Nearly every single book about writing I have ever read has one thing in common. They all start with the assumption that the novice writer must discipline themselves to write. Here are a few quotes from books pulled at random off my shelves:
“If you want to be a writer, then you must start to write.” –Writing Science Fiction By Christopher Evans
“Write, even though you have nothing to say.” –Writing and Selling Science Fiction By Science Fiction Writers of America
“You’re a writer, not someone who wants to write books.” –Revision and Self-Editing By James Scott Bell
“The deep desire to write is all you need to begin.” –Pen on Fire By Barbara De-Marco Barrett
Of course, they are right. There is something about writing that makes it very scary, especially when you are starting out. I liken it to performance anxiety and it is probably much the same. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, and the ability to make a million excuses prevents us from even beginning. Many times in my writing journey, the words above have saved me from never taking another step forward.
However, in my experience, there comes a time when discipline is no longer a problem. The turning point happens when you start to prioritize writing time. Instead of “getting to it” you do it first, before everything else. Maybe you can only spend the first fifteen minutes of the day writing. But once you’ve made it a priority instead of a luxury, it spreads like a wildfire. Suddenly, instead of dragging yourself to the desk, you’re thinking about your projects while in line at the grocery store, wishing you had a notebook to jot down the plot twist you just came up with. You wake in the middle of the night with an entire short story, word for word, playing in your head, and when you get up in the morning you can’t quite capture the feel of it and you wish you’d gotten up and typed it last night. You sit down to write for fifteen minutes and three hours go by unnoticed. Suddenly, you’re a writer.
Very few writing books talk about this transformation, how wonderful and also how scary it is, what its pitfalls are and whether it is a good thing or a bad thing.
Art, in whatever form it takes, can eat up your life. People do the same stupid things for art as they do for love–lose money, lose sleep, lose friends.
One of the books on my shelf does approach this question. Natalie Goldberg, in her follow up to Writing Down the Bones, Thunder and Lightening, puts it this way:
“I have given everything to writing . . . Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you. Bareboned, you are on the path with no markers, only the skulls of those who never made it back.”
Ernest Hemingway and Virginia Woolf are extreme examples of those who never made it back. According to fiction author and psychologist Philip Kenney, the process of writing opens us up to psychological difficulties.
“The problem writers face . . . is that they are constitutionally very sensitive individuals. As such they are extremely vulnerable on two fronts: first, because of this sensitivity, they are susceptible to over-stimulation and emotional states of flooding that can overcome the capacity to regulate such strong affect. This can lead to major anxieties on the one hand or dissociative states on the other. Secondly, because of this pronounced sensitivity and perceptual attunement, artists internalize so much of the world, including the unwanted parts, that, again, the system is overloaded and anxiety is created that strains the ability of the self to manage.”
So, once you are a “writer,” how then do you avoid becoming another skull on the path? In my opinion and experience, balance is the key.
As important as getting yourself disciplined to write was, giving yourself permission to not write will be. Meditate. Take a walk. Go camping. Do yoga. See a show. Take an hour off to meet a friend for coffee. Set limits on your writing time–yes, for those of you who aren’t there yet, a day will come when you have to set limits on your writing time rather than having to force yourself to write–and stick with them. You will want to finish writing that chapter, but your friends/kids/spouse/mother must know that they are more important to you than finishing that chapter.
Another part of this, and something I still struggle with, is to see yourself as separate from the work. This becomes even more important as you move your writing into the public sphere. A rejection of your manuscript isn’t a rejection of you as a person. There is your writing, and then there is you. If the writing goes away, you will still be there.
Sometimes, I like to play a game where I imagine I’m not a writer. If writing was suddenly gone from my life tomorrow, would my life still feel whole? Are there enough other parts to fill the loss? If the answer is no, it’s time to seek balance.
The second half of that quote from Natalie Goldberg was this:
“But I have made the journey, and I have made it back–over and over again.”
And so can you and I.
Where are you in the spectrum–seeking discipline or seeking balance? Or do you experience it in an entirely different way? I’d love to know, drop a note in the comments!
Tomorrow: 101 TIWIK #3: Tools of the Trade: Scenes, the Building Blocks of Fiction
This post is part of a series of 101 Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Wrote My First Book. Start reading the series at the beginning.
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