Writing Advice from Mike Tyson
By Keith Cronin | May 6, 2021 |
Over the past decade (whoa – has it really been that long?!?) at Writer Unboxed, I’ve endeavored to share a diverse range of insights: from Shakespeare to South Park; from Gatsby to Gilligan. What can I say? It’s all part of the service you’ve come to expect from the cavernous artistic depths of a guy like me. So today I thought it was time to explore what some might consider an unlikely source of literary inspiration: Mike Tyson.
No, this will not be a treatise on the aesthetics of facial tattooing, nor a tutorial on hitting things with approximately the same force as a disgruntled rhinoceros. Instead, I want to focus on an oft quoted piece of wisdom from Mr. Tyson, variations of which can be found all over the interwebby zeitgeist:
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
True confessions: I’ve been punched in the face. More than once. (I know, I know – given my utterly radiant personality, this must come as quite the shock to many of you.) I can tell you this: Mr. Tyson is not wrong. What looks like rollicking good fun in westerns and action movies is actually FAR more jarring and traumatic than one might assume.
Obviously I’m not alone in knowing this. Once you reach a certain age, it’s far more likely that you’ve been punched in the face, either figuratively or literally. Eventually we all experience the face-punching trauma of loss, physical injury, failure, grief, serious illness, or any number of similarly unpleasant variations. I think the point Tyson is trying to make is that when that punch comes, it can change everything.
From boy to man
I became a man in Orlando, Florida on the night of March 14, 1983. That’s the night I learned that my father had died, a piece of news that played out over an excruciating series of phone calls from the Illinois hospital where his condition had suddenly plummeted. As it was too late in the evening to book a flight out of Florida, I was stuck waiting by the phone for each new update until the final inevitable call came from my newly widowed mother.
At 23 years of age, I was technically already a man, but I sure didn’t feel like one. I was just a young guy living on his own in Florida, a thousand miles away from his loved ones, doggedly trying to eke out a living as a professional drummer.
My father, on the other hand, was definitely a man. A combat veteran of WWII and a street-hardened journalist who’d worked on newspapers across the country, he was every bit the old-school stand-up guy, with a pockmarked face and a nicotine-burnished voice. I loved and admired the man deeply, although neither of us was very good at expressing that kind of sentiment, and we’d reached a point where we had little in common – or so I felt at the time.
His death had a massive and lasting impact on me, and felt like an urgent and undeniable call to step up my game and start thinking and acting like a man – whatever the hell that might mean. As I grappled with the notion of him being gone, a distant memory of this biblical snippet kept bobbing to the surface of my grief-addled thoughts:
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Okay, anybody who’s spent more than five minutes with me might question just how successful I’ve been at excising childishness from my behavior, and to that I can only plead nolo contendere. But something fundamental in me did change that night. I’m not sure whether something was taken away, or perhaps added to me, but the next day I stepped off the airplane in central Illinois a different person. A different man.
I’ve posted before about Chuck Palahniuk’s advice to “write about the moment after which everything is different,” a mandate from author Tom Spanbauer, who led a workshop Palahniuk attended in his formative years. This was definitely one of those moments for me, and would become one of numerous devastating and impactful experiences over the years that shaped me as a person – and as a writer.
No doubt you’ve experienced life-changing moments brought on by tragedy and/or trauma, too. And often these are events that likely occurred through no fault of your own, perhaps even despite all your best plans and intentions – not unlike the plan-changing moments that many well-trained boxers experienced after stepping into the ring with the daunting Mr. Tyson. So let’s talk about how to apply this Tysonian wisdom to your writing…
Using the pain to inform your work
While I consider myself a lucky man in many ways, my life has not been without its speed bumps. In addition to the aforementioned face-punches I’ve taken, I’ve had a massive heart attack. I’ve been fired three times in one day (a personal best). I’ve pulled the plug on a loved one. I’ve had most of my belongings stolen – twice. I’ve been orphaned. I’ve been broken up with over the phone – and put on hold not once but twice during the process so she could take another call. (This was yet another piece of bad news received via telephone, further cementing my longstanding hatred for that device.) Bottom line, I’ve had some bad days.
So have you. So has everybody. But nobody else has taken the exact same punches in the face that you’ve endured. Though it will likely be painful, I suggest that you dig deep, dare to recall what those punches felt like, and put them to use in your storytelling. After all, nobody is in a better position to tell those stories than you. And it might provide your book with the kind of heightened conflict and contrast that will keep readers turning pages.
When life gives you lemons…
Most stories need a low point. A dark night of the soul. If you’ve experienced this personally – and God bless you if you haven’t yet – you likely have a unique perspective of just how dark that night can get.
You don’t have to be an action hero to have experienced one of these dark and dramatic moments. Maybe it was a problem during the delivery of one of your children. Maybe it was a close call – or a tragic accident – you experienced in what should have been a routine car trip. Maybe you’ve fought a terrible disease, or faced some other extraordinary trauma. Maybe you’ve lost someone just when you needed them most. Hell, maybe you live on a planet in the midst of a deadly global pandemic. I’m just spitballing here…
One thing I’ve noticed about these traumatic moments is that they’re never quite like you’d expect them to be. There are always peripheral surprises you could not have anticipated:
- The unforgettably inappropriate things people say to you at your loved one’s funeral.
- The slow-motion surreality of your out-of-control car bouncing like a giant pinball between the guardrails of a rain-slicked highway.
- The surprisingly short time it takes to lose consciousness when somebody who knows what they’re doing is choking you.
I can tell you firsthand: These are things you don’t know until you experience them. But having experienced them, you can now write about them – or about similarly traumatic fictional events – with a hard-won gravitas that will likely come through loud and clear.
From a purely pragmatic point of view, I figure you might as well get something good out of these horrific experiences, whether it’s the catharsis of talking about something you’ve internalized and possibly even repressed, or simply adding more depth, detail and believability to your narrative.
An unexpected kind of research
Much of my debut novel was set in a hospital in my old hometown in central Illinois. I had some vague memories of the facility, and filled in the blanks from studying its website. But as I was getting close to finishing the book, I flew up from Florida to visit my mother, who was scheduled for some “routine heart surgery” (three words that I now know do NOT belong together), and found myself sitting in the very hospital I’d been writing about. It felt like a great opportunity to get in some firsthand research on my novel’s setting.
Yeah, not so much.
Mom’s surgery went badly, and I spent the next 40 hours in a sleepless panic as I waited, helpless and alone, for any indication that they might be able to save her. As it happened, it was Halloween, and many members of the hospital’s staff were wearing costumes. As the hours dragged on, I’d find myself staggering bleary-eyed into the cafeteria to refill my coffee, while witches and skeletons and superheroes strode past me like some twisted hallucination. My brother arrived from Seattle in time for us to watch our mother die together.
I had planned for a pivotal moment in my book to take place in an Illinois cemetery. For simplicity’s sake, I’d chosen the main local cemetery in the town where I grew up, which I had visited as a boy on numerous school field trips, because a major U.S. president was buried there. But I didn’t know when working on the final chapters of my manuscript that I would soon be walking the grounds of that very cemetery with my brother, looking for a potential resting place for my mother’s ashes.
To this day, I can’t read the scene without crying. And while I won’t claim it to be great writing, I do know that I wrote that scene with an emotional clarity and sense of detail I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t felt the ground of that cemetery beneath my own feet, while reeling in a grief that had only begun to show me what it was capable of doing to my soul.
Ahem – give me a sec, please. I seem to have something in my eye.
Okay, I’m back. And yes, I’m growingly aware that Mr. Palahniuk’s mentor managed to say in nine words what I’ve been flailing away at for hundreds. But I’m not done yet. So far, I’ve been talking about the effect of punches that we take in our personal lives. Now let’s talk about what happens when your STORY gets punched in the face.
What’s it all about, Neil?
In Neil Gaiman’s MasterClass series (highly recommended, by the way), he points out that when trying to figure out what the story he’s working on is about, he often won’t know until the end of the story. He may start out thinking he knows, but it often ends up being about something else. From speaking to many writers over the years, I know he’s not alone in this experience.
In many ways, writing can feel like an archeological dig, a gradual process of scraping away the stuff that your story isn’t about to reveal its inner truths. But sometimes, that revelation is not so gradual. Sometimes, it’s more like – you guessed it – a punch in the face. This is also something I experienced with my debut novel.
With Me Again, I started out writing the story of a man named Jonathan, and added a woman named Rebecca as a potential love interest, not entirely sure what I’d do with her. I gave her a serious (and, I hoped, intriguing) challenge that provided the two characters something in common, but hadn’t thought where that might lead. As I continued working on the manuscript, both characters began to develop much more fully, and the conflict in the story began to escalate.
At some point, I realized: Holy shit – SHE is the one with the Really Big Problem. I mean, Jonathan’s problem was bad, but much of it stemmed from him being in an awkward situation – okay, several awkward situations – along with his gradual realization of some unpleasant truths. But Rebecca’s problem was far more serious emotionally, and Jonathan’s role became more about how to understand and support her. Although I was going for a compelling main character with Jonathan, perhaps in the long run I ended up making him a bit more of a Nick Carraway than I’d planned. Ultimately the punch in the face that my secondary character experienced is what created the more compelling story question: What if the person you’ve become – through no fault of your own – is not the person your life partner wants to be with?
This was NOT the story I’d set out to write. But I realized what I had, and it ended up being the reason my book got sold as a work of women’s fiction. And all because my story took a punch to the face.
Enough with the punching already
Maybe this whole punching metaphor doesn’t resonate with you – and I kind of hope it doesn’t, because experiencing violence firsthand (or would it be first-face?) is something I don’t wish on anybody. But unless you’ve lived a charmed life, you’ve likely hit some challenging moments, and possibly experienced some genuine trauma. I’m not going to insult the gravity of those painful moments with some “everything happens for a reason” pap, but I will say this: Having been through those experiences, you’ve earned the right to draw on them in your writing. And I submit that doing so might imbue your work with even greater conviction and universality (which I’m pretty sure is a word).
Similarly, most writers have experienced false starts, or have completed drafts that now live in a drawer or under the bed, or stories that did NOT go the way they’d originally been intended to go. What I – and many other writers – have learned is that sometimes that can be a good thing. Sometimes, it can take your stories to better places than where your original story idea was heading. Or it can more clearly let you know that now is not the time to try to tell that particular story.
It all depends on how you roll with the punches.
How about you?
What kind of punches have impacted your storytelling? Has writing allowed you to explore those experiences in a way that helps you – or helps your story – or helps your readers? Or all of the above? Please chime in, and above all, stay safe. Thanks for reading.
Author of the novels Me Again (originally published by Five Star/Gale), and Tony Partly Cloudy (published under his pen name Nick Rollins), Keith Cronin (he/him) is a corporate speechwriter and professional rock drummer who has performed and recorded with artists including Bruce Springsteen, Clarence Clemons, and Pat Travers. Keith’s fiction has appeared in Carve Magazine, Amarillo Bay, The Scruffy Dog Review, Zinos, and a University of Phoenix management course. A native of South Florida, Keith spends his free time serenading local ducks and alligators with his ukulele.
Excellent analogy and essay, Keith. I’ve been cold-cocked before—(yes, moí!)—and it definitely changed the story in ways I couldn’t imagine. Metaphorical ones are just as jarring.
Do throat punches next.
Writing advice from Mike, Part II: “And no matter how poorly it’s going, stay away from those ears.”
Good stuff, Keith. My dad passed in ’93, and I was 32, but I know exactly what you mean. In the years afterward, my sister–who was the only one in the house with him when he passed–told me that she marveled at how calmly I took control of the situation. She says when she called me (at, like, 8am on a Sunday morning), I sounded like I’d been sitting around waiting for the call with that very news (trust me, I hadn’t). She said that everything I did, from that moment to going to see the funeral director, to dealing with the hundreds who came to his visitation and funeral, was calm and in control. She’s expressed her gratitude for it.
Funny thing is, that whole period is a blur to me. I felt like I was barely in control, operating like I had some internal remote control system that took over. Even in the years right after, when folks asked about him, and how I was doing, all my answers were as if previously rehearsed, delivered by rote.
Fast forward a dozen years. I start a story and work on it for another decade or so before I realize that the whole thing is about a son unable to deal with the loss of his father–who often operates by rote, subconsciously hoping to live up to his father’s unclear expectations (or his imagined version of them), all fueled by a healthy dose of guilt and regret over all that went unsaid between them. (Took a while–guess I’m not as bright as Gaiman… Big surprise, right?)
Whoa. Ten years? I recall your “Verdant” post like it was yesterday. Maybe because it blew me away. You’ve not only stayed witty as hell, you’ve always dug a bit deeper, made every post memorable and impactful. Much gratitude and appreciation from your fellow (almost) ten-year WU bro.
I remember that post! Keith’s style made me verdant with envy. ;)
Thanks, Mike.
And I see what you did there.
Thanks, Vaughn – I’m glad (if “glad” is the right word, given the gravity of what we’re discussing here) that my post resonated. Even gladder that it’s not the only thing I’ve written here that did. Thanks again for the validation.
And it looks like the punches you’ve taken ultimately revealed a MAJOR truth-bomb here:
“I start a story and work on it for another decade or so before I realize that the whole thing is about a son unable to deal with the loss of his father–who often operates by rote, subconsciously hoping to live up to his father’s unclear expectations (or his imagined version of them), all fueled by a healthy dose of guilt and regret over all that went unsaid between them.”
I bet more than a few of us can relate to this kind of long-term realization.
Hey Keith, thanks for writing the kind of post that is so meaningful, it makes me think, “This is everything.”
But creating meaning is only part of what you’ve done here. Your writing also surprised (Tyson?) and entertained and moved us. Add to that its relatability to all writers, and now I’m sure that this post is everything. 💜
Damn, Kathryn – that means a lot to me. Thank you.
And I know for a fact that your novel The Far End of Happy came out of a MAJOR punch you took. Thanks for being willing to share that excruciating truth through your story.
I’m looking forward to UnCon UnMasked, whenever that might be, and a big hug!
+10000 for UnCon UnMasked, Kathryn. Too funny.
Darn it, Keith, I apologized to you a long time ago. And it’s not as if you were the only one injured. I skinned my knuckles! As you know, I was jealous. I gave up drumming in college but you lived the dream. That’s a hard pill for a sensitive artiste to swallow.
That said, your post today has a note of hope. “I’ve had bad days.” Haven’t we all. They are the stuff that shapes us and gives us stories, even if we don’t immediately know what a given manuscript is about. (I must thank Neil for that, it’s true.)
I find, though, that the problem is not so much lacking an understanding of a story’s purpose, but rather being unsure of the best way to tell the tale. I have been punched in the face enough times (by manuscripts) to know that eventually I’ll find the right approach, although that can be years after I shelved it to wait for a better day.
Which I guess is what I’d add to your excellent and entertaining, sometimes terribly sad, post. Two of our greatest tools are trust and time. Bad days are an important part of the journey but sooner or later we’ll get there. Just like in our relations with our fellow scribes who’ve lived the dream, really have been punched, write with wit and are altogether enviable.
Friends?
We’re good, Benjamin. But I still maintain that your punch came when I wasn’t looking. Or the sun was in my eyes. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Joking aside, you’ve just identified another level of my own writing hell with this observation:
“I find, though, that the problem is not so much lacking an understanding of a story’s purpose, but rather being unsure of the best way to tell the tale.”
Given how well you express yourself here at WU, here’s hoping you can punch your way through that problem. Good luck!
Great insights, Keith. And I loved “Me Again.” My second novel went through so many changes that the final version bore no resemblance to earlier drafts. It was truly a process of discovery. We must be open to changes when something in the story is not working, Thanks again for sharing your hard won wisdom.
Thanks, CG.
You just nailed an “if I knew then what I know now” realization with this:
“It was truly a process of discovery. We must be open to changes when something in the story is not working”
Amen.
*Punched in the face*. Wow. If one uses that as a starting point, the story can’t help but start in the middle of the action, be it emotional, physical or both.
Thanks for the *punch in the face* this morning Keith.
Bernadette, in reviewing my initial draft of a reply, I’m finding it feels VERY weird to say “No – thank YOU for allowing me to punch you in the face,” so let’s just go with this:
Thank YOU! :)
I’m going to reread this one several times: by coincidence, I’m starting exactly that scene, the one that irreversibly changes everything, right now. Two-thirds of the way through the middle book of the contemporary literary mainstream trilogy.
Chronic illness is a different kind of punch in the face, slow, insidious, and taking a long time to adjust to, especially when you realize nothing is going to fix it, it cost you your whole planned life, and it’s what you are now. But I’ve been mining that for twenty years now, because what people don’t seem to realize is that, as we say for dementia cases, ‘there is still a person in there.’
It has made me incredibly and painfully slow as a writer – and given me some of the most amazing material as I struggle to create the story of a character with those challenges who manages to win – without dying for anyone’s convenience, suddenly and miraculously becoming ‘well,’ or having someone rescue her – exactly as she is, if you will only look. In fact, she ultimately does the rescuing. At great cost.
This is a good one, Keith.
Thank you, Alicia. Wow, that sounds like a VERY powerful story.
I tried to explore a somewhat similar concept in the book I mentioned: the fact that health challenges can change people in ways that cannot be “fixed” – a notion that many people who have not faced such challenges have difficulty accepting.
But I wrote my little story with far less skin in the game than you clearly have. So thanks for sharing your painful insights with us. Good luck!
Keith, that is an impressive and eclectic array of ways you have been, whether literally or not, punched in the face. No wonder you became a drummer, so that you could exact revenge on the skins.
Great examples of how the jolts of life can spark electricity (or at least galvanize ideas) on the page. Many a punch of my own punctuates the memoir I just wrote.
(As for literal punches, it’s been years, but the last was an old girlfriend, who roused herself from a deep bed of alcohol, and basically insensate, punched me in the face while I was carrying her into the trailer where I used to live in my college days. She also managed to say “Fucker!” before she passed out again. At that point, that was undeserved, but for times past and to come, reasonable.)
And thanks for reminding me never to leave the house without a mask—and boxing gloves.
Thanks, Tom.
Good advice about the mask and gloves, although I’ve been going with the latex variety for the latter. I might need adopt your approach!
LOVE this line:
“…the jolts of life can spark electricity (or at least galvanize ideas) on the page.”
Yeah, I’ll be stealing that. Thanks again.
Great post, Keith!
Both of my books were inspired by the proverbial punch-in-the-face of my father’s early death and how that impacted my family.
And both of my books have been mauled at some point in development, and turned out much better for it. (Oh, hey, I’m not writing the genre I thought I was and need to rewrite it again and that should only take another two years? Cool. Cool. Oh, hey, you don’t feel the inciting incident that the entire story hinges upon works? I’ll just rethink…everything.)
I think your advice is spot-on. Find the greatest pain and use it. It’ll potentially be both therapeutic and imbue your writing with a level of authenticity that readers will appreciate.
Thanks for your knock-out post. As ever, you rock.
Thank you, Therese – you tend to rock a bit, yourself (as 15 years of accolades from Writers Digest might indicate).
I’m both sorry and not surprised to learn that such a powerful loss fueled both of your novels. Grief and loss seem to provide us an endless inkwell into which we can dip our creative pens.
Regarding the “Oh, hey” moments your books both encountered: I feel ya. But I’m starting to think that if the process of writing of a novel doesn’t rock our world in some way or another, we might be missing something. But believing that doesn’t make the experience any easier, does it?
Thanks for chiming in – and for your assistance while I was recovering from yet another punch this week!
Anytime, my friend. (Just don’t — uh — do that again! xo)
Great Post, Keith. One of my biggest problems as a writer is not letting my characters get punched in the face — they’re more likely to get slapped with a feather duster — which is the kick in the pants these need to compel them to act. (BTW, I wrote down the Tyson quote years back when I first read it, along with the words credited to Garrison Keillor: “Nothing bad happens to writers, Everything is material.”)
Oh, Christine – you hit a hot button for me there: my own habit of not hitting my characters – or getting them to hit back – hard enough.
To overcome this tendency, I’ve made a conscious goal of trying to think bigger, push harder, and raise the stakes higher with the idea I’m currently fleshing out. Good luck to us both!
Keith, lest it hasn’t been said enough, you’ve changed many lives here for the better! I personally cannot use the word “verdant” in anything but an ironic sense, and I call that a win for the world.
Re today’s post, your timing could not have improved! According to a few trusted readers, the book I just finished drafting is a cross-genre mess. (Oops.) But thanks to your perhaps unintended prompt, I’ve reexamined the story question and have some ideas how to tackle revisions. Thank you for the enhanced clarity!
Thanks so much, Jan – It’s greatly reassuring to know that my anti-verdancy (hey, it might be a word) lives on in the hearts and minds of others!
And am I alone in believing that “Cross-Genre Mess” should itself become an accepted literary genre? It sure would have helped my own literary career tremendously!
Keith, this is such a powerful post. I loved ME AGAIN, and the emotional journey of the characters really resonated. Thank you for sharing why.
The latest thing to punch ME in the face is the journey of parenting teenagers, and my latest book, which I thought was about one topic, turned out to be all about that instead. Sometimes you don’t even realize what’s hitting you until you start writing.
Thank you, Liz.
And know that I feel your pain, on both fronts.
But to your first pain point: Prior to my daughter becoming a teen, I had HAIR. ‘Nuff said.
When I was in a car accident and wound up with a fat lip from the airbag, I thought, Well, at least now I have an idea of what it feels like to be punched in the face.
That’s the great thing about being a writer – It’s all research. “This is terrible but I’ll use it someday ….”
Kris, I am totally on board with this:
It’s all research. “This is terrible but I’ll use it someday ….”
Great mindset, and so true!
Keith thanks for this post, for all your posts. I am writing late because today was “drive to the hospital and wait while my husband gets an infusion to keep him healthy” day, leukemia. But he keeps beating it. Like fighting back after a punch in the face. Death, illness, sorrow, breakups…life. When you’re a writer, you clear your throat, wipe away tears and get back to it. That’s what you did, that’s what we all do. Great post and amazing responses. What would I do without this group? Beth
Beth, I’m so sorry for what your husband and you are going through. But your attitude is truly inspiring:
“When you’re a writer, you clear your throat, wipe away tears and get back to it.”
Amen. Wishing you good luck as you face the punches.
THANKS Keith! He’s in remission and doing well. I think we all have these hurdles in life to inspire us to write. It’s a quirky answer, maybe an excuse, but challenge sets the brain on fire. Beth
As usual, I’m coming in three or four days late with my two cents’ worth:
1. You are one of the people here who stirs the pot. Just look at all the good responses from thoughtful writers. For the first time since I started lurking around this joint, I’m thinking UnCon might be a hoot, just for the people.
2. Synchronicity: My father died at Halloween, and for several years afterward, I was unable to enjoy stores full of spooky schlock. The whole episode turned up (slightly changed) in my second book. And I didn’t realize that, until I read your piece today.
3. Punched in the face: I distinctly remember the feeling. Little League football. Feeling like a stud with my new helmet. Dived to make a tackle and got kicked in the face. New high-tech (1956) snap-on faceguard unsnapped. Everything was buzzing. I yelled, “Coach! Coach! Take me out!” He said, “What’s wrong?” I said, “I don’t know!”
He took me out, all right. I think I played about two downs the rest of the year. Lesson 1: Don’t buy good-looking crap. Lesson 2: If you can pretend you’re not hurt, shut up.
This morning I was sitting with a cup of tea thinking about what is missing from my story. “You won’t sit quiet enough, long enough to process the painful emotions to make her come to life.” That’s what came to me. And then (in another act of procrastination) reading your post, you lay it out so clearly. Thank you. I will read this a few more times. I’m a little hard-headed but this is the truth I need.