crossing the author event horizon
I often hear people say “I’d like to write…” at which point the sentence peters out because they’re not entirely clear what the problem is. What’s prevented them from stepping across the line from dreaming to doing. Many lifelong lovers of the written word feel that occasional creative tickle, but it never goes anywhere.
Your inertia is NOT a sign that you were wrong. There may be a story in you after all; the truth is, it takes work to drag it out. Artistic genius doesn’t just spring from anyone’s head like Athena.
This post is for you, dreamers. A few thoughts on how to go from ambition to words on the page.
do the thing
a Yoda moment
You’ll note that the word ‘writer’ derives from a verb. It’s not the beret or collection of antique typewriters that makes an author. It isn’t how much time we spend drinking/ talking about drinking coffee (or red wine). It’s the part where we actually wrote something.
It’s my observation that many people stall before they can make it out the gates because it’s instinct to look too hard at inspiration and talent. A writer needs two other, less-often-acknowledged qualities that are as or more important: courage and discipline.
a leap of faith
You don’t know what to say, let alone how to say it. You had an idea that kind of sounded kind of cool when first it popped into your head, but now you’re not so sure. You’ve realized it was stupid; better throw it back and wait for something really good to come along.
If that sounds familiar, friend, I need to point a few things out to you:
- no one publishes a first draft, so that crappy idea you started with is your little secret
- the craft of writing entails waste; you will throw your own work away, and that’s okay
- brilliant ideas almost never strike from a clear sky but are birthed from false starts and failure
It might seem weird to suffer performance anxiety when you’re your only audience, but I know that voice is there. You started with “The” and that felt safe, but now you’re being asked to find a noun and then a verb! Your choices are bound to be an error.
It may well be true, but those words aren’t stone-graven. You can always change them later. Don’t let the self-doubt paralyze you. Any author can tell you stories about deleting 80% of a finished rough draft of a novel because it wasn’t working for them. Cringing at their own words and thinking ‘What idiot wrote this?!’ Writing themselves into insoluble dead ends.
Once you take that leap and just start expressing yourself, you’ll realize these are hurdles. Not solid walls dividing Those Who Can from You. Some of what you write is going to be bad, and fixing it is part of what you signed up for. But first, you need to get there.
The only question at this stage is: Are there words on paper?
commit
What this means depends on what you want to accomplish with your writing and how much time you’re able to devote to it. Authors run the gamut, from those who pursue writing as a hobby, their goal self-fulfillment, to pros who make a living off it. You know best how much time you have and how big a part of your life you want for this to be.
That said, writing isn’t going to happen if you don’t make time for it. Some writers set aside a fixed period daily for their work; some prefer to assign a mandatory minimum word count. Your goal might be more nebulous, something along the lines of: finish a bullet point from my outline every X often.
Whatever the case, make a commitment and stick to it.
perfect your craft
There are few things I find more obnoxious than sweeping declarative generalizations on the correct way to be creative. The idea that there is a ‘right’ way to write is nonsense. Still, there’s a Right For You, and you should always be on the alert for clues to help you hone your craft.
Find other writers and listen to what they have to say about their own style and process. Read. Try doing something counterintuitive to see how it feels. Even if you find an idea unappealing, being forced to articulate what about it bothers you will help you learn important truths about your voice and how you create.
put it down and walk away!
You wrote something! Rad! Now put it away and start on something else. Don’t touch it for as long as you can stand to. Several months, if we’re talking about a novel.
Why? Because half the process is editing, and you can’t do that effectively after weeks, months, or years spent eating and sleeping and breathing these words. They set a groove in your brain, and I’m sorry to say that what you have memorized isn’t actually the words on the page but what you intended to say.
They’re well bee aweful tie-pose you completely failed to see the last 40 times you read that sentence. There will be grievous plot-holes you skated across time and again, oblivious. On the positive side, there will also be obvious solutions to niggling problems you couldn’t solve when first you wrote it, which come clear when you finally come back to your work with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective.
Now is the time when you can go ahead and fret about each least word. Delete silly passages that bother you. Scrap what didn’t work, tweak and tinker; whatever it takes to get it just how you want it.
And pat yourself on the back while you do because hey: You’re a writer, it’s official.
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