Four Traits of a Master Writer and How You Can Develop Them
By Guest | November 13, 2016 |
By Alon, Flickr’s Creative Commons
Our guest today is Karin Gillespie, author of the national bestselling Bottom Dollar Girls series, 2016 Georgia Author of the Year, Co-author for Jill Connor Browne’s novel Sweet Potato Queen’s First Big Ass Novel. Her latest novel Love Literary Style was inspired by a New York Times article called “Masters in Chick Lit” that went viral and was shared by literary luminaries like Elizabeth Gilbert and Anne Rice. She’s written for the Washington Post and Writer Magazine and is book columnist and humor columnist for Augusta Chronicle and Augusta Magazine respectively. She received a Georgia Author of the Year Award in 2016.
I teach creative writing on the college level, and I always tell students that they will know they’ve finally reached a level of mastery when they start trusting their own instincts instead of constantly looking for outside advice. This led me to write an article about master writers approach their craft from an inside-out perspective.
Connect with Karin on her blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter.
Four Traits of a Master Writer and How You Can Develop Them
There’s an old saying that if you see the Buddha on the road, you should kill him. I’ll modify that for writers: If you see Strunk and White on the road, mow them over. What does that mean? Writing teachers are important, but there comes a time in every writer’s life when they must fade into the background. In other words, instead of seeking answers and insight from outsiders, writers need to look inward. This signifies the change from apprentice to master.
I’ve been a published novelist for over twelve years now, and it’s only recently that I’ve begun to feel remotely in control of my craft. While I don’t claim to be a master, I’ve identified a few traits I’ve observed in seasoned writers. All of these traits involve looking within for answers.
Masters Go With the Flow
Most writers have experienced the glorious feeling of having words effortlessly flow from their mind onto the page. Master writers regularly experience this state, which is sometimes called wu-wei and is literally translated as “not-trying.” Edward Slingerland, the author of Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity, describes it as ,“the dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person who is optimally active and effective. People in wu-wei feel as if they are doing nothing, while at the same time they might be creating a brilliant work of art…
Masters Court Wu-Wei
Masters don’t wait for the whims of Wu-Wei to pay a visit, they actively cultivate it. The first step is to leave all expectations for a piece of work (fame, fortune, cozy friendship with Oprah) outside the writing room. Instead, sit down at your desk, thinking not of what the creative work will do for you, but how it may serve others, e.g., to entertain, edify or empower. This concept is called karma yoga. To remind yourself, it might even pay to keep a picture of your “average reader” near your computer.
Approaching creative work with a spirit of generosity allows you to get out of your head. Good work is incompatible with an endless inner dialogue of self-criticism. Instead a master approaches his manuscript with a calm, playful spirit. As Brenda Ureland, author of If You Want To Write, says, “I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten,—happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.”
Masters Never Sweat Writer’s Block
Most master writers actually welcome writers’ block because it’s a signal to writers that they’ve gone off course and need to make an adjustment. It’s helpful to think of writer’s block as the voice of a GPS saying, “Recalculating.” Master writers have written so many novels they understand that each work has an intelligence of its own, and when the writer misinterprets that intelligence, the flow of the piece comes to a halt. Sometimes all you to have to do is go back a few sentences to identify the problem. Other times the issue’s thornier, and you need to leave your chair and fold some laundry or engage in some other mindless task.
Occasionally if you’re truly stuck, then it’s helpful to simply write, “I have no idea” and work on another part of the piece. An admission of “not knowing” clears a space in your mind for the right answer to come about. It’s a brief return to shoshin, more commonly known as beginner’s mind. Instead of panicking or attempting to force a false solution with a flurry of thoughts, you’re willing to put aside all of your expertise and be an apprentice again.
Masters Prepare Their Mind for Creative Work
Professional athletes scrupulously prepare their bodies for competition, and likewise master writers train their minds. How can you get your mind into buff, writing-shape? A regular meditation practice helps to quiet an endlessly chattering mind, which drowns out creative ideas. Meditation time can also be used to visualize the end results of your efforts such as a contented reader, furiously flipping the pages of your new novel. Or you might consider taking a long, solo walk. According to a recent Stanford study, creative thinking improves while a person is walking and shortly thereafter. As Ueland says, “the imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.”
Master writers also know the value of giving their subconscious mind suggestions, which are especially effective when the mind and body are relaxed. Before retiring you might say, “Please work on that troubling scene while I’m sleeping.” Your first thought upon waking might be, “You’ll write two thousand words today.”
Research has repeatedly shown that deliberate suggestions can influence how people perform on future tasks and are attributable to something called response expectancies. The way we anticipate our response to a situation influences how we will actually respond. In other words, if you go into your writing room with expectations of a high word count, you’re much more likely to achieve it.
Masters Only Compete With Themselves
Have you ever turned a deep shape of green after seeing someone surpass you in terms of getting “the call” or making a bestsellers list? Once you become a master, envy of other writers lessens substantially. As actress Marlo Thomas said, “Thoroughbreds run their own races.”
Master writers tend to view success among their peers as strong evidence that their recognition will also come. They’re aware that their gifts are wholly unique, thus making it difficult to imagine that another person’s success will take away anything from their own eventual wins. They have also developed the patience to wait until their gifts find recognition.
When successes come to them, they’re more capable of enjoying them, instead of become unnerved. You can enjoy your triumphs more if you develop what psychologist Carolyn Dwek calls a “growth mind-set,” where you attribute your successes to your efforts instead of how much talent you think you have or the vagaries of fate. When you develop a growth mind-set, you see success as a challenge to best yourself. When you meet with failure, instead of beating yourself up, you say, “not yet,” meaning you’re anticipating the success that will eventually arrive.
Do any of these practices resonate with you? If not, don’t worry. As you grow into a master writer, you’ll develop your own deeply held beliefs about the creative process. When that happens, if you see me on the road, feel free to aim your car in my direction.
What are your deeply held beliefs about the creative process? We’d love to hear!
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
I’ve learned to let go of all the “rules” we were taught when we first began our writing journeys. You know the ones. Write every day. Keep a journal. You have to have a blog! The list goes on. If we were to follow all the advice given us by the experts, we’d never have time to write at all, and what we did write would sound like it was written by committee. A writer must be a free thinker, above all else. Nothing is a hard rule. Everything is on the table. You should be able to identify us by our every action. We’re the ones that still stop and watch a flock of geese or stare at fallen maple leaf as if it holds the secrets of the universe. We’re annoying to have as friends because we can’t seem to stay on task. Too much wonderment to distract us.
And, staying in character, I’ve wandered off topic.
Most of my writing is done away from the keyboard. I am always gathering like my wife gathers fabric for a quilt. Like my wife, most of what I gather will never be used. But I’m always looking, wondering, touching, smelling (careful with that, people get cranky). I don’t write it all in a journal, but it’s there if I need it. I must behave like a child, in other words. Absorb much, so that I can create a little.
Thanks for the post.
What a lovely response. And yet another trait of a master writer, be present, fill the well . Very beautifully put.
Wonderful post. Several years ago I “broke through” to a new level of creativity by adopting all these practices and mindsets.
Nice to see you here, James. Glad these seem familiar to you.
Karin–thank for your thoughtful post. I especially appreciate your emphasis on not letting “experts” and writing gurus take over.
“How can we know the dancer from the dance?” is from W.B.Yeats’s poem “Among School Children.” It’s not likely Yeats was talking about being “in the zone,” but the line has always spoken to me in that way. No other blessing is greater for writers than those times when we come to, and discover we’ve been writing in a room. Dance and dancer have for a time been one. As you say, the best writers experience this more often than the rest of us. But I have to add that the production level of some very mediocre writers suggests that they, too, spend a lot of time in the zone. Too much, in fact.
I’ll have to read that poem, Robert. Thanks for bringing it up and for commenting.
You’re welcome, Martha.
I apologize for the wrong name, Barry.
Psst. His name is not Robert.
Details
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I
I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and history,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way—the children’s eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
II
I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire, a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy—
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato’s parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.
III
And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t’other there
And wonder if she stood so at that age—
For even daughters of the swan can share
Something of every paddler’s heritage—
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
She stands before me as a living child.
IV
Her present image floats into the mind—
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
And I though never of Ledaean kind
Had pretty plumage once—enough of that,
Better to smile on all that smile, and show
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.
V
What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
Honey of generation had betrayed,
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
As recollection or the drug decide,
Would think her son, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?
VI
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
VII
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother’s reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts—O Presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise—
O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;
VIII
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
Mille Grazie, Maestro.
All of it resonates, Karin. Thank you for expressing all of this so beautifully!!
Thanks, Susan.
The tricky part of trusting yourself: separating the writer’s typical huge ego from the real need to keep learning.
The ability to see yourself from the outside is hard to cultivate – and once developed, hard to satisfy. I think it depends heavily on the standards you develop as a reader before you even think of becoming a writer, and that may be to some degree built-in.
But only if you’ve been allowed free access to reading material of all kinds. And, of course, liked to read.
You write what you are, you are what you’ve read in the past and present, and you’re trying to produce something in the general quality area of the standards you developed.
In the beginning, over twenty years ago, I had the standards, but lacked the capability to produce the same. It took the one writing class I ever took to realize that the story in my head wasn’t getting to the page. And the next twenty years to figure out how to make them match.
You can be your own best and worst critic.
Your master level means you can tell the difference, and are willing to put in the work. ‘Good enough’ isn’t.
As with art of any kind, eventually the artist must make all the choices. All.
Well put. And I do try to continually try to keep learning. It’s funny I have craft books that I read and re-read and get something new out of them each time.
There are people on Facebook who consider themselves experts. They devote much of their attention focused on their own editorial styles and prejudices.
I don’t pay much attention to them.
Sorry it didn’t resonate but thanks for stopping by.
Thank you for this article, Karin. I especially like your suggest to keep a picture of my “average reader” beside my computer.
Even though I’ve just begun my writing career, I do have a small collection of writing truths…
-the more I write the more I’ll be inspired to write
-writers walk down their own path
New to writing, I was desperate to find ‘the’ way to write.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I’d never find it.
Now I’m actively involved in discovering my way.
It’s a twisty journey, isn’t it? But one of the most satisfying and worth the frustrations.
“As Ueland says, ‘the imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.’ ”
I firmly believe this is true but it is what’s missing from a lot of instruction on the business of being a writer. Each one of us has crazy, busy lives, so I understand why all the posts and books on writing are about squeezing in 5-10 minutes to write at the soccer meet and what have you. But you HAVE to have time to think and dream and let your mind wander. I find this to be especially true not in brainstorming ideas, but in plotting (to whatever degree) your novel. At least for me, I’ve never had a time where I was developing an idea and said “Self, you will create in this next 5 minutes before you have to rush off to work.” and had it happen. Now once I have the story laid out for myself, yes, I can write in snatches. But I need time to think and dream.
But probably the most significant sentence for me from your post is this one: “Instead a master approaches his manuscript with a calm, playful spirit.”
I was thinking this morning how in grade and high school I’d pop out short stories willy nilly. Now I feel as though I can’t possibly write one. I CAN, but I get my knickers in a knot stressing out about writing and forget to just chill out, be calm and PLAY. That’s why I took up writing in the first place–because it was a way to create whole new worlds and escape. Not because I had a dream of being uptight all the time. 8-)
I love Brenda Ueland and if you haven’t read her book “If You Want to Write”, I would recommend it highly. It always inspires me whenever I’m feeling frustrated. I like the way you boss around yourself. :) I do that too.
This one is going up on the wall above my computer! While I try to stick to these practices, its so easy to get lost in life’s stresses, deadlines and social media. I think it was easier to trust yourself as a writer before social media and all of the so-called “must-dos” of the industry that appear in my newsfeed every day. In my opinion, you should either be the writer or the promoter of a writer. To do both hinders the quality and wonder of the writer’s work. All of the practices you mention above work in beautiful harmony when allowed to do so. It’s keeping up that discipline that’s the key. Thank you for this!
I agree! I wrote on my first novel way back in 2002 without knowing a thing about writing and it got published. (Beginner’s mind obviously.) Now, with all the info out there it’s so easy to get lost in the noise and second guess yourself.
All of this is such wonderful advice. I esp. like being like a child, fully absorbed in the task, unworried about the outcome. I also have a dog and she’s always gets me out for a walk. There are always so many other chores to do but this is my favorite one.
I’m such a believer in long, meandering walks. Best ideas always come then.
Just found this blog. Very informative article, thank you!
I started writing more seriously five or six years ago and feel like I am driving backwards – I can see how far I’ve come and only sort of get a direction of how to turn the wheel, based on the things disappearing behind me. I know the writing’s improved but who knows how far I need to go before it’s ‘there’? Maybe this is where a conference comes in :)
The idea to write with a benevolent spirit is a good one. Motivations and attitude can make all the difference with creativity. And it’s good to know the ‘Wu-wei’ comes more often as you go along.
It seems to take forever, doesn’t it? And there are still mishaps. I just abandoned an entire draft that I’d worked on for months. But it’s all part of it and I just let it go.
I love Ueland’s book and reread it often. Your post today, Karin, is so inspiring. “Master writers have written so many novels they understand that each work has an intelligence of its own…” This to me is the essence of mastering the art of writing: to respect the story as it comes to you, to trust the characters as they emerge. And it does seem to come from the subconscious, as you suggest. I used to do a lot of walking to “find” my stories. Hip issues are preventing that access now. I’ve taken to listening to the Eternal Om. It’s having a similar effect of resting the mind to let the subconscious thoughts surface.
Author John Boyne is a subconscious plotter. He wrote The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in just three days. He claims that in the actual writing, the plot reveals itself. That’s amazing trust!
I didn’t know that about John Boyne. I love insider details like that. Can’t imagine writing a novel in three days. Wow.
How the Subconscious Mind Shapes Creative Writing for the John Boyne information:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/apr/07/subconscious-mind-creative-writing-mark-haddon-michelle-paver
I absolutely agree with your point about “writer’s block.” I’m a pantser, and there are times when the flow dribbles to a trickle trying to run uphill. That’s my clue to relax and let go. Soon enough, the trickle turns into a gush of creativity and I’m on my way again. Thanks for the affirmation.
Ray, I finally learned not to panic. I used to spend way too much time hand-wringing. It’s such a relief to be able to let go and trust.
Dear Karin:
What a lovely, prayerful post for a Sunday morning. How hopeful, how quiet, how gentle, while also challenging the thoroughbreds within us.
Barry mentioned one Yeats poem. Let me humbly add another, which I thinks speaks to your emphasizing the joy of creativity:
The Fiddler of Dooney
WHEN I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Moharabuiee.
I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.
When we come at the end of time,
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle
And the merry love to dance:
And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With ‘Here is the fiddler of Dooney!’
And dance like a wave of the sea.
Thank you for your kind words. Love the poem.
What a great post, Karin. I’ve been stuck, which is a rare thing for me. It has a lot to do with the recent US election campaign. I’m afraid it distracted me, and I allowed it to interfere with my creativity. Thank you for your thoughts and also for all the other great comments on this post.
Sometimes our minds are busy with other issues. I haven”t written either but I’ll be gentle with myself about that and I hope you will too.
Well… well… well… I guess today I’m not the only writer to benefit from your brilliance! Such a thoughtful, generous post! I must be learning. When you hit the NYT bestseller list, I shall feel nothing but pride. XO
Such a great post. It’s wonderful thoughts you have shared with all of us and to other avid readers of yours. Thanks for sharing this and it might help those who want to bring up writing to the highest level.
Thanks for featuring Karin for the tour!