Why All Writers Should Watch Mad Men

Tell me why you love "Mad Men", the AMC TV show that vivifies 1960s Manhattan, the dawn of a certain kind of advertising, the red pucker of big lips, and unblinkered gazing into another's eyes. All right, perhaps you haven't seen the show, perhaps this post is thereby to you seemingly irrelevant, but nonetheless, I have climbed onto this cliff and I will stay here until I explain:

I love "Mad Men" for its subtlety. Yes, subtlety. I know we are talking ad men and 1960s style TV, but I claim subtlety as the reason that all writers out there should be watching this show—sitting up straight and taking note of how the hard stuff gets done.

There are, for example, those leitmotifs. There is the submergence of the same, the way the show seems to move on, spiral forward, until suddenly the show's past is its present again—an old argument surfaces, a familiar sweater appears, a longing is ripped back open, and the whole thing burgeons with the messy complication of life and how life is lived. I am not going to fight you, Don Draper says to his wife in one episode. I'll say what you want me to say, but I won't fight you. And there it is—an answer to a question, all a viewer has to know about what has gone on behind the scenes in a household that is permanently unsteady. Somewhere off stage, an argument we had seen coming but did not fully witness has been had. Agreements have been made. The rules have changed.

One of the hardest things about writing well is recognizing that life is never neat, never only present-flowing, never summarily concluded. Writers have to honor that fact without burdening the reader with knotted tangents. "Mad Men" honors the messiness of life while being one of the most gorgeous and most carefully crafted TV shows of all time.

Read more...

Writerly Process: Special Features

An impromptu gathering at our home last night—two dear friends and our son coming in and out from a party of his own. Late into the night (rather, earlier today), the conversation turned not to books, but to writers and to writer talk.

It was suggested (by one) that the writerly process is too internal to be of any communicable interest. That what goes on inside a writer's head should stay right there, in a writer's head—the poem or the story or the book ideally speaking exclusively for itself. Process talk has inherent wings in the field of design (how did the green swan-footed couch come to sit beside the pink silk lampshade?) or in film (who doesn't luxuriate in the "Mad Men" special features? who doesn't want to know every last thing about that series' how?) or in the kitchen (which spice and how much and what is the chemistry of baking powder?), but not in writing, where the obsession is the writer's alone and the gist, the longing, the choice making, the fears, the megalomania do not make for relatable tales.

I didn't sleep the rest of the night, retracing the contours of this conversation in my head. I considered how long it takes to produce a story, even, that is worthy of another's glance—of all that time in between that is only choice making, only process. I thought of this blog, which is nothing if not process talk—the splintering off of obsessions, the dwelling with them, the fervent hope that what is said will be of some inherent interest.

I thought of you, reading this blog. I thought to say, Thank you. And happy new year.

Read more...