‘It’s rare that things arrive fully formed’

Jon Ronson's inspiration for anyone lost in their work this week – plus an online get-together and some subscription news.

Photo by Marco Lastella on Unsplash

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This week I came across this snippet from the interview I did in 2020 with Jon Ronson (you can listen to the whole thing here, or on your podcast app). It’s Jon’s explanation of how he came to write his acclaimed New York Times bestseller So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.

That book started with… Do you know Clive Stafford Smith, the human rights lawyer? He was a death-row lawyer in Louisiana for years, and he created the charity Reprieve, and now he's a Guantanamo lawyer. He's really a heroic, amazing man. Anyway, we became friends. And he was encouraging me to basically write a Men Who Stare at Goats about court experts. One of his big things is that court experts are all pseudo scientists who can't be trusted. Blood spatter, hair analysis – it's all nonsense. 

Oh god, how dispiriting.

I know. And Clive’s a polemicist, so I think there's an element of truth to what he was saying, but it's not the full story. But Clive was like, ‘This is what you have to do, Jon.’ I don't think I've ever told this story before. He said, ‘What you need to do is create a fake court science, just invent something out of nowhere. And then set yourself up as a court expert, and see how far you'll get. You'll be invited to give evidence at trials.’ And I was like, ‘Clive, at what point does this veer into contempt of court?’ Clive was like, ‘We'll worry about that later.’

I also remember he said to me, ‘You've got a real problem if you want to write about court rooms, because people aren't interested. For some reason, people don't want to read about prisons, prisoners, courts.’ But anyway, I did start going to courtroom expert classes, every Wednesday evening. I can't remember the details, but there was lots of stuff about blood spatter and fingerprints – it was a general course about the court sciences. And I went to several of them, but I was flailing around a little bit. I really didn't want to do what Clive had suggested, because it really felt…

Illegal.

Sketchy. Yeah! It really felt illegal. So I was flailing around, and then in the middle of this, I started noticing that there was a different sort of justice happening, which was social-media justice. I noticed Twitter justice at its very inception. And I thought, ‘Oh, OK, this is maybe the solution to the problem that Clive posed,’ which was people aren't interested in reading about justice. I thought maybe people would be interested in reading about social-media justice, because that's new and something that we're all part of. So really, that was how I started writing So You've Been Publicly Shamed. All this stuff I’d written about blood spatter, and about going to this course, that all became useless. And I'd spent months on it.

But I think that illustrates the value of your patience, because you kept going with it, even though you weren’t quite sure what you were going to do with it, until it became clear what you could do.

Yeah. It’s really rare that things arrive fully formed.

I share this today because I think Jon’s story is cheering, in a way. I think it’s normal – in fact, I’d say it’s universal, with very few exceptions – that at some stage in a project, writers will feel lost and uncertain. It might be unclear where it’s going and whether it will go anywhere at all. But I really believe that it does all go somewhere, even if it takes much longer than you imagined, and you end up at a destination you never considered at the beginning.

In Jon’s case, it was going towards a bestseller that, admittedly, would not include blood spatter – but it might never have been born if he hadn’t spent all that time thinking about justice. Sometimes writing is just shoring up your imagination, filling your creative stock-room. Sometimes it’s honing or maintaining your skill, or keeping your brain sharp. And sometimes it turns out to be useful later – I’m currently drawing on work that I did two years ago and then abandoned. Maybe Jon’s big blood-spatter book is still to come.

So don’t despair, if you’re flailing today. Don’t worry too much about where you’re going ultimately. Just look at the road a few metres ahead, and stay on it.

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I’m hosting another In Writing Creative Hour this Sunday 29 January at 5pm GMT.

If you’re new around here, the Creative Hour is a Google Meet get-together that I try to do a couple of Sundays a month (timings vary, so don’t worry if 5pm doesn’t work for you). We meet online, say hello, and then write for the best part of an hour in companionable silence; think of it as a virtual library environment, just with a bit more moral support from your In Writing community. It’s a very nice way to get some work done at the weekend.

It’s for paying subscribers only, so if you’d like to join, do upgrade your membership and look out for an email first thing on Sunday, when I’ll send out the link.

Another bit of news on that front: since this newsletter was born, I’ve kept the paid part of it available from £40 a year. In the spectrum of Substack subscriptions, this is bargainous, pick-it-up-in-the-queue-for-the-till territory. I am very happy to be a cheap date – always have been – but I work hard at all things In Writing and I want to be able to give it the time it deserves, so prices will increase slightly on 1 February.

The good news is that if you are already a paying subscriber, your payments will not increase – and so if you’re thinking about upgrading, do it before 1 February to take advantage of the cheaper price. This gets you access to face-to-face Creative Hours with me; audio recordings of the newsletter; the In Writers Write-In thread (which from February will be for paying subscribers only) so that you can discuss your writing issues with the community; and other perks, from time to time.

One more point: whether you are happy to stick with the free version or are able to offer some financial support, I am very, very grateful that you’re here and allowing me to do this at all. Thanks for reading, and an extra thank-you to those who get involved in the comments, which makes it all so much more enjoyable. Remember you can introduce yourself here.

I’m looking forward to meeting more of you on Sunday. Until then, good luck with your writing this week!