Despite my “hey, we writers don’t need resolutions!” I found myself clutching my bookstore gift card and perusing the “writing books” aisle on New Year’s Eve. There are so many of these “how to write” books being published, you’d think a literary renaissance was booming. But most of the people out there want to get published, not be writers. Even though I love the act of writing, I still find myself drawn to these books on a regular basis. I tell myself it’s because I’m a writing teacher and am looking for pedagogical materials, but really, I’m looking for that something to finally save my writing life.
There are the favorites—Natalie Goldberg‘s Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind which I return to often for their simplicity. Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird is another favorite. Perhaps these books remind me that to write, I must write. And yet, I have trouble taking this advice no matter how many times I hear it or read it; I have trouble sitting in the chair (mostly because I think I should be churning out something life altering, and 99% of the time it’s garbage). Conversations with other writers always end with the same thing: writing is hard. It’s hard work. But we keep doing it for those beautiful moments when we write something that we can’t wait to read ourselves. I think of myself as a writer, but constantly ask What is a writer? I’m always looking for the book that will give me someone else’s spin on that definition, and possibly give me a road map to my own, inner process.
Cleaning out my unused home office last week, I came upon a spiral journal dated June 2006 and full of notes and quotes from Dorothea Brande’s great little gem, Becoming a Writer. Originally written in 1934 and reissued in the early 80’s by Little, Brown, Ms. Brande’s book details a specific and particular method that people can use to train themselves to practice writing as a regular habit and as a mode of ‘work.’ There are four phases to Ms. Brande’s method of becoming a short story writer. Phase I involves waking to write for 30-60 minutes every morning as a regular practice. Once Phase I has been mastered, Phase II involves setting a secondary 30-60 minute appointment during the day and writing again. Once the twice-a-day schedule has been mastered, Phase III asks the writer to set aside quiet time to think and to do non-reading/writing activities that help to focus on some particular aspect of a journal entry in hopes of ‘exhausting the mind’ for that story kernel, and then sitting to write the story in 1 long sitting, no matter how long it takes. Phase 4 tackles a form of revision, in which the writer revisits the material 3-4 days later to clean it up and work on it.
I remember thinking at the time how absolutely brilliant and wonderful this advice was. Make an appointment with myself! Sit down to write! Yes! That is what needed to be done! And I did do this, for about a week. Then I overslept one morning, got bored with the journal entries another morning, and somehow my new, regular, organized, appointment-defined writing life dissipated. This is more a result of my failing and not Ms. Brande’s method. She believes that “The difficulty of writing may be youth and humility,” and I can’t deny that I’m a bit young and a bit afraid of looking or sounding stupid. So, better to have failed while hardly trying, then to have tried hard, and failed, right?
Of course, this is why those many many people out there, like me, keep looking for the book to change their lives. We want the magic elixer! The snake oil! The super duper pill! Ms. Brande says to make the writing appointment a ‘debt of honor,’ but I fear that I am occasionally drawn to cat-box cleaning, washing dishes, cleaning windows, and all other manner of things that could surely wait for an hour or two while I write. I think it’s hard for writers–for me–to feel they deserve the time to write. Writing is “silly.” This I hear often from family, friends, and colleagues outside of the creative world–and sometimes, in my weakest hours, I believe it.
Ms. Brande, then, must be right when she says that “most writers flourish greatly on a healthy routine with occasional time off for gaiety.” With so much against us, we writers need routine to stay grounded. This sentiment is echoed in almost every book I’ve read on writing–and is echoed in every conversation with writers I admire. They get up. They sit in the chair. They write. They do it again. And again. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
Even though I should’ve internalized this knowledge long ago, I was giddy when I came across This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley. Perhaps it was the title–yes! This is the year! Perhaps it was the day. Yes! It’s New Year’s Eve! I mean, I don’t even have an idea for a novel. Well, I do, but those are just ideas. Make those ideas into a novel, in a year? Wow! I’ll buy some of that! Even though I’d read it all before, I was genuinely invigorated reading the book with my cup of coffee outside the Coffee Bean; especially section one of the book, titled The general disciplines that every writer needs;” the first of which was to write every day. His reason for this rule: “getting the work done and reconnecting with your unconscious mind.” Yes. This is vital.
Funny, Ms. Brande said the same thing: to wake and write first off, so that you can work in that in-between space bordered by dream and reality–the space she attributes to the unconcious mind. So. The same old, tried and true advice from Goldberg, Lamott, Brande, McClanahan, Carlson, Mosly et. al. Write.
(Just to get it clear–so, they’re all saying that writers write? Like, regularly? I think I’m getting it!)
What I like about Mosley’s approach is that it’s absent of the schedule. He notes that the time to write needs to be “not less than an hour and a half,” and he suggests first thing in the morning, but he notes that this “time” for writing can vary–as long as it’s routine. Thus, if he wakes up early and writes, great. If he stays out all night partying, then comes home in the early morning hours and sleeps until the afternoon, and then wakes up to write–fine, because “the process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination.” Keep writing.
Maybe it was the new year, maybe it was just time, but I found myself so inspired that I woke up and started my novel. That’s right. I started my novel! It helped that throughout his book, Mosley kept sharing examples and then saying “like you’ll do in your novel–the one you’ll write this year.” It was subliminal, hypnotic programming. (Insert eyes like saucers): Yes. My novel. Yes.
I followed up Mosley’s book with the other book I was drawn to: Ron Carlson Writes a Story from Graywolf Press. It came as no surprise to find this little gift in the opening sections of the book:
In the morning, I took my coffee cup into the room, turned a sheet of paper into the typewriter […] and I immediately remembered that the living room hadn’t been vacuumed for eight, maybe ten hours. So this little book is about how I migrated from the vacuum and all my home appliances […] toward my writing room, that typewriter, and the stories I had to write. There, of course, were other pressures. There are always other pressures.
The writer learns to ignore these pressures; learns to put herself and her writing-life first; learns to treat writing like work–like a job–like oxygen.
A few pages later, though, I got that new piece of magic that I needed. Carlson said that often writers don’t know where they’re going or where the story is going, and that’s an uncomfortable feeling: “It’s uncomfortable enough in fact to keep most people away from the keyboard.” There it was–the little piece I needed to make all of this stick. It’s OK to feel uncomfortable. It’s OK to not know where you’re going or what the heck you’re doing. It’s OK. The writer is the one who “has been in those woods before and is willing to be lost; she knows that being lost is necessary for the discoveries to come.”
Friends, my new book* will be called Writers write. It will contain the following advice: Write. Now. (This is totally unique advice, by the way. You’ve never heard it before!)
*All agents please contact Kirsten Ogden with your million-dollar book deal contract for the above manuscript.