Once upon a time, I believed a lot of things. My parents could fix everything. The Tooth Fairy responded personally to every letter I wrote her. Most importantly, I believed that writers only wrote when they were inspired.* If they wrote without inspiration, their writing was ordinary. In retrospect, that's probably because I enjoyed a four-year period during which I felt almost perpetually inspired. I'd sit at my computer and write a few pages, rarely working on the same thing I'd come up with the day before. Every once in a while, I could put off annoying chores like mucking stalls or washing dishes by yelling "I'm writing, guys!" At 13, this seemed to me the very essence of being a writer.
This approach stopped working in my junior year of high school. College essays had to be written, inspired or not, and at the time inspiration didn't come like it used to (it tended to strike in the middle of Algebra II). I panicked. A lot. Mostly because I didn't realize I was transitioning from an inspiration writer to a daily writer. I first recognized this extremely slow transformation when I wrote a novel-length story (I hesitate to call it a novel) in a 24-hour period. This may sound like I was crazily inspired, but it was actually very silly. I like to remember only typing frantically and chortling with glee at certain scenes involving rocket-propelled grenades, but I know that about four hours in, I stared at the clock and thought "I am never going to finish." The only way I could was by writing inspiration-free. This meant a lousy first draft, but a complete one.
In the end, National novel Writing Month hammered the lesson through my head. If you don't have the right words for what you want to say, use the wrong words. Keep using them until the story's done. Then you can agonize over the right words, in the long bloody torturously repetitive process known as revision (kidding, revision, you know I love you). I write every day now (more on why in another blog post), and it's a hundred times better than waiting for elusive inspiration to strike. Sure, when it does, take those perfect characters and intricately constructed phrases that pop fully-formed into your head. Build something around them, even if the framework is unworthy of their beauty. Don't wait for the next moment of inspiration.
* There are probably some people who write only when inspired. My mother still claims she was only taking dictation for the Tooth Fairy. Inspiration is great, but it's not a very productive way to build a career as a writer.
This approach stopped working in my junior year of high school. College essays had to be written, inspired or not, and at the time inspiration didn't come like it used to (it tended to strike in the middle of Algebra II). I panicked. A lot. Mostly because I didn't realize I was transitioning from an inspiration writer to a daily writer. I first recognized this extremely slow transformation when I wrote a novel-length story (I hesitate to call it a novel) in a 24-hour period. This may sound like I was crazily inspired, but it was actually very silly. I like to remember only typing frantically and chortling with glee at certain scenes involving rocket-propelled grenades, but I know that about four hours in, I stared at the clock and thought "I am never going to finish." The only way I could was by writing inspiration-free. This meant a lousy first draft, but a complete one.
In the end, National novel Writing Month hammered the lesson through my head. If you don't have the right words for what you want to say, use the wrong words. Keep using them until the story's done. Then you can agonize over the right words, in the long bloody torturously repetitive process known as revision (kidding, revision, you know I love you). I write every day now (more on why in another blog post), and it's a hundred times better than waiting for elusive inspiration to strike. Sure, when it does, take those perfect characters and intricately constructed phrases that pop fully-formed into your head. Build something around them, even if the framework is unworthy of their beauty. Don't wait for the next moment of inspiration.
* There are probably some people who write only when inspired. My mother still claims she was only taking dictation for the Tooth Fairy. Inspiration is great, but it's not a very productive way to build a career as a writer.
6 comments:
I hope you realize that I'm going to whore this out to everyone I know because it's awesome and basically exactly how I became a Writer Who Finishes Things.
Amen to that. Sometimes you just have to get your characters from A to B, and worry about making it sound pretty/coherent/logical later on!
Great post! :)
I followed Shayda over. Awesome post. And so true. You have to get the words onto the page because you can always fix those later. You can never fix what isn't there. ;o)
Great post! I completely agree with the NaNoWriMo part too. Sometimes you just have to pound out that first draft and then fix things. I tend to write several days a week, inspired to write or not. Although with poetry, I have to be inspired or have the Muse start throwing words at me and not let up until I write them down.
By the way, I found out about your blog from Shayda. :)
Cherie - yes, I don't think this approach works so well for poetry because the language is integral to whether or not a poem works. (And welcome to the blog!)
B.E. - Welcome!
Rachel - thanks!
Shayda - ha, sounds good to me (and yeah, I'm guessing a lot of writers have had this moment in their lives)
I like that about writing the wrong words. I definitely learned the value (and freedom) of writing the wrong words when I did Nano. Great post!
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