Considering the Practice

Writing

I don’t know why this note was in a copy of one of my books! I didn’t make the call….

There’s a lot of writing talk about the need to create a weak first draft before you can revise to get a better draft. Sometimes that kind of advice might make it sound like creating a messy first draft—the shitty first draft, “vomit draft,” or “lump of coal,”—is somehow easy.

It takes a lot of work to write even a weak novel, a thin story collection, a round-one version of your vision. Every word is a decision and every decision might be a mistake and in that way the possibility of missteps can pile up, carrying psychological weight. Take a breath, take a walk and keep going.

In theory, if you take the brakes off the car will barrel down a hill. If you lower your standards, lower your expectations, there’s the sense that your first draft will crash forward, gaining speed and momentum, to an ending! In that vision, it seems as though the work of writing could be done as though without effort…

There are advice books suggesting a writer simply “turn off the internal critic.”

It’s great advice and maybe misleading at the same time.

Every step of writing is about asking yourself what you’re aiming for. It’s a long walk through an overgrown forest, wondering if you’ve found the path. It’s an exercise in deep consideration even as you let yourself run wild, try things out, make it all up, excavate memory, enjoy words, consider character.

Be generous with yourself.

It all takes labor, even the first draft.

Put words on the page. With that gesture you’re starting the work, doing the work, sinking into the craft. It’s very possible that none or little of the process comes easily at all, but you can still be a writer. For me—and many—I’d say a writer’s good times are peppered with self-doubt, big questions, high hopes and insights and shifting levels of awareness and every word laid down is up for scrutiny, doubt and revision at all times right up until it finds publication (and maybe after).

Let yourself agonize, if that’s how it feels. Recognize that agony is real. Let yourself laugh at your own jokes, because why not? Consider your characters—write them however they come to you, then revise them with increasing compassion.

I hope this helps you free up some thoughts to enter the agony of the pursuit! Ha! Or the freedom of using words to reach another level of existence.

You have a voice. You have ideas, experiences, emotions. If you’re inclined to write, the next step is to accept the challenge and take on the hard work of getting it wrong, then sorting out the details, possibly obsessively, until you get it right.

xo