Writing process.

Managed to write 1500 words before breakfast this morning and still can’t think of a thing to say here. 1500 words in 45 minutes. No wonder all the writing experts tell you to start with your family. This particular exercise suggested re-invention, which in the case of my kin is a nice way to fill in all the information gaps, by creating it. Do I know what port my great-grandfather left Europe from? No, but if I look at a map I can see that the closest major sea port was Genoa, so I might as well have him leave from there. And on it goes. I suppose that’s how people write fiction.

Normally I despise every writing exercise except free writing, and yet I find myself drawn over and over to books that promise a hundred ways to spark creativity and get you going. If I’m lucky, there is one exercise that sparks my interest and the rest just feel contrived. I suppose that I’m really hoping one day I am going to find a book which makes writing super easy for me, so it’s never work again. You know, clearly, if I had the right set of exercises I would be able to write voluminously.

Of course, what I am really discovering is that dedicating an hour every day to writing (no internet, no email, no distractions) is the only exercise that really does make writing easier for me. It’s been two weeks of this so far and I feel improvements already – not in the sense that my quality is better, but that my output is increasing and my brain is shaping around the work differently than it was before. Increased output ultimately means lots of raw material to winnow down, and ultimately I find freewriting an interest process of discovery and the most effective use of that time.

Over beer last night I told a friend about this, how I learned to free write in a high school creative writing class, and did loads of it in my late teens and early twenties. Got some poems out of it that I still consider quite good (and apparently are still used as examples in a teacher’s classroom). And then I stopped because I had this great desire to be super abstract that in the end just got silly. I’m pretty sure the amount of hallucinogens I was taking at the time didn’t help.

Since then I’ve had trouble coming back to it, trouble with the concept that not everything has to be finished by the time it hits the page. It is this kind of thinking that really is the antithesis of creativity, the editor brain getting in the way of the words before they even have a chance to get out and be heard. But because I have been trying to break my writer’s block and get motivated, I have returned to the technique with dedication in the last two weeks – using the process to flesh out an essay, take notes for poems, start a family story that may end up fiction. No doubt, writing at six in the morning feels like a bit of a chore no matter what you do, but I wake up wanting it, and that surprises me. A month ago I could barely eke out a blog post, and today I have stories and poems lurking about, awaiting exposure.

Next is the shaping of things, the cutting, finessing, forming from the words I have spilled already. This is not work for six in the morning I am sure, but for more hours, half days, which I will find as I arrange my life to accomodate these bursts of editorial activity. I am worried that after all I won’t be able to finish anything, but determined this time to try. To produce consistently enough that I have items for submission, that I have things to read aloud and share with writer’s groups. Enough that I can feel myself a writer, at least momentarily, instead of someone who “just blogs”.

I know this is the lament of every writer, except for those who get down to doing it – but even them – we could always be more disciplined, more rigorous, less self-indulgent with our mornings, evenings, lunch breaks. We could always decide too that torturing ourselves over not doing it is just silly. Ridiculous even. We’re just not that important. And yet, for me it’s not about self-importance, but self-identity. It’s an identity I want and have always wanted. Perhaps because a celebrity to me is a great author. Perhaps because I’m secretly starved for attention.

But it is easier to just get down and do it. To rehearse the words rather than wallow in the lack of them. To commit those mornings to paper before someone else beats you to that perfect punch line. The only other option is to give up and stop fussing about it. But that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.