The fourth stage of the creative process is WORKING – the hard slog of getting the writing done. You’ve got your story and done the research, shaped your character arcs and structured the plot. Now you write.
This might seem straightforward, but there are many issues that come up while you’re writing that you’ll have to deal with. Whether you work from an outline or by the skin of your teeth, while you write it’s impossible not to think about how it’s going. Writing isn’t a mechanical process where all you have to worry about is putting the words in the right order. Once you’ve worked out what you want to say, there are countless ways of saying it and you have to find the way that works for this particular story. The possibilities are endless and it’s easy to get lost in a maze of doubt.
This might seem straightforward, but there are many issues that come up while you’re writing that you’ll have to deal with. Whether you work from an outline or by the skin of your teeth, while you write it’s impossible not to think about how it’s going. Writing isn’t a mechanical process where all you have to worry about is putting the words in the right order. Once you’ve worked out what you want to say, there are countless ways of saying it and you have to find the way that works for this particular story. The possibilities are endless and it’s easy to get lost in a maze of doubt.
On top of that, there
are the issues you have with the story itself, as well as meta-work issues of
how well you think you’re working: is the story turning out as you expected,
are you meeting your target number of words or pages, is the project coming
along well, are you progressing, are you writing well, and so on.
There are two different
processes happening here. One is the actual writing, and the other is the
appraisal of the writing. But here’s the problem: you can’t think about all
these questions while you’re actually
writing. It’s distracting and off-putting. But you have to appraise as you go, even if it opens up a flurry of
self-doubt. So you need to find a way to balance working and appraising.
The Trance of Working
When you sit down to
write there’s always a period of struggle. Even if you want to write, you’ve
said Yes! to writing, and you’ve chosen to be there, distractions and doubts
will pull you away if you’re not careful. But if you stick at it there comes a
moment when something suddenly clicks. You might not even notice when it
happens. One minute you’re thinking about making another cup of tea, despite
having drunk three in the last hour, and then the next – you’re writing.
The struggle dissolves
and the words flow and you’ve entered the trance of working.
This is also called Entering the Zone, and is when the best
writing gets done. You stop second guessing yourself and the story flies from
your fingers. The trick at this stage of the creative process is to maintain
the trance of working for as long as possible. If you stop to look at what
you’re writing and start to think about it, the trance is broken.
Aim to stay in the zone
long enough to get some writing done, then you can pull back and look at what
you’ve got. If you pull back to question every other word or sentence, you’ll
be stopping and starting and will never settle into a rhythm of work. This is
an exhausting way to write and the results are rarely worth the effort.
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| Creativity takes careful balance... |
Trust the Process
The key is to trust
yourself. Just write and see what happens. Try not to be too attached to the
outcome – if the story doesn’t work, you can rewrite it. You’ll be rewriting it
anyway, so why worry. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted by unwanted
thoughts and distractions – try the Puppy Technique to keep your mind focused.
As you write, the story
will evolve and you’ll need to change with it. You may find yourself balanced, Man On Wire style, suspended between
staying true to your original idea and following wherever it wants to take you.
To do this you must
trust yourself and the process. You will need to stay present: be there for
your characters, be willing to take risks, be willing to be wrong, and be
willing to write garbage.
I’ve written scenes
that have gone wandering off in another direction only to discover this new, ‘wrong’
direction was right all along. It might not be what I have in my outline, but
it feels right. It’s more true to the story than my original plan. There are
just as many scenes that have gone off at a tangent and ended up in a ditch
with their skirts over their heads, screeching. But that’s okay too – I’ll just
rewrite it. It’s not a disaster.
They’re just words.
Chaotic Mind
Creativity is inherently
chaotic. You are literally making this stuff up as you go along and you don’t
know what will happen. Even if you’ve got a detailed outline with every story
beat plotted with confident precision, the process of writing the story changes
it. You might know what happens in your story in a general kind of way, but
until it’s written down, anything could happen.
The anxiety of this
stage of the creative process is Chaotic
Mind anxiety. You know you’re not in control and you don’t really know what
you’re doing, but you have to write anyway. The process will carry you along
and you don’t know where you’ll end up. You have to trust the process – but
how?
You might react to the
natural chaos of creativity, and the fear it can cause, by becoming defensive.
In the face of uncertainty you suddenly feel blank and empty and convinced that
you don’t want to write at all. It was a
stupid idea to even try, what was I thinking?!
There are many ways you
can react to the chaos of creativity, but they’re all ways of trying to impose
some sort of order:
Throw it away: You give up on the project and pretend it never
existed. Shred the manuscript, burn your notes, and trash your files. This is a
nice clean break. It’s safe and deadening.
Wall it off: You hide the project away – out of sight, out of mind.
This is similar to throwing it away, but in this case you put your story in a
drawer and try to ignore it, but it taunts you every time you see it.
Act ‘as if’: You distract yourself from the real writing by messing
about with ‘related tasks’. You organise your work files, create research
notes, get everything sorted in neat boxes and files. You act ‘as if’ you’re
writing, but you’re not.
Work obsessively: You endlessly rewrite one chapter, one sequence,
or one scene. You think you’re writing, but really you’re just avoiding moving
onto the next bit.
Suffocate it: You lean too heavily on ‘technique’. You wrap the
work up in a neat formula, nail the structure to a tree and hang yourself, and
the story, from it.
Work defensively: You’re too scared to create fully so you put up
barriers and make rationalisations. You may manage to write, but because you’re
scared of yourself as well as the chaos, your work becomes rigid and lifeless.
Surrender, Dorothy
These ways of imposing
order ultimately fail to help – they don’t make the chaos go away and they
don’t make you feel better about it. All they do is stop you from creating
fully.
To deal with Chaotic
Mind anxiety you need to apply ‘appropriate
order’, and since the chaos of creativity is totally normal, you can’t stop
it. There is no way of knowing what is unknowable. The only thing you can do is
surrender to the process and do what is necessary in order for the work to get
done. The key word here is: do. You
must act. In other words: write!
One word at a time.
One line at a time.
Whatever it takes.
Accept the chaos and the unknown, and just write. Familiarise yourself with
your rhythms of work. When do you work best? How long can you write
productively before your mind gives out? Try to get into a routine that
supports the process of writing and stick to it.
You might have to
rearrange some of the other responsibilities in your life to make room for your
new creative zeal. Even so, there’ll be times when you have to write during
less than perfect moments, or when you feel lousy, like your brain has been
abducted and replaced by a turnip (and a particularly obtuse turnip, at that),
and the last thing you want to do is write your damn novel.
Don’t be too hard on
yourself. If you really are ill and you can’t focus, give yourself a day off.
But don’t fool yourself about this. You can usually manage to write if you try.
Aside from a bad case of dysentery or death, the real distractions that stop
you working are internal. Practise letting go and allow your mind to be quiet,
and you’ll fall into the trance of working before you know it.
In Part 5 we’ll look at
COMPLETING.
How do you stay in the
trance of working? Do you lash yourself to your chair? Share your thoughts
below..
Image: Tightrope
