Among the clients I’ve worked with this week was a lovely lady developing a picture book. There’s so much that’s wonderful about her story. I was immediately touched and involved by the plot, the characters and what when talking to Nigel Planer at The Writers’ Gym I called the sense of humour of the universe the story takes place in. Still, I could have felt closer to it – and I knew exactly how.
Something about this particular story taking place in present tense was distracting. I’m a big fan of present tense for the urgency, intensity and immediacy it generates. A lot of people aren’t; I’ve even heard a creative writing teacher tell her group that past tense was ‘better’ than present (ironically, this happened in the same week I spoke to my then-seven-year-old LAMDA student about orange not being a ‘better’ colour than purple).
I made it clear to my writer client that both options are as worthy, exquisite and important as each other. But, like dating or job interviews or starting sentences with conjunctions (see what I did there?), the important thing is to know what you want. That way, your sense of obligation to anything as the one-size-fits-all ‘right’ way to communicate your story won’t get in the way of finding what’s authentic to your idea, style and personality. The choice has got to be about the story, the flavour, the mood and pace and sense of where, when and who we are in the moment. Just as times of day fit different drinks, tenses and voices fit themselves in their own time and place. It’s all personal preference and specificity in the end. “Present tense is coffee,’ I heard myself say. “Past tense in tea.”
I love coffee. If you’ve met me, you’ve seen me drink coffee. The one almost definitively equals the other. I love coffee. I love my addiction to coffee. I love that I discovered it thinking I wouldn’t like it, and for totally the wrong reasons (trying to impress/fit in with a grown-up, as I saw it at seventeen or eighteen). But this is why there’s no such thing as a wrong answer. We’ve been very happy together ever since. Coffee and me, that is. Did I mention I love coffee?
But I also love tea. Just as the rhythm of language follows our heartbeat and the speed of our thoughts, hence so many swearwords are short and so many separated love poems are long, tea and coffee do different jobs. Tea is not part of my day, my brand or my writing rituals the way coffee is. But it is important and just as I wouldn’t want to choose between any two of my friends because I have a unique relationship with each of them, so I wouldn’t want to choose between tea and coffee, or between past tense and present tense. Both colours are in the paint palette for a reason, neither better or worse. We are not betraying anyone or anything by playing the tense field. We’ll find what’s right for this story, this moment, not through a preconceived right and wrong but through finding the specific and individual truth of this one story.
I Dare You
Do you have a preference between tea and coffee?
Write that taste.
Go on, just be honest with to the piece of paper. It’s a first draft which means it’s sacred to you: it won’t tell (Whatever we think any preference we have ‘says about us’, the piece of paper doesn’t see it that way. It doesn’t compare. It just explores the specifics). Write the taste itself. Not cleverly. Not interestingly. Honestly. Write the thoughts before you drink it, how they merge with the taste, and your thoughts after it. Be in your body and mind. Don’t ‘tell’ the reader your feelings. Just be in them, and transcribe what you find.
What’s your cup of tea might not be someone else’s – and that’s exactly what we want to discover when we read.
Second Cup?
There are more creative confidence exercises at the next Friday Writing Workout on 1 March. If you can’t join live, do the workshop in your own time, right here. Signing to be a paid supporter will also get you new writing prompts and exercises every week…