Good god, this woman can write

I don’t know what it is with me and bluebirds. The way they show up when I least expect them, and most need them, like the one that showed up the first Mother’s Day after losing my mama. Tiny bird, singing in my tree. Hope is the thing with feathers.

So, of course Judith would show up with a bluebird.

Let me tell you a little bit about her, okay?

She was a writer in another life. Wrote for Time, Vogue, Vanity Fair, New York, The New Yorker, CBS and CNN. A single mom making headlines and deadlines all over the world, as she says. Then she got hit by drunk driver in a truck.

Woke up in a hospital with a green angel leaning over her. Never got another job or paycheck. Had to return the five figure advance. She’d been a ghost writer, mostly, and then she wasn’t. Did you know after a traumatic brain injury some people don’t know what a fork is and have to learn to eat again? Not all people, of course.

Some have trouble breathing, some are quickly fine again. It’s a crap shoot. Roll the dice and wish for luck. She didn’t get lucky.

But let me interrupt myself.

Because I want you to know why I’m writing this.

You might think I’m writing it for Judith but I’m not. I’m writing it for you.

Let me tell you what I know about you, okay?

Best I figure, you love words like I love words. I think that because most of my readers are writers and if they’re not writers they’re agents, publishing people, journalists or avid readers and I don’t know how anyone does any of those without loving words.

Here’s the funny thing about writing. There are different styles of writing. We look at a political post, a trilogy about Middle Earth and a poem—and call them all writing. What a strangely generic word. Like calling liver and chocolate both “food.”

Here’s another funny thing about writing. A lot of us use words the way a ninety year old would drive a Porsche 911 Turbo. Thirty miles an hour, nevermind that it can do two hundred and five. Which is to say we don’t push words to their capacity.

In the sixteenth century, Erasmus wrote a collection of adages, common thoughts and wisdoms he liked. One was “vestis virum facit” — which means “the clothes make the man.” In a similar vein, the words make the writer, if you now what I mean.

We have all the experiences we need to be a writer. We’re alive, aren’t we? But the way we use words often doesn’t do justice to what lives deep inside our hearts.

That’s why William Zinsser said the best writers learn by imitation and said we should find writers that move us and let them influence us. And eventually, we move on beyond our influences, we shed those skins, and we develop our own style.

Margaret Atwood was influenced by Orwell, Alice Munro and The Brothers Grimm. Cormac McCarthy by Herman Melville, Faulkner, Dostoevsky and Mark Twain. Stephen King was influenced by Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson.

Of course, their influences were before the internet. Now, we can be influenced by beautiful writing outside of the books we loved. Like writers online.

So when I find a writers using words in a really unique way, I have to share.

And also? I think it’s more important now than ever because we live in a world filled with AI, and not just AI, but readers who can’t tell human writing from AI. It makes me sad, because AI can emulate a middle of the road writer, but there is no AI that will ever use words the way a truly skilled writer can and does.

So, that said — back to bluebirds finding me...

I was scrolling my feed one day when I saw a post with a bluebird as the cover. The title was The Cape of Good Hope. Hello bluebird, we meet again. I clicked.

Here, can I show you a snippet?

This brings us to Oklahoma, where once another beautiful guy woke up with no memory at all. Oklahoma has tornadoes that blow whole towns off the map. This dude’s tornado clawed out his head. I met him in brain injury group where we were rolling Play-Doh balls and banging plastic pegs with pretend hammers.

‘This dude’s tornado clawed out his head.’

Who writes that way?

Judith Hannah Weiss, that’s who.

No criticism intended, but you know how a hundred other writers would write that scene, right? They’d tell you what happened. The facts. This thing happened to that man and he lost his memory. They wouldn’t say a beautiful man woke up with no memory. There’s be no tornadoes in Oklahoma, much less clawing out his head.

By the time I got to the bottom, the last paragraph did me in.

Hello hope, we meet again.

I restacked.

Kate DiCamillo said “Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.”

And she’s right. Most of us don’t pay attention nearly enough. But paying attention isn’t just to the world around us. It’s also paying attention to how other writers use words. Because we can’t be influenced by what we pay no attention to.

Here, let me show you another snippet…

my mom grew up without moon or stars or sky or pets or parks or the soft feel of grass underfoot. Instead she had asphalt and pigeons. A glimpse of blue through tenements. Plus rice and beans and rice. But not enough beans or rice.

That’s from Glimmers. And again, you know how most people would write that, right? They’d tell you their mom grew up in poverty. Lived in a tenement, didn’t always have enough to eat. But there’d be no moon or stars or sky or the soft feel of grass underfoot she didn’t have. Because most people write conversationally.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with conversational writing, but it’s grape juice not burgundy wine or a rich Bordeaux and you’ll never get a little tipsy on it.

Charles Baudelaire said always be a poet, even in prose.

That’s what Judith does.

A glimpse of blue through tenements. The soft feel of grass underfoot. I think the most beautiful prose uses words the way a poet does. I also think most people don’t know how to do that because we see it so rarely. So much writing is conversational or educational, and so little is truly poetic. So, when I see it, how could I not share?

Here’s another thing Judith does. Can I point out a technique that, once you see, you can’t unsee? Because once you see it, you can tuck the technique in your toolbox.

Often times, Judith will write a paragraph that you or I would write. A sentiment felt by so many people that we all resonate. But that’s when she goes somewhere most writers don’t. She’ll end with one sentence that sets her writing apart. Like this:

I couldn’t imagine being old. I wouldn’t look like my mom and my feet wouldn’t hurt like hers. I wouldn’t shrink, wither, or die. Fast forward. My feet ache like my mom’s. My daughter lives far away. I remember her milk-drunk on my breasts and burrowed in my arms.

That’s from the piece called Moo Shoe News, which is tender and nostalgic.

And again, you know how most of us would write that, right? My daughter lives far away. I miss her. My daughter lives far away, I wish I could see her more often. And it’s not that those things wouldn’t be true. It’s that they lack the gut punch.

Because most of us do not end a paragraph with a sentence that packs a punch but every woman who ever nursed a child can feel that in her bones. I read that sentence and remembered little-babygirl-me holding a baby, milk drunk in my arms.

I can’t imagine waking up in a hospital with a green angel hovering above me. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to learn to use a fork again, much less not knowing how to be a mother, or what the word daughter even means.

It guts me to think of anyone going through that experience.

In the years since a drunk driver put Judith Hannah Weiss in the hospital and made her relearn everything, her work has appeared on NBC News and in The Washington Post. In the Oldster, Salmagundi, Iowa Review, The Rumpus, Creative Non-fiction, Bellevue Literary Review (wow!) and she was an editor’s pick on Longreads.

In 2024, she was nominated for Best American Essay and The Pushcart Prize.

You know why, right? Of course an author has the answer to that.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

That’s how she writes. Not a single word to spare. No rambling. No fluff.

Nothing left to remove. And I might add that for most of us, it’s not “writing” that gets us there, but editing mercilessly. Asking questions like can I say this more concisely? Are these the best words for what I’m trying to say? Can I make this stronger?

Until there is nothing left to take away.

She writes her posts intentionally short, 2-3 minutes each. They’re quick to read and she packs so much into them that each piece will leave you a little drunk on words.

Many of them include her own artwork, I might add.

I’d suggest you start with The Cape of Good Hope. and How To Operate A Fork. After that, maybe About A Boy, Once, I Was A Heavy Thinker or Moo Shoe News.

Or just poke around and see what resonates. Hope you enjoy! And if you leave a comment, maybe let her know I sent you! I think she’d like that. :)

Here’s my AI policy. I don’t use it for writing. At all. That would be like asking it to eat cake for me. I’ve been writing for over 30 years, why would I outsource what I love doing? When AI can clean my darn kitchen, maybe we’ll talk.