Shall We Dance?

I’m delighted to introduce you to Rough Draft, the new online publication from StoryStudio Chicago, where I’m Artistic Director. This is a co-post, and if you’re reading this because you subscribe to my own newsletter, I hope you’ll also subscribe to Rough Draft; we’ll have a wide range of writers and topics, and I’ll pop in from time to time.

If you’ve ever seen the 1952 MGM film Singin’ in the Rain, you might remember the number “Good Mornin’,” in which Debbie Reynolds, Gene Kelly, and Donald O’Connor, dance and sing as a trio.

If you don’t know it, or if it’s been a while, I hope you can take a minute out of your day to watch the sequence, with—and this is important—the understanding that Debbie Reynolds was in ABSOLUTE HELL during the 15-hour filming of the scene.

It was 1952, and she was 18 years old and under contract at MGM, and Louis B. Mayer, who always got his way, wanted her in this movie. He stuck her between Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor, two of the greatest dancers of their generation. She had absolutely no dance experience.

Gene Kelly was also co-directing the film, and you can imagine how he felt about Mayer giving him a teenager with no dance background. When you watch it, you’ll see that Gene Kelly did a hell of a job of choreographing around her limitations. At more than one point they lift her up on a piece of furniture and dance around her as she just kind of sways.

Debbie Reynolds had been given three months before filming to “learn to dance.” She was training in MGM’s dance rehearsal studio, eight hours a day, and Gene Kelly would come by and criticize everything she did. He was notoriously harsh on her, there and then on the set. Later in life, he said he was amazed that she still talked to him.

There’s a famous story about this time, and it’s famous because Debbie Reynolds told it again and again later in life:

One day late in those three months of training, Debbie Reynolds was hiding under a piano in an empty rehearsal room and crying. Someone heard her and came in and asked what was wrong. She peered out and saw Fred Astaire.

(If you’re not up on your dance history, Fred Astaire was older than Kelly and O’Connor, in his early fifties. Gene Kelly’s style was athletic and muscular; O’Connor’s was usually comical. Fred Astaire, on the other hand, seemed to float. He was pure elegance, and he made everything look effortless.)

“You’re not going to die,” he told her. “That’s what it’s like to learn to dance. If you’re not sweating, you’re not doing it right.” Then he invited her down the hall to his own studio to watch him rehearse. “I think you’ll see something useful,” he said.

So she sits on a chair in the corner, and she’s not sure what she’s supposed to learn, because he’s Fred Astaire, and he’s doing insanely complicated things. He’s working with his choreographer, Hermes Pan, and he seems to forget that she’s there. He’s just working the same sequence over and over. He’s sweating, he’s getting frustrated. At one point he throws his cane and cracks a mirror. He has his assistant bring him new socks, because he’s sweated and bled through the first pair. He’s red in the face, and he’s still just working the same moves over and over.

After a couple of hours, she slinks out of the room.

And then for the rest of her life, she points at this moment as the most important one in her formation as a performer. Of course Astaire’s lesson was not “engage your core and keep your spine straight.” The lesson was “Yes, it IS this hard.” The lesson was, “You thought you were working as hard as a person has ever worked, but guess what.” The lesson was, “If you’re not sweating through your shirt and bleeding through your socks, you’re not doing it right.”

I’ve come to realize over years of teaching very talented graduate students and even my most advanced students at StoryStudio that 95% of my job is getting students to understand how hard they need to be working. It’s a tricky paradox: We want writing to be accessible to everyone, we want new writers of all ages, we don’t want to scare away any of the vital and beautiful voices that we need in this world. And then, in the next minute, we’re supposed to turn around and explain that writing—at least, writing toward publication, writing something that many other people will want to read—is hell?

It’s quite similar to something like dance, of course. Dance IS for everyone. Everyone who can move any part of their body, even if it’s just their eyelids, can and should dance. But if you’re going to keep up with Gene Kelly and star in an MGM musical—yes, it’s going to nearly kill you.

Time for a dance break.

Only one year later, Reynolds and O’Connor were reunited in the Warner Bros. film I Love Melvin (yeah, I’d never heard of it, either) and you can see that in this brief time, she’s vastly improved. Here’s the aptly-named number “Where Did You Learn to Dance,” which—okay, yes, they’re still putting her up on a table a couple times—but look how far she’s come!

What makes this message especially tricky is that just about everyone believes they’re already working as hard as they possibly can—harder, in fact, than anyone has ever worked. Most writers are not. But this isn’t a question of laziness. True laziness is rare. Some far more common issues are: a misunderstanding of the amount of work involved, a lack of confidence, a misconception that this is supposed to be easy, a fear of failure, a fear of success, a fear of facing the throbbing heart of the writing. Most common of all is a fear of dismantling the drafting that’s done, for the sake of revision—when revision is the most important part, and usually the bulk of the labor.

In some ways, I’m a “lazy” writer. I do not write every day. I don’t set myself stringent word goals when I write. I do not get up at four in the morning to write. I do not go for a ten-mile jog, dictating into my phone, and then come home to write at least 2,000 words before lunch. Those are ways of working hard, but I think they’re fundamentally unimportant ones. You can get your Puritan Work Ethic merit badge for writing before dawn, but you won’t get a better book out of it.

Real work is both more painful and more joyful than simply rising early and writing a lot of words. The specifics of this work—of how to work hard, and how hard to work—are what we teach at StoryStudio, and they’re a lot of what this publication is going to be: Instructors, advanced students, and other community members talking about going through it, about the specifics of craft and revision and depth and research and self-reckoning that might be painful but that get us all the way there. The path of least resistance, after all, rarely yields great rewards.

What happens when a writer has understood writing to be a faster and easier and less painful process, then worked as hard as they think they’re supposed to, and the piece in question isn’t accepted for publication? They tell themselves this was the wrong project, or they’re a bad writer, or that novels about killer nuns just aren’t selling right now. And maybe they start over on another project, abandoning the first—or maybe they give up altogether. What happens, on the other hand, when a writer halfway through a novel finds that it’s painful, nearly impossible, absolutely pulling teeth, and they haven’t been prepared for this? They assume that it’s the wrong project, or they’re a bad writer, or a novel about killer nuns was a bad idea. And they abandon the project, or writing itself.

I’m devoted to talking about how hard it is, not to scare anyone away, but so we don’t lose these writers. In other words, my job as a writing instructor is not to Gene Kelly you; I’m here to Fred Astaire you.

Speaking of Fred Astaire… After some research, I’m pretty sure that what he must have been rehearsing that day is the “hat rack” dance from the film Royal Wedding. When you watch it, I want you to remember that he was 52. Presumably, by then things were getting harder for him every year—not easier.

I also want you to notice his socks. He always said he wore red socks to draw attention to his feet. But I wonder if they were red so the blood wouldn’t show.

When you watch it, see how he floats. Watch how the dance looks, in its final form, absolutely effortless.

Welcome to Rough Draft. We’re going to have some fun here.