More on the War
By John Vorhaus | February 24, 2011 |
If the writer’s gift is the gift to make choices, then the writer’s war is the struggle to make choices without going nuts. Without second guessing ourselves, annoying ourselves, stopping or subverting or diverting ourselves. If we succeed, then we communicate our thoughts in a meaningful way. If we fail…sigh…we try again, because we’re writers and we can’t stop writing. The writer’s gift is to make choices, but not the choice about that. As we discussed last time, if writing is our itch, then we simply have to scratch. And no amount of mental Benadryl can change that.
Meanwhile, back at the war, we find that we’re assailed on all fronts. Procrastination creeps through the lines. Doubt occupies the low ground. Bills come flying in like bullets. Metaphorical land mines (the worst kind!) block our path and also our Path. Inner terrorists lurk. Enemy personnel constantly advance, trying to seize or kill our time. And the trouble with these personnel is that they might have our best interests at heart: we do deserve a break; we have wanted to see that new film (or the ball game or the kids’ school play or whatever). But writing takes time, and anyone or anything stealing our time is, de facto, the enemy, even if also a frenemy.
Then again, as wars go this is a fun one because we really can’t get killed, and we do get to call the shots in a way that people who have only the desire and not the drive envy. Just ask the guys down at the tire shop. I’m sure they’ll tell you there are some terrific darn stories in tire repair, if only they had the wherewithal – no, the guts, I say – to write them down. They envy us our war because war, albeit hell, is not dull. Better yet, it’s a war we can’t ever totally lose. Just by putting words on the page – waging the war – we’re bound to advance on some fronts.
They may not be the fronts we expect, for this battlefield is fluid, and we never know where our breakthroughs may come. In fact, since part of being creative is taking oneself by surprise, we can expect to make breakthroughs in unexpected places. Especially if we’re expecting them.
Expect the unexpected? What’s that all about?
It’s about a feeling common to writers, a feeling that washes over us when we see our writing take on a life of its own. We bury ourselves in a writing project for an hour or a day or a week or a month or a year, and later we look back and wonder where all the good stuff came from. That’s the magic of writing: I know that I wrote all the words, but they don’t all seem to have been written by me.
There’s either a logical or a mystical explanation for this bit of battlefield magic. Logical interpretation insists that if we work on a project long enough with our conscious mind, eventually our subconscious mind starts pitching in, too. Mystical interpretation suggests that creativity is a gift bestowed upon us by higher powers, and that by writing we’re just putting ourselves in help’s way. Which interpretation is correct?
Whichever one you choose.
Doesn’t matter.
They serve the same end.
If you love logic, you’ll spend more time writing in order to derive more benefit from your subconscious partner. If the mystic thing moves you, you’ll spend more time writing as a means of positioning yourself to receive such gifts as higher powers bestow.
Either way you win, because either way you spend more time writing.
More time fighting this blessed war.
Now, no one wants to go to war unprepared. And war lore is rife with tales of greenhorns who didn’t make it through their first battle because they lacked the seasoning that making it through their first battle would have brought. Same with writing. To become a well-informed and confident writer, you have to write a lot; however, to write a lot, you have to be a well-informed and confident writer (otherwise, fear and procrastination freeze you). How do we resolve this paradox? How can we work toward being the kind of writers we want to be before we have the confidence and craftsmanship we need to move forward? How do we build strength?
Gradually. By degrees.
We start by pretending that we’re not completely ignorant and ill-informed, and move our writing forward a tiny bit on that basis. Having moved our writing forward a tiny bit, we now have that extra iota of writing experience to draw on. This experience gives us new information and new confidence, which we feed right back into our writing process, like a not-for-profit corporation feeds its income right back into research and development, or like a mama bird feeds half-digested worms down her babies’ throats.
Additional writing gives you more experience of yourself as someone who can do a writer’s job, and also gives you more skills for doing that job. Each time you confront recurring writers’ problems (motivation problems, story problems, logic problems, detail problems – oh, that list is long) you’re incrementally better equipped to handle them than you were last time through. Eventually the war starts to go your way.
But it’s a long war, and it warrants a long view. You won’t win it overnight; hell, you won’t win it ever, for it’s a sad fact of the writer’s life that whenever we succeed at any writing task, we perversely assign ourselves a new, bigger and more difficult one. It’s an addiction condition, a have-more/need-more vicious circle that leaves us not satisfied to re-fight battles we’ve already won. But you know what? That’s okay. We don’t have to win the war; we just have to keep winning battles. And this we do just by writing, just by advancing our craft. Skill builds confidence, confidence builds skill, and this is how we improve: slowly, incrementally, over time. My best advice to any writer always boils down to this: Take small steps, and take as many as you can.
But who has that kind of patience, right? You want to be good from the start. Okay, fine, me too. But contemplate this: You don’t have to be good to get good. Choose to learn. Choose to have patience. Choose to serve the writer you’ll be in the long run. That’s a place where a writer can stand, and that’s a war that a writer can win.
John Vorhaus has written seven novels, including Lucy in the Sky, The California Roll, The Albuquerque Turkey and The Texas Twist, plus the Killer Poker series and (with Annie Duke) Decide to Play Great Poker. His books on writing include The Comic Toolbox, How to Write Good and Creativity Rules!
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Frenemy. I love that. 8-)
“it’s a sad fact of the writer’s life that whenever we succeed at any writing task, we perversely assign ourselves a new, bigger and more difficult one. ”
And the reason we often become trapped in fear, at least in my experience, is because we want that big difficult story right out of the starting gate of writing. The minute I tell myself I want to write like a Tolstoy, etc. is the minute the enemy zooms in with his heat seeking missile to shoot me down. “You don’t have enough skill, you’re not smart enough. Who are you to think you can write like that?” type of stuff.
What I have to remind myself is–even if I’m not smart enough and I don’t have enough skill, it is my freedom of choice to try anyway.
And that’s where that patience comes in. I’m going to need a lot of it to keep chipping away in my attempt to write the kind of story that knocks my socks off.
It’s too bad the advice is quoted so often because writers tend to ignore it, but my best weapon against the fear, I have finally learned, is demanding a high word count goal of myself—not so high you fail, but high enough that all thoughts of fear is forced from your mind. Instead of frittering away hours in fear and doubt and pondering, you just have to get the words on paper and think on purpose later.
So many of your points resonate with me, John. I especially like your comments about the “magic of writing.” Indeed, that’s such an exciting accomplishment to re-read passages and wonder if YOU were really the creator. That magic, for me, is much of what drives me forward, keeps me pushing (despite the second-guessing). The message that “writing is tough” and requires practice, practice, practice is well taken. Your post was tremendously motivational. Thank you.
“You don’t have to be good to get good.”
I’m going to write that on a post-it and stick it up by my monitor. Love this!
For me, winning the battles, taking small steps, advancing incrementally, is very important. I take this all the way down to putting my butt in the chair by a set time daily. I’m sure everyone has heard the Somerset Maugham quote, “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”
I like the war analogy for writing. It feels like being in the trenches, gutting it out. And I do love the looking back in awe thing that inevitably happens, the sense of accomplishment after. Thanks for some great reminders.
Ah, this truly strikes home. The editor who had requested a revised opening decided to reject the project after all–despite having liked the original, and saying I’d done everything she’d asked and more. But after a few days in a funk, I found the only thing that made me happy was to get back to writing.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this post. Right now, I’m on the battlefield of revisions, so your line “the writer’s war is the struggle to make choices without going nuts” is especially appropriate. Great metaphor.
John – not sure I agree that “we can’t get killed.” Sure we can: we can give up and stop writing. Would feel a bit like death to me!
I don’t know what to say except that I love this post. (I saved it to Delicious.) I was going to quote my fave lines, but there are too many. This is both inspiring and realistic at the same time. Thank you.
This is something I’m going to save in my bookmarks. I am new to writing (not published, not evened schooled).
“To become a well-informed and confident writer, you have to write a lot; however, to write a lot, you have to be a well-informed and confident writer (otherwise, fear and procrastination freeze you). ” It’s comforting to see that my fears of not being adequate are not unwarranted but can be overcome. Thanks John!
What a fabulous post. Writers really are masochistic in a lot of ways. But you offer hope for overcoming (or at least embracing) our masochistic ways. Thanks for a good read! :)
Nicely done, John. I loved the way this, “part of being creative is taking oneself by surprise” captures the essence of, well, being creative. Thanks.
I agree with the others who’ve said there are plenty of quotables in your post, John, but this is my favorite:
We don’t have to win the war; we just have to keep winning battles.
Battles, one at a time. That makes the whole seem a little more do-able, and a little less exhausting and overwhelming.
Thanks for a great post!
Thanks to everyone who posted such kind words here today. It’s a two-way street, you know: I seek to make my posts inspirational to you, and your comments in turn inspire me to keep inspiring. So I guess we’re caught in a vicious circle, though I’d prefer to think of it as a positive (energy) feedback loop.
I notice that a lot of people have pulled quotes and I just want to say, “You’re welcome to them.” Spread my good vibes in any manner to anyone as you see fit. It can only redound to my benefit, and yours, and theirs.
Do I get bonus points for using the word “redound?” -jv
Wowsie wow! My head is truly spinning from the richness of this post. It can’t possibly be consumed and digested in one reading. But most definitely a “print out and reread multiple times” rendering. Fabulous wealth of words and wisdom, John. Thank you, thank you.
Intriguing post, thanks for sharing!
One more thing on this: a writer-friend of mine who’s won a National Book Award always says that over the long term, her writing has taken on the pattern of three bad days, then one good day. No matter how many books she has published (around ten as of today!) she always has those bad days. She needs them, she says, “to get the sh*t out.”
The lesson: no matter how far along you are in your writing path, there’s always sh*t. I think it’s just a question of how quickly we recognize that and make the necessary changes.
Around my house, we call this phenomenon, “I suck Tuesday.” I’m having a lousy writing day and I walk down the hall to my wife’s office and beat my head against her door frame, proclaiming, “I suck.” She tells me it’s just “I suck Tuesday” (no matter which day of the week it is) and that the feeling of I-suckitude will certainly pass. And it always does.
We crave perfect practice, but it never happens. Buddhism tells us that “right view” is merely a matter of seeing things as they are. If we can simply close the gap between how things are and how we want them to be, even as we struggle every day to close the gap between the writers we are and the writers we strive to be.
The bad news is: You’re never going to get “there.”
The good news is: You already are. -jv