What Hank's Writing: Green Beans

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Today the topic is: green beans.

Some years ago, I came into the kitchen of my father’s house, where he was standing at the sink, snapping the ends off the green beans, and humming.

You seem happy, I said. Happier than I’ve ever seen anyone snapping off the ends of green beans. And, I have to say, there were quite a few of them, since dinner was for dad and his wife, and me and someone (I won’t go there, long ago) and four siblings and their significant others and various of his grandchildren. Lots of green beans.

Do you need help? I asked. Happy to pitch in.

Nope, he said. I’m fine. I like doing this.

And I said, why do you like snapping off the end of green beans? Hundreds and hundreds of green beans? It's going to take forever.

That’s exactly the point, he said. It isn’t going to take forever. It’s going to take me a finite amount of time, just as long as it takes to get all these green beans done. If you think about them as hundreds of green beans, it seems impossible but one by one by one, it’s nothing. And if you persist, and if you finish it, you’ll have fun of having all these nice green beans. And then you can share them. And then they’re delicious. And everyone is happy.

As you can see, that stuck in my mind, but most the time I thought about it when I was snapping off the ends of green beans of my own. I thought about my dad, and all lessons I learned from him, and thought it was sweet that the green bean lesson was so resilient.

But now here I am in my new book, I am on word --to be exact--47,842.

When I am in the middle of thousands and thousands of words in a story, with thousands and thousands words to go, I sometimes think; THIS IS GOING TO TAKE ME FOREVER. That there is no way I’m going to get to 100,000 words, no matter what I do.

And then I began to think about the green beans. And the arithmetic and patience involved. If I don’t write my book word by word– – bean by bean ––I will never have enjoy having all of those words. And by simple arithmetic, they all have to add up. I mean, it’s addition. Add a word, then another word, and then another word.

I teach a class called The Muddle in the Middle. In it, I explain to writers why the middle is so difficult, and offer some steps to avoid getting mired in it. And how to extricate yourself from the middle’s inevitable quicksand. We’ve all read books where this problem is apparent--where we just keep turning the pages, wondering is anything going to happen?  (And sometimes we think: STOP TALKING, YOU PEOPLE!) Until the author manages to crawl their way through the middle and get to Act III, where there is some big revelation and twist and surprise and yet another twist and then the wonderful emotional wrap-up coda.

There are lots of secrets you can use to keep your manuscript moving forward, and I must admit, with some amusement, that when I was sitting there at word 44,000 (see? I took a pic to commemorate the moment), I thought: what am I going to do? What what what am I going to doooooooo?

And then I thought well, Miss Smarty, why don’t you just take your own advice? So I thought about some of the things that I tell my students, and used one of them! (I will reveal that I had the power go out. And it turned out to be a great thing.)

I also reminded myself that I felt exactly the same way in the middle of HER PERFECT LIFE. (Which comes out in about 50 days. Yikes. ) And that time as well, I just kept typing. Just kept going. I just kept saying : write one more line, write one more line. And it all seemed to work very nicely.

Did I tell you HER PERFECT LIFE got starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly? Very very lovely.

Or you might say, cool beans.

So as I am writing the new book—pssst--just don’t tell anyone, it's called...well, no, I can’t tell you yet. But here in the middle, I think of my dad, and I think of those beans. And I just persist, bean to bean to bean.

And now I realize I sound like Ann Lamott (sort of), Bird by Bird, but that never crossed my mind until this moment. 

Maybe its falls to each of us to discover our own metaphor for patience. Our own way of muddling through the middle of something that we know it will be worthwhile. Something that is rarely easy, and a major hurdle, but in the end infinitely rewarding.

So thanks, Dad. Those were some magic beans!

Reds and Readers, tell us what you think about in the midst of a long and tedious task!

PS. I’ll be teaching The Muddle in the Middle as a Master Class at this year’s New England Crime Bake. (Where, Reds and Readers, I have been named Guest of Honor.) (An honor for which I am still in utter disbelief. And infinite gratitude. ) The registration is capped, so hurry to sign up for an incredible weekend! Here’s the link.

(And SO funny--just go to the Crime Bake website and see who the GOH was in 2020. :-) )