Category Archives: Writer’s journey

First drafts stink

16 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in Revision, Writer's journey, Writing Advice

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How are your stinky first drafts doing? 

This week I completed a stinky first draft of a new play. I felt victorious. I felt defeated. I felt nauseous. 

This is always the case for me.

My brain understands that the stink is part of the process. (I assure you that the stink is part of the process.)

And yet, I’m always surprised and a little disappointed when the first draft does actually stink. 

This is always the case for me. 

Despite a multitude of examples to the contrary, I thought maybe this time it would be different. Maybe this time my play would spring from my mind in fully-formed perfection. Maybe this time I wouldn’t have to grind out five gazillion drafts just to get it to an acceptable shape for a reading around my kitchen table with my three kindest friends.

Oh well, not this time. (This is always the case for me. Is this the case for you?)

Friends, I don’t have a problem with a blank page. I have a problem with what I write on it. 

Anyone else feel that way?

This is what helped me accept the reality of writing the despicable first draft:

  • Pep-talks from my friends
  • A spirited sixty minute walk
  • Advice from Ian Finley (more on that below)

Ian and Tamara look happy because they are talking about writing and not actually writing.

I accept that writing is work. Writing is revision. And more work. And more revision. 

I accept.

And I turn to one of my favorite podcast conversations with playwright and 2012 Piedmont Laureate, Ian Finley. Ian tells it like it is, and I find a lot of comfort in that. 

I find comfort in knowing that we all go through this.

Solidarity, writers! Make a stink! Carry on! 

When you have 50 minutes, listen to Ian tell it here: 043: What good is a bad first draft? Playwright and arts educator Ian Finley extols the power of revision.

For now, take a look at the transcript below and revel in his wisdom about revision. 

TRANSCRIPT OF PODCAST EXCERPT:

Timestamp: 10:00

TAMARA:

Let’s talk a little bit about revision because I know this is something else that you have strong opinions about. And I’m in agreement. Your assertion is that revision is 75% of the work in writing a new play. 

IAN:

Yeah. So I hate Lord Byron.  I love his poetry. What I hate about him and all the Romantics was this belief that they put forward that is still so prevalent – that art is just given to you. Like the muse reaches down and you’ve got this great idea and you’re inspired and you go off and you write it and it’s done. And it’s a lie. It’s a gigantic lie. And it’s a destructive lie because it makes people feel that when they don’t get inspired that way, that they can’t write, that they can’t create.

Timestamp: 10:53

IAN:

And it’s a lie because that’s not how Byron wrote. Byron wrote and then he revised, he put the work in. Again, it’s a craft, not an art. The art comes out of the craft, right? The working of the pieces….

Timestamp: 11:38

IAN:

The first draft really ought to be quite horrible. Because if it’s not, you’re not trying anything, You’re doing the safe, easy thing if it’s any good in that first draft. Greatness is next door to awful. It’s like 10 miles away from good. Right? if you’re ever going to be really great, you’ve got to allow it to be just miserable in that first draft. And then you can fix it later on. Anything can be fixed once it’s done. And it’s an iterative process, right? You learn about the work by writing it. You don’t learn about it by researching. You don’t learn about it by outlining. Those are important things. And you do need to do some degree of them.

Timestamp: 12:27

IAN:

But you learn about the characters. You get to know the characters, you get to know the world by spending time in that world, which means piling up pages, and writing. And then once you’ve written it, you realize that 80% of it is crap and has to be thrown away, but it’s not wasted time. It’s how you got to know what you are actually writing. So the first draft is what is really your outline, right? The second draft is like your deeper outline and then maybe by the third draft you get something that’s sort of your first draft. Right? The process of revision, I would say is 75% of the work, that first draft maybe outlining all that is 25%. Revision is 75% because anything can be fixed if you’re willing to do that.

Reading Books in the Age of Madness

02 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by in art, Attention, competition, frustration, Reading, Uncategorized, Writer's journey

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A few years ago, I sat on a public bench, waiting for a friend and reading a book. A woman interrupted me. (Please note: Do not interrupt a person reading a book!) The woman wanted to know what I was reading. I showed her the cover, and then the woman said she couldn’t read anymore. She used to read. She used to read a lot, but now she can’t. She can’t concentrate. Things have become so unstable lately, so volatile that she can’t concentrate on reading.

“Read,” I told her. “Go read a book. You’ll thank me later.”

After she left I muttered under my breath, “You think it’s hard to read in this environment? You should try writing.”

I know a lot of writers. We plug along. We ride the waves of self doubt and the waves of cultural madness. We have no choice. Being a writer, or an artist, requires a little unplugging. So we unplug. And then we plug back in. And our blood pressure goes through the roof and we unplug again. We write. It’s incredibly selfish of us. It’s incredibly hopeless. And it’s incredibly depressing as we watch the celebrity-titled books fly off the shelves while ours, and those of many authors I know, linger and gather dust.

You want to help the world be less crazy? Support the arts. Support a writer. Buy a book that does not have a flashy familiar face on the cover. And be seen reading it. And then buy another.

 

 

The Art of Listening

27 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in art, Attention, creating, creativity, Guidance, Observation, Process, self, slowing down, Writer's journey

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If you are a writer, you must listen. You must listen to your instincts. You must listen to the world. You must listen to the things that lack conventional voice. You must listen to the trees, the river, the deer, the rocks, the fungus, the rust, the sunrise and the moon. You must listen to your characters, to the sound of vowels, to the rhythm of language as well as its meaning. You must disengage, every day, from the noise and commerce and traffic and politics of the world. You must not let anyone tell you how to do it. You must not let anyone tell you what’s important. You must not let anyone tell you that you must do A, B, or C.

What fed your soul as a child?

Find it.

What did you do before the serpent of social media?

Find it.

Where were your secret places before you became an adult?

Find them.

What calmed your heart?

Find it.

What quieted your mind?

Find it.

What circumvented the chatter?

Find it.

What is the last thing you picked up off the ground and put into your pocket?

The Chase

30 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in Alchemy of writing, Attention, creating, creativity, ideas, Nancy Peacock, Process, prompt writing, ritual, slowing down, Writer's journey

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Twice a week I teach a prompt writing class. We write to a prompt, provided by me, without editing, thinking, or worrying. The rules are: Let it rip. This past week the prompt was: Running out of something. Here’s what I wrote.

 

This morning, I felt as though I was running out of fresh ideas for prompts. I sat at my desk and looked out the window and said out loud, “I know you’re out there.” The leaves rustled in the breeze showing their white undersides. It felt like a taunt. A tease. “You’re looking too hard,” the leaves said. “You want too much. Your head is too filled.”

I know. I know. I know.

But it doesn’t change the fact that I sometimes feel I am running out of ideas for prompts. And it doesn’t change the fact that I believe there are a million ideas surrounding me that I’m just not capturing. They are like little fairies in the woods. Lithe and free and quick and laughing at the lumbering writer who tries to catch them. They call out, “Here we are. Here we are. Here we are,” and then vanish, a puff of smoke left behind. An idea that could have been mine, but instead remains its own.

I wonder if I shouldn’t go to a mall. Not that there is a store where I can purchase ideas, but that it might help to expose myself to the mass of humanity. Perhaps ideas among people are less illusive. Less playful and teasing. In the mall I might see a mother, harried and stressed, tugging a child behind her like a suitcase – and this might trigger an idea for a prompt, or a story. I might overhear a man tell someone on the other end of his cell phone that he is in a meeting. “Just taking a break,” he adds, realizing his friend might overhear the muzak, the clang of cash registers, the sloosh of Coca-cola descending over a cup of ice.

I might sit in a mall and capture the rhythms of conversation in my notebook. I might find ideas jumping onto the page instead of hiding on the undersides of leaves among the eggs of insects.

The woods are my home. There, a deep peacefulness settles over me. The woods make my mind go cottony like a cloud. Thoughts are less important. They flit through and don’t land. They are like the waterbugs across the surface of the pond. Glittering in the sunlight they skim across the surface before being eaten by turtles and fish. They do no mind being turtle food, or fish food, or eventually fertilizer dropped by a heron lifting off from the branch of a tree. They are afraid of nothing. They are not even afraid to be my ideas, the ones we use for prompts to write about on Friday mornings. But ooh – they do love a chase.

Holding Space for Yourself

16 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in comparison, competition, creating, creativity, emotional safety, Process, prompt writing, ritual, safety, slowing down, Writer's journey

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In teaching, one of the things I try to do is hold space. In my private prompts classes, we close our eyes and take some deep breaths and get quiet, letting the workweek fall away, the effort that went into getting the kids off the school, the traffic we drove through to reach our destination, all the little niggling energy that we carry with us to the next place. My studio, where I teach my private classes, has, over time, taken on a lot of creative energy from my work there, and the work of others. The space supports our creative endeavors, and the work of holding space is made easier by this concentrated energy. But the energy in my public classes is also concentrated, and held collectively.

The class I teach regularly, for free and open to the public is called Prompt Writing. I teach it in a book store, and here I have a different ritual for opening the space. I ask each person to say their name, and give one or two sentences about their writing practice, and in this way we settle into each other.

I then introduce myself and tell the class what we’re going to do, I give the prompt and we write. There are rules for responding to others’ writing when it’s read out loud, and they are rules I believe in, so I try to enforce them gently, but firmly, and consistently. I do not waver from these rules.

The rules are meant to create a safe space for writers. It’s important. This is what is meant by holding space. Holding space is holding safe space, and there are lots of different ways to do it, and lots of different ways to not do it, or to undo it.

Competition is anti-safe-space holding. Overly critical thinking and analyses also. Hierarchy. Self-promotion. Comparison. Trying to fix something for someone, be it their writing or their life. Sometimes asking digging, probing questions can make a person feel challenged and defended instead of heard.

Recently I have been thinking about how powerful this is, and how I might try the same techniques for myself. In other words, when I am feeling low and anxious, perhaps I could recognize that I need something that’s not being provided and try to provide it. I might try to hold space for myself.

I don’t think it would be any different than holding space for others. The first step would be to get quiet, and the second step would be to create a safe environment for myself. One without competition, without over-thinking, without hierarchy, without self-promotion, without comparison, without trying to fix it, without digging at myself. In fact, when I need to hold space for myself, it’s always because I have let these things in. It’s natural that they should creep in. We live in a world of low thoughts. The trick is to see it, and to say no to it, and to open the space for yourself again.

The Easy Way is Hard Enough

01 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in Advancing the story, Alchemy of writing, Attention, Observation, Process, Story, Writer's journey, Writing Advice

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I have an obsession with hand-built houses. To feed my obsession I look at pictures in books with a magnifying glass, and in doing so I become curious about the people who live in these houses. I look closely at their knickknacks, the pictures hanging on the walls, the shampoo they use, and especially the books on their shelves. I am a voyeur. All writers are voyeurs.

I don’t believe that writers are born with special spy genes, or eavesdropping genes, but that early on in our lives, for some reason, we learned to observe. For me honing the skill of observation came from being terribly shy and lacking confidence. Later it was honed further through writing.

One day, looking through my magnifying glass at a picture of a woodworking shop, I read a sign on the wall that said, “The Easy Way is Hard Enough.”

That’s writing, I thought. That’s my writing philosophy. Why fill a room with six characters who stand around invisibly witnessing an important interaction between two characters? Why have a character go to bed, and then get up, and go back to bed, and then get up, and then finally do the thing that needs to be done to advance to story? Keep it simple. The easy way is hard enough.

My first novel, LIFE WITHOUT WATER, grew from my first short story, written for the first writing class I’d taken since high school. The assignment was simple: Write a short story. I had no idea what to write about and I only had a week to do it in. Time ticked by as I stabbed and stabbed at that story. Three days in I was at my kitchen table stabbing some more. I decided to take a walk to clear my mind, and ended up in a used bookstore where I found a small paperback about communes in the sixties. I flipped through the center section of black and white pictures: bearded men chopping wood, naked gardeners, dirty children, a kitchen filled with pans of rising bread dough, a woman outside a shack sawing a board for some repair. I came of age in the sixties. This was my era. These were my people. I knew about these wild reclaimed places with the slippery driveways and the crummy insulation and the snakes in the walls. I’d reclaimed a few myself, and suffered through a few winters, and thrown a lot of wood into a woodstove. While I no longer lived this lifestyle, I still loved these places. I still drove out into the country some times, just to find and visit an old abandoned house.

I purchased the book and decided to write about the reunion of a commune, which quickly became far more than I could handle. All those people who’d once shared an old house had dispersed, abandoned the lifestyle, become what they’d become and had their own stories to tell. Too many stories. The noise of that many characters became too loud and unfocused. And so I decided to write from the point of view of one child who’d grown up on a commune.

This was my first lesson in “The Easy Way is Hard Enough.”

I don’t always know my journey as a writer. I don’t always know my journey as a teacher. I don’t always know my journey as a human being. But I do know journeys, and I have found that “The Easy Way is Hard Enough” is good philosophy for nearly every undertaking – from writing to teaching to cooking a meal to life itself.