On Radical Writing

Personal essays, narrative structure, charcoal chicken.

I saw some writing tips the other day¹. One of those was to focus on structure — because once you figure out structure, your essay writes itself². That note gave a caveat, however: giving a piece of writing the right structure is really hard.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about writing — specifically good writing. I would say that writing well is a very, very difficult thing to do. Getting the structure right is just one piece of a much larger puzzle³. To write something that transcends jotting and emerges as writing, you need to also have a level of technical proficiency and the ability to craft sound sentences — good writing being easy to read, if not always read easily. You need to have a baseline of knowledge from which to draw allusions and make references — ones obscure enough to alight the reader’s wonder but familiar enough to resonate. You also need to have a wealth of experiences about which to write — it being very hard to write an engaging piece about a boring life⁴. A great writer brings a sense of wonder to their writing.

In this way, writing is similar to cooking. To be a great cook, you must also have the technical proficiency to dice and chop, sauté and simmer, brine and cure, braise and smoke. You need to have a baseline of knowledge from which to draw recipes and techniques and a wealth of high quality ingredients to showcase in your meals. And, like a great writer, a great cook brings a sense of wonder to their cooking. He knows when to veer from the recipe, when to add his own twists, is confident enough to improvise when needed⁵.

Paul Millerd

wrote recently about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “confessional essay," published in Esquire, titled “The Crack-Up.” Paul writes that, upon rereading it, and despite it being, in his words, “meandering and hard to read sometimes,” the essay reads very much like the “personal essays” so in vogue online today. Having read a number of these essays recently — and, not, frankly, being a fan of them — I wrote back to Paul pressing him a little bit about this⁶.

We exchanged a few emails, with me pushing the idea that writing a personal essay does not automatically make you a good writer⁷ — that you need to expand how you write, play around with different styles and techniques, have a grasp of basic syntax, style, and structure before you delve into deeply personal stories⁸.

At the end of the correspondence, though, Paul proved too Zen for me — I couldn’t get a rise out of him⁹. Still, though, I think it’s worth anyone who considers his or her self a writer to spend a little bit of time thinking about what good writing means to them. To me, good writing is those things I mentioned: fresh, engaging, thoughtfully composed, and deeply relevant. It has a balance of powerful emotion and appropriate style — with neither overbearing on the other. It engrosses the reader and inspires them to write¹⁰, or at least reflect¹¹.

Good writing, now that I think about it, is like good eating and good living: pretty radical. We’ll keep that radicality alive this week with a roasted chicken — pollo al carbon — inspired by

Andrew Fuselier

over at

Fuselier & Co.

¹²

In a blender, combine a cup of orange juice, a splash of apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, some soy sauce, some fish sauce, a squeeze of Gochujang¹³, olive oil, and some canned chipotles in adobo¹⁴ and blend it up. Spatchcock a chicken¹⁵ and place it in a large ziploc bag with the marinade, and let it sit overnight¹⁶.

When ready to cook, either light a charcoal grill and cook over indirect heat¹⁷ or, if you’re lazy like me, fire up a pellet smoker to 375(F). Cook until the internal temp is 130-140(F), then crank the heat to 415(F) (or move over to direct heat) and continue cooking until the skin is crispy¹⁸ and the internal temp hit 155(F).

Serve however you like to serve your chicken¹⁹.

So there you go, pollo al carbon. Give it a shot this weekend as a warm-up for your Memorial Day cookout. Any questions on preparation should be addressed to Mr. Fuselier.

With that, class is dismissed. Your homework is to spend some time doing something radical. As for us, we’re going to be celebrating (the now official) Auntie CWD, eMD, while eating cake and Chik-fil-a²⁰. If you’re not cooking your own meals, maybe you do the same.

See you next week.

1. A Substack Note, as it were, which is a platform I can’t quite get my mind around.

2. Or something like that.

3. For those who enjoy reading about the mechanics of writing, I’d recommend John McPhee’s terrific Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process — which, among many other things, dives deeply into how to structure any piece of non-fiction.

4. It’s no wonder that many of the “best” writers have led lives filled with adventure. Think Ernest Hemingway and his time spent in the field fishing and hunting, experiencing war, bullfights, prizefights, traveling through Europe and the US — these are all things he drew on in his writing.

5. This is why I loved watching Chopped so much when I was first beginning to experiment in the kitchen.

6. I realize I was asking a lot of Paul here, for him to defend a genre of essay writing that he has no (excuse the pun) personal stake in. But, like I said, I’ve been noodling on these thoughts for a while now and Paul’s piece came during the Kiddos naps, when I had plenty of time to rant like an old man raving at the clouds.

7. I even quoted his own comment, that many of these essays are themselves “meandering and hard to read".”

8. The reason for this, in my mind, is that good writing stands on its own — neither the plot (or, in the case of non-fiction, the underlying story and emotions behind it) nor the beauty of the prose carry more or less of the weight: they work together in harmony. I find that too often, writers online have more substance than style, and the story gets lost in sloppy prose or a poor structure.

(An example of this being the now cliched structure of:

1. ATTENTION GRABBING FLASHBACK! “There I was, fifteen feet underwater, eyes wild trying to identify the shadowy movement around me. Was it a shark? A barracuda? Uncle Steady floundering for air? I was nearing the end of my oxygen levels and I was worried I’d never get the chance to find out.

2. BREAK TO THE PRESENT; CONVEY HOW WE GOT THERE. “All that was running through my head 6 months ago when I went on my first spearfishing adventure. You see, Uncle Steady and I had been having a hankering to fire rubber band-propelled spears underwater, trying to catch some fish, and we finally found ourselves ready to do it…

3. THE DEEPLY MEANINGFUL CONNECTION. “Looking back at it, I suppose I really wanted to spearfish because I was lacking a connection to a more primal version of myself. I wanted to give myself a new challenge, a new way to experience the world. Doing it underwater, given [the background I just gave you] seemed only natural…”

4. BACK TO THE FLASHBACK. “Back underwater, I just couldn’t hold my breath any longer. I kicked to the surface, gasping for air. Looking around me, I saw Uncle Steady’s dive flag 25 yards away. ‘So it wasn’t him,” I thought to myself…”

5. THE RESOLUTION. “Having faced my fears of coming face to face with a shark — and having it turn out to not be a shark at all, but a clownfish! — I felt renewed. I laughed — as one does when watching a clown show! — and dove again for several more hours, not spearing anything, but just enjoying a new perspective on the world.”

While this type of structure certainly provides the opportunity for great writing, at this point, it — at least to me — feels so overused, I can only focus the structure; I lose focus of the writing and the story itself. Good writing engrosses you: the last thing it should do is have you thinking about why on Earth the author made that stylistic choice!)

9. Chock that up to his previous career as a consultant, I suppose — my feedback is tame!

10. After I read good writing I think to myself, “Sh*t! I wish I wrote that!”

11. Paul, upon me sending him a draft of this dispatch, pushed back on me, asking why I was so passionate about this (meaning, good writing, and probably also, bad writing). He asks where it comes from, and what’s my own aim with writing.

Answering that question is going to get a little meta, a little “behind the writer’s curtain” — which is not really the type of writing I really like — but, it is a good question, albeit one that a college creative writing professor would ask (not that that’s a bad thing). I think it comes down to this: we live in an age where it is so easy to consume copious amounts of media and consume it very quickly. The saying “you are what you eat” is cliche at this point (though that doesn’t stop me from using it) — but I think you can expand the “eat” there to “consume.” When your diet is fast food and fast clothing, TikToks and tweets, you hamper your ability to grow — your body, mind, and spirit aren’t getting the nutrients they need.

When a writer — or someone who thinks its cool to call themself a writer — dashes out a poorly written but deeply confessional essay and then “hits publish” (“even if it’s scary!”), that’s the literary equivalent of a pre-made meal (Blue Apron at best, McDonald’s at worst). It may taste good (or make you feel good) at first, but it doesn’t stick with you; it’s not memorable. And, reading that, absorbing that — it’s not going to make you a better writer. You may get off a little bit on the vulnerability porn that are so emblematic of personal essays, but at the end of the day, if not well-written, it’s a fleeting high.

I think that we owe it to ourselves to push to that higher standard in what we read, what we write, what we eat, and what we do. But that’s just me — the nice thing about this is that you’re free to read and write whatever you want.

12. A writer whose professor, after reading his work, once urged the class to “shoot him in the nuts” with their “imaginary .22s.”

Now if that’s not radical, I don’t know what is!

13. Andrew’s recipe calls for achiote paste (and lime juice, not vinegar), but I didn’t have any on hand so I took the liberty of substituting.

14. One or two is probably all you need, unless you a glutton for heat.

15. Cut its backbone out so it lays flat.

16. Or at least an hour or two.

17. The traditional way, I think — al carbon in the name being “charcoal.”

18. At this point I basted the chicken with a mixture of melted butter, soy sauce, and tomato paste to add the characteristic reddish color given off by the achiote paste I was lacking.

19. Andrew recommends homemade tortillas, which are terrific, but I’m often lazy and find that putting high-quality, store-bought tortillas directly over the burner until they are charred works pretty well in a pinch.

20. Not necessarily, but in all likelihood, in that order.