✍️ Five Steps to More Authentic Writing
or, Thanks, Hem – but How Do You Find Your “One True Sentence”?
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
This opening sentence from Joan Didion’s essay and collection, The White Album, has always resonated with me, and I come back to it often. I believe it to be true on so many levels – and not just within the realm of writing.
Here are two lines from the TV show Community during a conversation about how everybody lies all the time.
Abed : “We don’t lie when we’re alone.”
Jeff : “Biggest lie ever. Nine out of ten lies occur six inches away from the bathroom mirror. We do most of our lying alone.”
Why do we do lie to the mirror? Because we need to tell ourselves stories in order to live.
This Catch-22 of human nature is part of what makes writing so hard!!! If we can’t be honest with ourselves, how can we be honest with our readers? The answer is: we can’t.
This idea overlaps with another piece of writing advice we’ve talked about before: Hemingway’s “Write One True Sentence”. In that post, I talk more about its relation to “finding your why” in your writing.
But in the more literal sense, it means writing through all the layers of bullshit – the stories we tell ourselves – until we get down to the truth, the context, the real meaning underneath. In other words, it means writing authentically.
That’s our job as writers.
Finding Your Authentic Writing Voice
Easier said than done. But here’s a little trick I came up with to be more authentic in my writing.
Remember back to a moment in your recent past (today, yesterday, last weekend…) when you changed your mind about doing something at the last minute. It could be going to the gym, cleaning the basement, painting the bathroom – whatever.
Ready?
Recognize that you may be lying to yourself. The first step isn’t realizing that you have a problem, but that you might have a problem. How many times have you sworn to go to the gym the next day, only to bail because you “had a long day” or “can’t get in the right head space” or whatever? Everyone does it. I’m not judging. But a good self-assessment is a great first step.
If you’re lying about that, what’s the truth? In the case of going to the gym, the real answer could be that you hate exercising, don’t want to climb into the car on this cold day, just can’t be arsed, or some other real, human emotional reason(s). What was that emotion for you in this case – and what is the real truth?
Write about that truth. You don’t have to show your writing to anyone. For your own edification, write down that truth. Write down how you really feel. Write down how you feel about how you feel (e.g., do you feel guilty for not feeling like exercising?) Write down how you want to do better in the future. Write down your fears about that. Write down how you’ll overcome those fears… And so on.
Reverse engineer what just happened. So far, we’ve dug backwards. But what do you think brought you here in the first place? Wind forward again and see if you can identify the (mostly subconscious) motivations at each step that led to your final decision to bail.
Remember the path you took there and back. What you just wrote probably won’t show up in any writing you’re doing right now. However, if you remember the path you took to get to that truth beneath the story you told yourself, you may notice that the path to finding your one true sentence in your future writing is easier. Bonus: this exercise may also help you dig down into your characters’ motivations as well.
Congratulations! You now have a whole ream of authentic writing sitting right in front of you!
It will take practice to dig deep like this to find our authentic writing voices every time we sit down to write. I certainly haven’t mastered it! The idea with this exercise though is to start getting comfortable with writing uncomfortable things – especially about ourselves.
But if you ever get stuck in places because you feel the writing is inauthentic, adapt these steps and see if you can dig into what’s not working. Chances are, you’re not getting to the full, honest truth. It doesn’t “ring true” because it’s not true.
One last, brutally honest point to remember. We tell ourselves stories in order to live. So when we push past those stories to the real truth underneath, we are going to die a little.
That, too, is our job as writers.
Over to You: Have You Ever Found Your One True Sentence?
What’s worked for you – and what didn’t? Is it hit or miss, or is there a formula you use? Let us know in the comments below!
Until next time, keep writing with wild abandon!
~Graham
email me if you get lost.
Your step-by-step suggestion here is so smart, Graham. So practical. Thank you. I am acutely aware of the major lie I tell myself. Were I to look directly into the mirror right this minute, and not lie, I would say with total honesty, "I will always remain sophomoric in my writing if I don't make time for self-reflection. I need to quit playing around and write much more thoughtfully than I do." I have written a few true sentences, and I recognize them immediately. They rise to the top, like cream in a bottle.
This reminds me of what my shrink told me to do to get a handle on my anxiety attacks. He said: "write what you feel when you're in the middle of one of these crises". I guess that's the most 'true' writing I've ever done (and I'm not being sarcastic here). By the way, the method works.