The other day I
mentioned I was on the hunt for a book. It still remains a sight unseen. Though
in my half-hearted attempted to find it, I happily rediscovered another book. I
abandoned the search and whittled away the afternoon re-reading ‘Naked, Drunk and Writing’ by Adair Lara.
I bought the book last
year because of the title* and it’s promise to help the reader ‘craft a
compelling memoir or personal essay.’ At this point I was half contemplating
writing a travelogue about my impeding journey from London to Sydney. I was
also starting to get steady requests to pen opinion columns in SpitPress.
On the first read I
gobbled the book up. The pages are dog-eared and annotated with flashes of
green highlighter and scribbles in the margins. Adair Lara’s guide is personable and informative. Lara addresses structure, subject
matter, tone, narration, scene with a firm hand and wry wit. Even Lara, a writing teacher, admits,
“structure is not sexy”, yet I would consider her own book as delightfully playful. She
blends anecdotes of working as a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle and
teacher, throughout the book. Thereby giving each lesson or writing task depth
and relevance.
Lara also liberally
quotes other writers including Chekhov - “Tear your story in half and start in
the middle” or Marilynn Robinson’s description of writers starting out “At
first less in love with structure or pattern and more in love with words in a
foolish but sweet way.”
Lara herself is also
full of quotable titbits (hence the heavy-handed green highlighting) “Apply
part A (Butt) to part B (chair)….Don’t vow to write. Vow to show up at the
desk.” Or “You must work. You start with your hot heart, spilling truth any
old way onto the page. And then you bring in your cold eye.”
There is a plethora of
writing exercises in the book. In all honesty I have completed few. I read the
book quickly and with immense joy. Then I packed it in a box with 18kilos worth
of other goods and shipped it from London to Sydney.
Some of the writing advice
stuck like glue throughout the rest of my trip and inferred astounding impacts
on my journal writing. Lara recommends that you collect sensory rich images as
well “those cranky, eccentric details that could come only from a frontier
where no one else has been: your life…the most neurotics details resonate like
a tuning fork”. So I wrote my journal with a hot heart. Now I just need a cold
eye.
* The title itself is
a cute story in itself “somebody at a party once remarked to me over sushi that
books with ‘naked’ in the title always sell”.
