Photograph by Ellen Von Unwerth
Today I ran out of pages in my notebook and started a new one. I was so proud that I trotted off to the Thai restaurant for a bowl of masaman curry with tofu. (Hot damn. That broth is the nectar of the gods.) I sat at my usual table with the fresh notebook and a cup of jasmine tea and felt satisfied with my progress for the first time, this time around.
It’s silly, I suppose, to offer myself a reward for something as unremarkable as a filled-up spiral notebook, but the more time I spend writing, the more I realize that 90% of the process is about tricking myself into writing anything at all. Every project is like learning to write all over again; what motivated me last time is hopelessly ineffective with the new work, and it seems that none of the methods I arrived at so painfully are of any use at all. My drafts are messy fragments of scenes and scraps of dialogue, all scratchy and with the words misspelled, and sometimes I look at what I’ve got and think, How will this ever be a book? I peer around at the writers who work so much more quickly than I do, and wonder how they manage and what’s wrong with me that I can’t. I read finished books that thrill and delight me, then go back to my scrap pile and consider a new career in waffle-making or underwater photography.
(Drew’s sister says that after reading this blog, she has decided never ever to try to write. My friends, we’ve saved her.)
However, one lesson has finally gotten through: Writing is always going to be like this for me. It’s always gonna be a fucking mess. But if I keep going, adding to the mess and cleaning it up, despairing of progress and then filling a notebook, eating my heart out for all the things I can’t do, then doing the best I can, eventually something will come of it.
This is just how it goes.
What do you know about writing?
Make a mess, add to the mess, clean up the mess. WashRinseRepeat. You have nailed my process.
We would have played so well together as children, Teri.
It’s the only thing in my life I’m eager and reluctant to do at the same time.
No, I lie—scooping the kitty litter comes close. And hey, that’s not a bad metaphor . . .
“It’s the only thing in my life I’m eager and reluctant to do at the same time.”
That’s it exactly. I just want to get it OVER with.
Except you know it won’t be . . .
I know that people who are confident about writing, folks who’s writing seems good to me, scare the crap out of me.
Just today I read this quote from Dwight Yoakam (whose songwriting skills I admire) after he was asked how he managed to attain “the dream” (I think the interviewer meant his songwriting and music success): “I think the willingness to live outside the reach of self-doubt was one of my strengths. However you arrive at the ability to ignore self-doubt–if you can acquire it or find it or discover it–move beyond self-doubt.”
I was like a deer in headlights, thinking, “Shit. Please let that not be the only way success happens.”
Are you saying you’re attached to your self-doubt, Ré?
And I was happy to see Dwight Yoakam mentioned. He is a singular talent in the country music world. Thanks.
I’m saying that I was so down yesterday that I couldn’t get out of bed. None of the tools I’ve learned so far have consistently banished self-doubt. At the moment, I have to finish my project (in hopes that it can be salable.) If I have to conquer mountains self-doubt at the same time (and learn how to do it alone), I might as well open a vein.
Sparks, you’re worrying me. Are you okay?
I don’t think so, but I keep trying. I was thinking this morning, while trying to figure out what comes next in the story, that maybe I actually do what Dwight was talking about, just not in a steady stream. Maybe ten per cent of the day I have that audacity of hope the president wrote about. It propels me for a while then I run on the fumes until I get some more.
I have to make myself. I have to take my face in my hand like one would a puppy who keeps pissing on the linoleum, point my face at the computer screen, and mutter “write, write” over and over until i do. Because really, I’d rather scrub toilets than write. It takes about an hour of this until I get into it but then I can’t stop. The memory of what happens after the first hour is what makes the suffering bearable.
I also know that I always, always feel like I”m not smart or clever enough to write the story until I miraculously do it.
I am with you except for the ‘can’t stop’ part. I can totally stop, at any point. Gratefully and without a backward glance, for anyone with a toilet brush to lend me.
Good Lord, Ave, this was so good for me, I wanna get the entire blog post tattooed in mirror-script on my belly where I can see it every day and draw hope, instead of my usual feelings about that body part. Perfectionism is a terminal disease with me. I’m aware that sounds like humble-bragging, but it’s not. If I can just get a draft done, then I can indulge my nit-pickiness in the rewriting and editing.
I have exactly the same problem, and it always trips me up. My work-around is to get a semi-solid outline in place, and then pluck out whatever random scene seems doable at the moment. I hold my nose and throw down a draft of the scene in my notebook (dear lord, this part is ugly), and then spend the next few days or week revising it. Which is the fun part, as we know. I always think I should write a whole draft and then revise, but it just doesn’t work for me. The task is too big. I get overwhelmed.
Small bites, T.
I am my first reader. If I’m bored everyone else will be too.
Word.
That everyone has their approach, none better and none worse. Although I do like your thai reward soup angle. Why have I never thought of that? I just pummel it out. Then wait. Then pummel again. When a story is over I go into free fall and feel sort of bereft.
Yes. The end of a project is like a divorce: We were so comfortable with one another, I knew your shoe size and how you liked your coffee and eggs, and now I have to start dating again?
I know nothing. Just bs-ing my way through. Yesterday, I received a rejection for a query I sent out 3 months ago. It wasn’t so bad as far as rejections, and pitifully I will use it as fodder to write some more words today.
One thing I have found is it just takes time to plan the layers of a story, to give it depth beyond the basic plot line and tinge it with character and theme. The mess is necessary. You should see my notebook. I don’t even take notes in order. I whip it out, find an empty space, front, back, or middle and fill it with whatever idea has popped in my brain. Then I X them out when I’ve written them into a more comprehensible format.
That’s true about the layers of a story. Just as with real people, the characters don’t give up their secrets to a stranger. You have to live with them awhile and keep asking questions, like a shrink. (Tell me about your mother. . . .)
I don’t think your mirror is working properly. Granted I’m not versed in the ways of the writer but I’d still swear you’re one of the most productive ones out there.
Case in point: Our own Ms. Marshmallow, who wrote 7400 words yesterday. As I told her, this kind of productivity makes me want to put my head in a gas oven.
Thank you for this, Averil. If you, as prolific as you are, can have doubts about how much you are writing, it becomes so apparent that it just doesn’t matter. In the end, the goal is to get one book out there that was the best I could do at the time. Whether someone else is publishing one a month or one a year, has no bearing on what I can do and how I have to do it. Remind me of this when I forget, okay?
I’ll remind you, if I can remember the lesson myself.
XO
The more I write the less I seem to know.
In writing as in life. . .
“It’s like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, though it is less than all the seeds that are on the earth, yet when it is sown, grows up, and becomes greater than all the herbs, and puts out great branches, so that the birds of the sky can lodge under its shadow.”
I’d settle for growing a single chive, most days.
“Mess” sums it up nicely.
I know nothing about writing. Rien. I actually tried to write fiction recently and I have so aptitude for it at all. Plus, I don’t like it. It’s just not in me maybe. But you my friend, it’s in you and I’m happy you’re letting it come out.
I know that everything said by other writers is absolutely true and usually good advice.
Right now, I’m switching between two projects. If I’m not “feeling” one, I’ll do the other. The illusion of choice pleases me. This is advice I’ve been hearing for years, from other writers, but of course when I decide to do it, it feels like my own idea, generated from my own jellybrains. Why must I be so stubborn? I don’t know. I will try to harness the stubborn!
Congratulations on finishing the spiral notebook. I like to leaf through and count the pages at the end of the day, stare at the beautiful swirls, enjoy the physical proof of my work … my twenty-miles-long blue line of inky progress.
I told someone at my writing retreat this weekend that when I think of one of my writing projects (which is about to be abandoned for good), I only feel a lingering sense of shame. This shame and failure are only one side of the writing life, because god knows it can be good as hell, too, but it still happens and it’s the fact that we do it to ourselves that I find so amazing. Yes, Drew’s sister has been saved. And then there are us, the ones who are saved nonetheless by the very writing that pains us in the first place.
God, I want a drink.