writer’s block – Only Mostly Dead

I’m a bit backed up with blog posts, which is odd considering I’m off work right now and (theoretically) have oodles of free time. I should be reviewing either Merlin ep 2 (more of the same as ep 1 really), the Chuck season 2 opener (spent too long re-establishing the premise) or The Man in the High Castle (what the hell was that about?). Also I watched The Island on TV the other night and felt like blogging (i.e. whinging) about how if they hadn’t tried to make a big dumb action movie they’d have made an only slightly dumb, if derivative, Sci Fi flick. Oh and there’s always Buffy Re-watch to get back to.

But instead of all that I’m going to talk about writing and my on-going love/hate relationship with it.

I’ve just signed up for two big writing commitments. The first is Slingink’s “Eurofiction” competition, which is a short story is due every two weeks for twenty weeks. Points are awarded and whoever has the highest total score at the end wins a prize (and much glory and bragging rights obviously). I actually entered a similar competition that’s just finishing – The Write Idea’s “Whitaker Prize” – however after I failed to enter in round 3 and 4 I just bailed on that.

Second commitment is NaNoWriMo. As you may have noticed I’ve changed my blog theme again, apologies for that I’ll try to stick with this one for a while. This is partly because I wanted one where I could add tabs across the top and have NaNoWriMo with links to my profile and progress etc.

So I am officially getting back on the writing horse and shouting “giddyup” in a nervous and slightly excited way.

Which brings me to my main topic. A new twist on the perennial “do I really hate writing and does that mean I’m destined not to be a writer?” question. As I sat at the keyboard last night, not typing, remembering how much I truly hate this part, the beginning part, the part where you think that every shred of imagination or trickle of inspiration has fled far far away – as I thought on this I was reminded of something I wrote in a forum at the beginning of this year:

What actually happened was that I started 10 minutes late, stared at the
challenge requirement for 10 minutes before coming up with the germ of
an idea. I then wrote for about an hour, producing 850 words of pure
drivel. That idea, that cute little, perfectly formed concept of my
imagination had become this crap on the page because I lack the skill to
put it into words, apparently.

I received some comforting words about turning a deaf ear to my inner critic, who to be fair is pretty fierce, but I think I’m developing a theory about the way I write. When I look at the most successful, and by that I mean the most well-received, pieces that I’ve written, they are either flashes or stories where I took the time to re-work them significantly after the initial draft. I recall I had to write a story-within-a-story piece for a challenge and I went through 3 versions of the inner story before I finally committed. I found it painful and difficult. Real work in fact.

Secondly almost always the first draft is complete crap. Not only that but my inner critic will scream at me that it’s not even worth finishing and I should just ditch it and start on something new. Sometimes I listen to this. I have a limited amount of time to give to writing and I’m not a fast writer. I wish I could sit down with an idea, toss off 1,000 words quickly and treat it as an experiment. I can do that but the 1,000 words may take a couple of days.

You see there are ways to overcome that initial block, that blankness of mind and page. I find simply writing what I’m thinking (complete with negative commentary) works for me. Each time I start anew I have the fresh fear that this time nothing really will come but it usually does. An idea, a bright shining little spark, lighting the way to the story as a whole. And for a brief moment I’m excited and engaged, if it’s a good idea, or at least charmed with the possibility enough to want to give it a try.

But I find that spark is usually a single flash. A moment’s illumination during which I need to memorize as much details as possible because once it’s gone I’ll be groping along in the dark relying solely on my recall of the features around me. And it’s at this point that the fear and doubt kick in. I wish I could simply get that first draft down on the computer whilst the light is still fading and the after images burned clearly on my retinas. If I could only do that then I would have something, a draft, something I can tweak, edit, re-write, even rip the guts out of and re-work structurally – but a place to start. But often I can’t get that far because the light of inspiration has long since died and I’ve allowed all the criticisms of the idea to come in. “It’s not that original/plausible/interesting/clever.”

So I think, for me, a major skill I need to learn is to holding on to the initial thought, that idea that got me started, for the duration of the task of writing, at least the first draft. Since my attention span seems to have a radioactive half-life that’s not particularly easy but it’s something I want to develop. Half the battle is turning off, drowning out, the inner critic but that is only half the battle. The other half is holding on to the idea. I think that’s why I’ve had more success with 250-word flashes where I can write the thing in an evening. I’ve also had some success with longer stories but where I was prepared to really work at maintaining the vision. I had to keep reminding myself what the story was about, even if I secretly doubted that that “what” was worth doing. I haven’t written a novel (yet) but I imagine that holding the thought for weeks and months will be one of the biggest challenges involved.

So anyway that’s what I’ve been thinking about. And it’s why I think NaNoWriMo will be very very good for me.

Well it’s been 5 days since I started my new regime, end of the first week as it were. I kept to my hour of writing on Wednesday and Thursday, did my two hours yesterday and today I managed… two also, not the three required. I’ve only done half an hour of reading and that was today.

I started this because I wanted to “get serious about my writing.” I’m forty, single and don’t have many interests or close friends – and whilst all that is fine in one way, I guess I felt like I want to do something of some significance other than sit on my couch and watch TV. Anyway when I started to “get serious”, which really started back in October when I re-joined AFO, I had the impression that the major hurdle I had to overcome was lack of discipline. I was moaning the other day, on AFO, about how I never know whether to give up on something that seems not very good, or continue working on it. One of the replies I got was “You’re not lazy you just have a harsh internal critic.” The later may be true (actually I think it is, I think that’s what this post will be about) but the former’s not. I am lazy. I know this about myself.

And if I was lazy back in the good old days of trying to have a daily “quiet time” how much more so when I have, in fact, sat on a couch and watch TV for seven years? No, there’s definitely a problem there and so I expected it to be tough. I wanted to make the effort though and so I was prepared, when the urge came on me to do something more relaxing, to stick it out and keep writing.

I wasn’t prepared for the other thing. How to describe it? This crippling sense of the pointlessness of what I’m doing, the absolute certainty that what I’m producing is rubbish, the feeling of being stuck not able to go forward and not willing to just give up. I know it won’t come across as strongly as I feel it, but it’s almost a sense of panic, or fear. I’m at the end of my first week and I’ve felt it twice so far.

Strangely enough, one of my self-assigned tasks for today was to work through the first chapter of Creative Writing and that had a section on just this with sections called ‘Postpone Perfection’ and ‘Avoid Writer’s Block’. The impression I was left with is that it is normal to feel very down on your own work but that the important thing is to stick with it and improve it when you edit/re-write. That I sort of knew (maybe not how strong the dislike could be). However the section on writer’s block talked about how it could happen even when you’re doing a lot of writing and it could happen to a previously successful writer. The scenario described was of a writer who put himself under pressure because of his wife’s expectations. The end of the section, and the chapter, talked about how the most creative people are those who do it for the intrinsic rewards not the extrinsic ones. In other words writing because you love writing not because it will get you money, fame, applause etc.

That’s a tough one for me. I know I can beat the laziness, it’s just a matter of training myself to do it, sticking to the schedule until it becomes habit. But do I like writing? There’s definitely a large part of me that’s hungry for the approval of others and sees writing as a way to get it. For years I’ve talked myself out of “getting serious” precisely because I believed that if I really loved writing for the sake of writing I’d’ve done a lot more of it by now.

So do I like writing? And do I like it enough?

Well there have definitely been moments where I’ve come up with a phrase, or an idea that I like. And in fact all the things I’ve written that I “hated” I actually really like the idea – but I want the prose on paper to generate the same images I have in my head and it just doesn’t. But that’s fixable. I can improve something that already exists if I have something to work on. Stone soup sort of.

I think part of the problem is I’ve psyched myself out. Precisely because I’ve made it this big deal, this thing I’m doing in 2008, it’s become, well, a big deal. I need to enjoy it more. But I’m not going to quit, not yet. Tonight I confess, half an hour into my second one-and-a-half hour session I gave up. I compromised and read for half an hour instead.

I comfort myself with this: back in my evangelical days, on the way back from a conference I was moaning to a car-full of friends that I didn’t seem to feel the same passion that others felt about God, Christianity etc, and that it frustrated me because I knew I should. When I finally let someone else get a word in, my good friend Kate said, “Have you ever thought that maybe you are passionate, you just don’t show it the way others do? Surely the very fact that you’re frustrated shows you’re passion?”

Maybe my passion for writing is like that.