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CHOOSING is the second stage of the creative process and it starts with a question: what do I write? Inspiration has struck and you’re buzzing with ideas. Now you must choose between them.
Choosing is unavoidable if you want to create. In fact, choosing is unavoidable if you want to live. But choosing is hard because it involves making a commitment to one idea over another, or to writing over not writing.
Choosing is unavoidable if you want to create. In fact, choosing is unavoidable if you want to live. But choosing is hard because it involves making a commitment to one idea over another, or to writing over not writing.
You must also choose to be true to yourself. You live through
what you create, so it’s important to choose honestly and deeply. Deep choosing
means going for the big themes or difficult concepts, the idea that scares you,
the one that torments you at four in the morning, the idea your heart needs to
write even though the market may not accept it. I think if you’re not a little
scared of the book you’re writing, then you’re probably working on the wrong
thing.
I wrote my first novel because I needed to get it out of my
system. I knew the subject matter wasn’t marketable and that the book wouldn’t
sell much. I wrote it anyway. The story was burning a hole in my head and the
only way to make it stop was to write it down. The process wasn’t easy. I’d
never written prose before and had no idea if I could write a whole novel, plus
the story is based on personal experience. I had to confront myself and dig
deep into areas I would normally avoid sharing. Addled: Adventures of a Reluctant Mystic is a perfect example of
how not to write a novel – and yet it works. I made the deep choice to write
the book that scared me, and it paid off – not financially (!), but in
self-knowledge.
Deep choosing means being willing to reveal yourself in your
work, to take risks and be unpopular. You always reveal yourself in your
writing, even when you’re trying not to, perhaps especially when you’re trying
not to.
The creative process involves three types of choice:
- Choosing what to work on
- Choosing to work
- Choosing while working
Taking them in reverse order, choosing while working means all the choices you make as you write.
You must choose which words to use and how to say what needs to be said. Which
is the best verb for a sentence? Do you need to change the way a scene plays
out? Should you include a snippet of research or back story at this point in
the book? And so on.
Choosing to work
means making the decision to actually write in the first place. This might seem
to be a choice you make only once, but you’ll need to renew your commitment to
your writing every day, and perhaps even while you’re working. It’s easy to get
sidetracked or dispirited. Writing is hard work and it’s easier to not write a
book than to write one. So the choice to write is one you’ll make over and
over.
Now that you’ve make the choice to work, what will you
write?
Choosing What to Work On
Your next brilliant idea may come out of the wishing stage:
while affirming your desire to create something, the idea pops up and demands
your attention. Or it could be an idea you’ve had rattling around in your head
for years. Or perhaps it’ll come out of all the excellent thinking you’ve been
doing on interesting subjects, giving rise to an idea you have to explore.
Or you may choose to work on something for purely commercial
reasons. Perhaps you’ve been commissioned to write something and the choice of
what to write is made for you. Perhaps after spending years on your three
volume epic novel about crochet and the men who love it, you think it’s time to
write something that’ll sell, something for the kids, something with blood and
guts and breasts. And explosions. Exploding breasts!
Or perhaps not.
Confused Mind
Whatever you choose to work on, the process of weighing up
all these potential ideas and trying to work out which is the best can be
overwhelming. The anxiety of this stage is called Confused Mind anxiety – either you don’t know what to write or you
have too many ideas all vying for your attention. You might worry that you’re
choosing to write something for the wrong reasons, or be concerned over the
quality of the ideas, and so on.
What you need is clarity, but at this stage in the process
that’s more or less impossible. The project is swirling around and changing
shape. You try to hold it still, but it keeps wriggling and slipping through
your fingers. There’s no way to know, even if you do write it, whether the
story will work, whether you can do it justice, or whether it will sell.
Confusion now is normal. You can’t escape it, but you can
learn to think about it differently.
Being Clear
Confused Mind anxiety is dealt with by applying ‘appropriate clarity’. There may be many
things you’re confused about, but there are five facts you can be clear about at this stage of the creative process:
- You are alive and you want to create
- You have an idea
- You don’t know how it will turn out
- It’s hard to create anything
- You can choose, and you can do your best
These facts are mostly self-explanatory. You’ve already made
the choice to create and found an idea. You can’t use the fact that it’s hard
to create stop you from writing. If you do, then there was no sense in making
the choice to write in the first place. And not knowing how it will turn out is
no excuse for not writing. You don’t know how your life is going to turn out
either and you don’t use that as an excuse to stay in bed all day.
As usual, all the anxiety at this stage comes down to one
big FEAR:
Will I Fail?
The question of failure haunts all creative work. Looking at
the statistics doesn’t help. Screenwriter Bill Nicholson says he has a success
rate of 30%, which means 70% of the scripts he writes are never made into
films. The odds of getting published by a traditional publisher if you’re not
already published or famous for something else, are nanoscopic.
Knowing that most writing fails will not help you at this
point. You need to develop a kind of selective blindness to reality. Yes, the
odds are against you – but so what?
That kind of thinking never stopped anyone buying a lottery ticket. But then,
there’s no risk in that. Or skill.
Having said that, it’s important not to be deluded about
what you’re trying to do either. It is possible to be too confident and declare
your genius to anyone who can’t run away fast enough. Or not confident enough
and give up before you’ve even started, or scribble half-hearted rubbish that
no one would want to read anyway, thereby guaranteeing failure.
All success is built
from the bones of failure.
So, even if the situation is unclear, you can still be clear
about that lack of clarity. That sounds like bullshit, but you don’t have to take
the confusion personally or turn it into a problem. Embrace not knowing. You’ll
figure it out as you go.
I spent several years writing Addled and eventually self-published when no one would touch the
manuscript because it wasn’t commercial enough. Was that a bad choice? Could I
have written something else? Could I have changed the book to make it more
accessible or obviously saleable? Perhaps, but then it wouldn’t have been the
book I wanted (and needed) to write. I don’t believe I made a bad choice. I
learned so much from the process and became a different, and hopefully better,
writer as a result.
A book isn’t a failure if it doesn’t sell in the millions,
or even hundreds. It’s practice.
Just write something. It’s the only way to learn.
In Part 3 we’ll look at STARTING.
How do you choose what to write? Share your choices below…
First posted here: http://jessicadavidson.co.uk/2015/01/12/the-creative-process-choosing-the-right-idea/
