Pep Talks for Writers Page 2
There’s no such thing as the way to create good work; you just have to find your way.
There’s no such thing as the way to create good work; you just have to find your way. Ann Beattie’s favorite hours to write are from midnight to three in the morning. James Baldwin liked to rise before dawn, before there were sounds of anyone in the house. Legend has it that Edith Sitwell used to lie in an open coffin before she began her day’s writing because a foretaste of the grave was supposed to inspire her macabre sensibility. Some writers thrive in solitude, while others seek to write with others. Some writers are vitalized by background noise, while others are horribly distracted by it. The most creative people often contain contradictory extremes, inhabiting a multitudinous personality.
I did NaNoWriMo the first time because I’m such a slow, plodding writer and wanted to experience my imagination at a different pace. I’m an early morning writer, but sometimes on a Saturday night, I’ll make a pot of coffee at 10 and plan to write into the dark silence of the night. I might just write my next novel on note cards, as Vladimir Nabokov did. And I’ll never quit dallying with different types of outlines (and chastising myself for pantsing [winging it] anyway).
So find your way, embrace your way, but don’t become too rigid. Experimenting with your process is a way to open yourself up to new possibilities.
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IDENTIFY YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS
Reflect on your process and work to make it a habit by taking steps each day. If you have a solid process in place, consider mixing something new in to see how it changes your work. If you’re a meticulous planner, try pantsing your next chapter. If you write first thing in the morning, try to write for 30 minutes before bed. If you write alone, write with a friend, or in a café.
3
FINDING YOUR MUSE
Inspiration is a funny thing. It’s powerful enough to move mountains. When it strikes, it carries an author forward like the rushing torrents of a flooded river. And yet, if you wait for it, nothing happens.
The irony is that so much is actually created—mountains moved, sagas written, grand murals painted—by those who might not even describe themselves as particularly inspired. Instead, they show up every day and put their hands on the keyboard, their pen to paper, and they move their stories forward, bit by bit, word by word, perhaps not even recognizing that inspiration is striking in hundreds of tiny, microscopic ways as they push through another sentence, another page, another chapter.
“I write when the spirit moves me, and the spirit moves me every day,” said William Faulkner. This is the principle way writers finish 50,000 words of a novel each year during National Novel Writing Month—by showing up—and it applies to being creative the rest of the year as well.
Inspiration is often characterized as a thunderbolt—a brilliant flash that strikes from the heavens, a eureka moment, and that metaphor certainly holds truth, because inspiration can be a sudden igniting force, random and illuminating and otherworldly (and even a bit dangerous). Yet I think of inspiration, at least the big, gobsmacking moments of inspiration, as more like Bigfoot. Sightings of Bigfoot are rare, and he’s so elusive that he can’t be captured physically, or even truly on film, so his very existence is in question. It’s wonderful to believe he exists, because it’s nice to think of the world as strange and beautiful enough to spawn such a creature, but if you go out into the woods and look for Bigfoot, you’re not likely to find him, just as you can’t force sweeping gusts of inspiration to appear on any given day.
The muse of Greek mythology—that creature depicted in a beautiful flowing gown, playing a harp—was invoked by authors to sing stories into their ears, but I’d like to recast this muse. The muse doesn’t sing the words of a story to you; the muse is conjured in the telling—in overcoming those lulls that strike with willpower, grit, and as much caffeine as it takes. I see the muse as hundreds of invisible sprites that sleep in the whispery spaces between each word. These sprites are enlivened only by the breath of a churning imagination, by the stirrings of a story moving forward.
The muse of inspiration appears when you plop your heart onto the beautiful blank page that awaits your words.
Such a muse is ineffable, so miniature that she often goes unnoticed, yet an author must trust that the responsibility for bringing those story sprites to life resides in creating a spool of words that spins onto the page. “A writer is either compelled to write or not,” said Toni Morrison. “If I waited for inspiration I wouldn’t really be a writer.” The urge to wait for inspiration has killed many a wonderful story.
Now, of course, you’ll have lulls. Your willpower will face the crippling doldrums of self-doubt. You’ll tell yourself no one wants to read your story. You’ll tell yourself your characters are clichés, your plot unremarkable. And you—you!—are not a writer. You are a person with silly dreams who should know better, and you should just return to a life where you sit and simply be entertained by other people’s imaginative creations. A life of binge-watching TV series isn’t all bad, is it?
Here’s what you must know: Every single creator throughout history has experienced such moments. Keep trusting that the muse of inspiration appears when you plop your heart onto the beautiful blank page that awaits your words. The words you create every day are each fruit-bearing kernels of inspiration. Each word wants more and more words to follow. And you are the all-powerful God that sends those words—those story-igniting lightning bolts—into a world that’s coming to life before your own eyes. You are your own muse. Let the blank page be a spigot for all of the dramatic, ornery, lyrical, and shocking thoughts in your head that are eager to come out.
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AN INSPIRATION INVITATION
Write about what inspires you to write—whether it’s the desire to create lyrical prose, escape this world, or explore your inner world. Think about the last time inspiration hit and how it came about. After you’ve written this short piece, focus on the things that inspire you to sit down and write on even the worst days. Your big inspiration can open a pathway back to writing.
4
BE A BEGINNER
So much of our emphasis in life is to be the one who knows. When we embark seriously on any new endeavor, we look up to the masters and gurus and yearn to match their expertise someday. They’re the ones who have it all figured out, after all. When they walk into rooms, people tilt their heads up in admiration. People ask them questions and hang on their every word. The experts move through life with surety, certainty, and maybe even a good paycheck, or so it seems from the outside. They dash off novels, speak with aplomb, and take exotic vacations.
When you’re a beginner, it’s easy to feel awkward and clumsy. We want to be graceful; we want it all to be effortless; or we just want to move. Paradoxically, though, it can be more exciting to be the one who doesn’t know—the one who is beginning the search, the one immersed in the pursuit of answers, the one who has the humility to be open to learning all possibilities.
When my son was learning to walk, I paused one afternoon to simply watch his attempts. We’re accustomed to think that falling causes frustration, but Jules didn’t furrow his brow or cry out as he plopped on his behind again and again. He got up, swaying back and forth, wrestling with gravity, noticing the tenuous shifts coursing throughout his body, and he worked on his strength to stay steady, as if putting the pieces of a puzzle together. As I watched him, I listed the lessons of his practice:
1. He didn’t care if anyone was watching.
2. He approached every attempt in a spirit of inquiry.
3. He didn’t mind failure.
4. He took pleasure in each new step/milestone.
5. He didn’t imitate another person’s walk; he was just intent on finding his own way.
He was quite naturally immersed in shoshin, or beginner’s mind, a notion from Zen Buddhism that emphasizes the benefits of being open to whatever occurs and being observant and curious in each effort. “In
the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few,” said the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki. The idea is that in the beginner’s mind there are no considerations of that very confining box called achievement, because the true beginner is always learning. A beginner’s mind is innocent of preconceptions, expectations, judgments, and prejudices.
Devise a way to stay in the mindset of a beginner, to be naïve and wholly open to the world.
Why bring up Zen Buddhism in a book about creativity and writing? Because writers are so eager to become experts. We want so desperately to know how to write good dialogue, create mind-curdling suspense—and get published—that we don’t properly value that wondrous and wonderful state of having a beginner’s mind. In the heat of our aspirations, it’s easy to overlook the power of the fresh approaches we’re discovering and the potency of possibility that’s driving us. We don’t know that being an expert is often boring, and we can’t possibly realize that the expert we so envy just might covet and miss the flowing flexibility of our beginner’s mind.
Think about it. When you know something, you’re a little less awake, a little more dulled. If you’re an expert, you’ve already got it figured out, you’ve put a stake in the ground about storytelling, life, politics, whatever it might be, so you live and create within that position, and you tend to not pay as much attention to what’s happening as a result. Too often, becoming expert means becoming finished, so thoughts ossify and the imagination follows such familiar patterns that the word imagination might not even best describe it. Becoming expert means feeling you know more than others, which too often means listening less—because you’ve got wisdom to dispense, to put into action.
People often disparage modern art by saying that it could be done by a child, but maybe that should be viewed as a compliment. Why should a work that has stiffened around an identity, made solely through the discipline of craft, merit more praise? A work of art that is closer to the beginning of life, its initial propulsions of gestation, holds a valuable life force, the sparks and excitements of making. “It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur,” said Wallace Stevens.
Our minds gravitate toward acquiring things—the getting of knowledge. There is always more knowledge to get, and the more knowledge you have, the more powerful and strong you think you are. Your writer’s toolkit gets heavier over time, and hopefully your stories get better as well, but sometimes carrying that heavy writer’s tool kit can be more of a burden than an asset.
My recommendation: don’t worry about having it all figured out. Shed culture’s morals and artistic demands. Divest yourself of whatever preconceptions and conventional ideas that might narrow your vision. Devise a way to stay in the mindset of a beginner, to be naïve and wholly open to the world, so you know how to keep your thoughts crisp and unjaded, so you come to your writing each day with a dewy notion of expansive possibilities.
Matsu Bashō, the great Japanese haiku poet, said, “Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.” That statement is a Zen koan unto itself. Its essence is to pursue your truth rather than imitating another’s expertise. If you’re always seeking, then your worldview expands. If you’re always trying to mimic another’s expertise, your worldview narrows and diminishes.
And what if you don’t become an expert—ever? What if you assume the open mind of a beginner with each sentence you write, just as you did with your first story?
I read a story about a professor who once visited a Japanese master to inquire about Zen. The master served tea. When the visitor’s cup was full, the master kept pouring. Tea spilled out of the cup and over the table.
“The cup is full!” said the professor. “No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” said the master, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
Keep your cup empty. Remember your first urges, the feeling you had when you wrote your first story.
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RETURN TO A BEGINNING
Think back to a beginning—your first guitar lesson, the first poem you wrote, the first time you traveled to a different country, even the first time you fell in love. Reflect on what possibilities you felt, how you noticed things, what experiments you conducted, perhaps even without knowing it.
5
MAKE YOUR CREATIVITY INTO A ROUTINE
It’s always easy to find better things to do than write. “I hate writing. I like having written,” Dorothy Parker famously said.
She nailed it for many writers. There’s been many a time, especially on a labored day of writing, when I’ve looked out the window on a nice sunny day and wondered why I don’t take a hike with friends, go to a matinee, or just sit and pass the day with a good book. “I’m an adult,” I tell myself. “I can do anything I want with my free time. Why am I sitting here and forcing myself to write when I could be indulging in practically any pleasurable activity I want?”
Writing can be daunting, frustrating, and even frightening—yet then, somehow, magically fulfilling. That’s why having a writing routine is so important. If there’s a single defining trait among most successful writers, it’s that they all show up to write regularly. Whether they write at midnight, dawn, or after a two-martini lunch, they have a routine.
“A goal without a plan is just a wish,” said Antoine Saint Exupéry. And a routine is a plan. A plan of dedication. A routine helps obliterate any obstacle hindering you from writing, whether it’s a psychological block or a tantalizing party invitation.
But it’s even more than that. When you write during a certain time each day, and in an environment designated solely for rumination, you experience creative benefits. The regularity of time and place serves as an invitation for your mind to walk through the doorways of your imagination and fully concentrate on your story. Routines help to trigger cognitive cues that are associated with your story, cloaking you in the ideas, images, feelings, and sentences that are swirling in your subconscious. If you anoint a specific time and place for writing, make it sacred and regular, it’s easier to transcend the intrusive fretfulness of life and rise above its cacophony. Regularity and repetition are like guides who lead you deeper into the realm of your imagination.
Another name for muse might be routine.
In fact, another name for muse might be routine. When you work regularly, inspiration strikes regularly. That’s because you’re carried forward by the reassuring momentum of your progress, absorbed in a type of mesmerism. Creativity arises from a constant churn of ideas. If you don’t have a routine, if you show up sporadically, it takes longer to warm up and remember your story.
Stephen King is perhaps the perfect case study of such a writer. He compares his writing room to his bedroom, a private place of dreams. “Your schedule—in at about the same time every day, out when your thousand words are on paper or disk—exists in order to habituate yourself, to make yourself ready to dream just as you make yourself ready to sleep by going to bed at roughly the same time each night and following the same ritual as you go.”
But, wait, aren’t artists supposed to be freewheeling, undisciplined creatures more inclined to follow the fancies of their imagination than the rigid regularities of a schedule? Doesn’t routine subvert and suffocate creativity? Quite the opposite. A routine provides a safe and stable place for your imagination to roam, dance, do somersaults, and jump off cliffs.
Also, routines don’t have to be overly routinized. I have a tradition of buying a new hat for each new novel I write—a hat that fits the theme if possible—just to change my writing energy a bit. When I put on the hat, I get into the character of the novel, I signal to my brain that I’m ready to write. For one macabre tale, I wore a “coffin hat” (a short version of a top hat). For another one, I wore a derby. For this book, I’ve donned a bowler.
Do you have a particular talisman, article of clothing, or ritual that ca
n guide you into your routine? How can you make your routine like a hat you put on each day?
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ROUTINIZE YOUR ROUTINE
What was the last noticeable change to your routine? How did it impact your writing, either positively or negatively? What can you do to make your routine work for your creativity?
6
GOAL + DEADLINE = MAGIC
If you’ve done National Novel Writing Month and learned just one thing, it’s the power of setting a goal and having a deadline to keep yourself accountable. A goal and a deadline serve as creative midwives, NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty wrote in No Plot? No Problem!
The words goal and deadline might not ring with any poetic allure, but these two words are perhaps the most important concepts in living the artistic life, ranking right up there with inspiration and imagination. Creativity is one part anticipation, one part commitment.
Here’s the rub, though. I think NaNoWriMo has spoiled many of us. It’s just a month—a short, condensed period of time—so despite achieving the gargantuan task of writing 50,000 words in a month, it’s only 30 days, a fiery burst, less than 10 percent of the year. Many people awake on December 1, thrilled with their November achievement, and in their gasping breaths they determinedly make a pledge, “I’m going to finish this novel,” only to find themselves drifting aimlessly in a state of abeyance, and then making a vague promise to finish it someday (which we know is unlikely to come).