Author: Kelly Caldwell

A thing I like to say to my students, maybe too often, is expectations ruin everything.

That’s the good news.

Also, the bad news.

It’s good news when we are trying to build adversity—or in memoir, when we’re puzzling out why everything went wrong—because expectations are a great place to look.

I interviewed a marriage therapist once who said that unspoken expectations were the chief cause of strife among her married patients. They carried beliefs into their marriages—sometimes subconsciously, sometimes acutely aware of them—about how they’d celebrate Thanksgiving, or who’d be responsible for cooking dinner. But they never talked about them. When their new spouse failed to live up to those expectations? Disaster.

So when things are going off the rails for your characters, and you’re not sure why, look to their expectations. Are the characters even aware of them? In my memoir classes, students often discover that they’d held unarticulated hopes and beliefs. That they were secret from everyone, including themselves, created anguish and chaos, often for everyone involved.

But there are other expectations working on us when we write — those we anticipate our readers will hold. Those can sometimes be helpful, when they’re things like, “Don’t bore your reader.” Or, “Readers expect the beginning of the story to grab their attention.”

More often, though, what we think our readers expect from us, or what they actually do expect, can be unhelpful, to say the least.

Author Brit Bennett said of her debut novel, The Mothers, that, after it came out, readers seemed to think her characters would adhere more to stereotypes.

“It’s a book about Black characters, but I think there’s a way in which people are reacting to the characters — and their not conforming to what is expected — which has been very telling of what people think or expect about Black narratives,” Bennett told Electric Literature. “Black people are as diverse as any group of people, which should go without saying! But it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that that’s shocking or surprising to people in a way that I just didn’t think it was.”

You want to resist falling into that trap, unless of course, you’re going to use it to surprise the reader. [Spoiler ahead!] Think of the ending of the movie Frozen, when it seemed like the movie’s happy ending would be the same as most other Disney princess movie happy endings, with Anna marrying her paramour, Kristoff. Instead, the ending of the movie reveals that the love of Anna’s life is her sister, Elsa, and vice versa.

For writers, I think the most insidious way expectations ruin everything is when we set them for our own stories, creating in our minds the idea of how a story will resonate, or read, or succeed.

I wrote about that expectation recently, so I won’t repeat myself, except to quote, again, Gotham teacher Teresa Wong:

“To exist, [your story] has to be a little bit flawed,” Teresa said. “But then at least it can be shared, right?”

Kelly Caldwell

Dean of Faculty

I shared a pretty embarrassing story with my students the other day, so I figured, why not go for broke and tell it to you all as well.

For a few months when I first started freelancing, I found myself completely stymied whenever I began a new story (often on deadline!). I’d try to start in the middle. I’d try to download my research. I’d try to start at the end. Every time, I ended up deleting everything and starting over.

I could only really begin writing (and this is the embarrassing part) after I’d type out seven words:

The Ottawa County Board of Commissioners today…

When I first got out of college, I worked as a reporter for a community newspaper and wrote hundreds of articles about the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners. Apparently, I’d moved on, but my mind had not.

That I couldn’t work before typing that phrase infuriated me. It’s not like that board was the only thing I wrote about. When I wasn’t writing about tax millage, I wrote about disaster aid. Heroic rural maternity nurses. An obscenity trial that echoes our current struggle with book bans.

Compounding that, I accused my mind of sedition. “I don’t live there anymore,” I’d say to myself, arms crossed, refusing to type the words my mind wanted to hear. It felt like some part of me was trying to drag me back to when I was 22, inexperienced and unsure. So I resisted.

Because that always works so well.

What I failed to realize was that I’d inadvertently created a ritual.

I mentioned rituals last month, and wanted to return to them, because some people (read: me) undervalue the role they play in our writing process. But we ignore them at our peril. You might create one you hate by accident.

More likely, you’ll keep struggling every time you sit down to write, when there’s a tool that can help you make that happen more quickly.

Rituals, says the writer Amitava Kumar, fill a need, “the need for those conditions of work, the meeting of place and habits, that allow the right words to emerge.”

Or you can think of them another way, as a way of staking out territory for yourself, and your work, says writer Sheryl Garratt.

“Ritual can be a way of reclaiming space,” Garratt writes, “of bringing us back to the present moment.”

Kumar’s ritual is walking. When he laces up his walking boots, he says, “The work of writing has begun. As important as the act of shutting the door of the study has been the act of opening it and stepping out for a stroll.”

Other writers clear their desks, eat a sandwich, do yoga, play three hands of computer solitaire. Saul Bellow did 30 pushups. Jesmyn Ward makes herself a cup of tea. (For many of us, caffeine is involved.)

The precise actions involved don’t matter, as long as they help you cross that bridge from your busy life into your imagination.

That was the real problem with my accidental ritual—when I started accusing my mind of trying to force me to live in the past, when I fought it, the ritual I never meant to start stopped serving any purpose. Eventually I replaced it.

And then, when my life changed, I changed my ritual again.

Next time you make time to write, pay attention to what you’re doing just beforehand. Do you have a ritual? Does it help you build a bridge, or is it getting in your way? If you don’t have one, or you hate the one you do have, create a new one. Build it for yourself with the generosity and enthusiasm you’d bring to knitting your BFF a new scarf, or making a loved one an omelette. Find one that soothes the chattering part of your mind. One that works.

Kelly Caldwell

Dean of Faculty

Another January, another season of watching my fellow writers experience a surge of energy for their work. Sometimes, it’s brought on by the downtime over the holidays; in others by the shiny, fresh feeling of a new year. 

Perhaps you’re among these writers, for whom the January reset comes with a little extra gas in the tank. I hope so. And if you are, let’s talk about how you can make the most of it while it lasts. 

• Don’t squander your surge on research, unless it’s the most important thing your project needs right now. 

As a former newspaper reporter, I’m particularly susceptible to this one. “How can I write if there’s more reporting to do?” I think. The truth is, there is always more reporting you can do. The real question is: Is it necessary? Or is it just procrastination?

If that “research” involves social media, it can probably wait. 

Instead, make a list of the questions you’re thinking about researching. Then switch to your project and start writing. If, once you’ve got your writing done, those questions still feel urgent, by all means, dive in! 

• Do create a bridging ritual. 

The writer Sheryl Garratt says that between fast-paced lives and constant distractions, many of us have forgotten the value of performing a ritual as we shift from task to task. 

“Ritual can be a way of reclaiming space, of bringing … ourselves fully into the present moment in order to do our best work,” Garratt writes. “Bridging rituals are the tiny things we do to move from one role to another, to shift from one task to a different one, to change our state of mind and find focus in a world of constant distraction.”

Garratt suggests small, easy rituals like making yourself a cup of tea, or clearing your workspace. You can, like Mister Rogers, take off your jacket and put on a cardigan. She also suggests taking three deep breaths and then saying aloud, “I am now here to make art.”

OK, that one might not be for everybody. 

Find one that does work for you, and then do it. (Ignore your dog giving you the side-eye.) 

My last suggestion comes in two parts, which may at first sound antithetical: 

• Don’t write for 5 minutes, then give up. AND, make time for breaks.

You need to give your mind time to simmer down, to shed the world, to reach The Zone. If you get impatient because it’s taking more than a few minutes to find, you’ll never actually get there. 

You also need to respect your poor beleaguered brain when it’s tired. Gotham teacher Angela Lam has written about this, and says that our minds are like nutrient-rich soil — they need rest to remain fertile. 

“Sometimes,” Angela says, “while laying fallow, a seed germinates and sprouts, out of control, into an award-winning story.” 

Let that be a benediction for us all— ride your new-year wave, and let us read your stories!  

Kelly Caldwell

Dean of Faculty