Writing check-in. Last week I made a plan to work on my fiction every day by writing at a minimum one sentence. I had hoped that one sentence would lead to more. The real barrier was beginning at all.
It has helped. The story moves onward. It’s full of cliches and bad sentences and contradictions but I feel like I’m excavating the bones of what I’m trying to write. You can either go slowly and carefully with each word and character turn . . . or you can write it all out and then rewrite and rewrite. I am taking the less efficient path.
I’ve read a couple books by writers about writing lately: The War of Art, Sometimes The Magic Works, Letters to a Young Writer. Currently, I’m listening to the audiobook of Reading Like a Writer. The best one is what you’d expect — Stephen King’s On Writing. Listening to the audiobook, narrated by King, last fall pushed me back into writing with a purpose this year.
All the books have posed the question the authors themselves have been asked again and again: Can you teach people creative writing?
The answer (again and again): No. You can only learn to write by writing and by reading.
Got it. On it. Reading about writing motivates me to get back to the page. It makes me want to be better. It also makes me realize how crazy inadequate I am. Franchise Prose writes about crafting beautiful sentences, about discovering new ways to make language sing, and my heart drops. My words aren’t exactly singing right now. Just kind of talking maybe? Humming? I’ll fix it in post?
I love this advice by Ira Glass. It reminds me to keep at it:
“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years, you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.
Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.
And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
-Ira Glass
Here’s to fighting our way through. And writing every day.
As promised, I recorded the last sentence I wrote every day for personal accountability:
- 3/12: Check in with Rachel when you’re up.
- 3/13: See? Sometimes I get the good dreams too
- 3/14: I can’t hit people or I can’t stay
- 3/15: You know I had my first French kiss in here.
- 3/16: Wow,” I say back.
- 3/17: I just mess around with an old polaroid sometimes – isn’t there someone else?”
- 3/18: I remember that much about her. She really loved him.
With Love,
Natalie