Tag: hope

The Alchemy of Writing

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We’ve all heard of great writers who suffered tough childhoods. Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Virginia Wolfe, James Baldwin, Jeannette Walls, just to name a few. The challenges may have equipped them with unusual insight, or pushed them deeper into their imaginations, or taught them outsized observational skills as part of the need to survive. I can intuitively understand why their difficult experiences might have enhanced their writing to the benefit of the rest of us. But what intrigues me is why people with damage or heartbreak might be driven to write.

One reason might be the desire to live in another world for a while, with a different mind and a different life. In this way, writing can be a solace to both writers and readers. When I had to get through major surgery in college, I remember rereading my old favorite, The Lord of the Rings. I wanted to lose myself in characters whom I already knew and loved. In other times of need, I’ve turned to literary fiction for its depth, fantasy for its heroism, and poetry and short stories for their insight, such as those collected by my friend Ellen Wade Beals in Solace in So Many Words.

But nothing is more absorbing than creating those other lives yourself. I’ve written elsewhere about the importance of sympathetic imagination – the need to carry your characters’ attitudes and feelings inside yourself and write from their perspective, reflecting your characters’ pasts, not your own. In the New Yorker profile on Jennifer Egan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, she says that when her brother died, “it was a solace to be able to disappear into her fictional world and momentarily distance herself from actual life.” Not only can that move into fiction give you a respite, it can remind you that there is more than one way to process trauma, more than one way to live with scars.

The chance to craft a different ending could be another reason. That doesn’t have to mean something akin to a classic storybook ending: “and they lived happily ever after.” No one, except maybe Cormac McCarthy, ends a novel with “and eventually everyone died.” We arc our stories so that loss and danger are something that our protagonists survive and learn from. Writing gives us hope because, no matter what we throw at our characters, we can imagine a path to the other side.

Beyond that, I believe the act of writing itself is a comfort. My love of storytelling began when I was five and used to roam the block while my mother and sisters napped, feeling alone but not wanting to join them, making up sad little stories that I’d tell to myself. My mind would inevitably shift in focus from the feeling of sadness to the beauty of the sad little words – which of course meant I was no longer sad. There’s an alchemy in writing, a harnessing of inner resources. Once the effort to capture something in words takes precedence, it refocuses the mind, inspires the imagination, and enlists the eye and ear. An inherently solitary act that somehow makes us feel less alone and more connected – as if creating words to be read invites the reader inside at the act of creation. Turning dross to gold.



Looking Forward

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I never realized how important short-term memory was to happiness until my father began to lose his. If I tell him I’m going to visit, he forgets the moment we hang up. He’s happy when I get there, but he misses out on the anticipation. Last summer, he kept forgetting to be excited about the Indians games. We all need things to look forward to, in life and in fiction. Many of us turn to fiction for exactly that: the sense of expectation that our real lives at times may lack.

I’ve written a lot about the importance of tension in fiction. Tension involves a possible threat to or question about a positive outcome. That counterpoint is essential. We need hope. We want to see mysteries resolved, a couple united, a soul redeemed. We read on because we want to believe. Not every story has a happy ending, but we crave something to look forward to, even if instead it’s justice served or the satisfaction of insight.

The past year was a difficult one for many, and the future is uncertain. We worry about our families, our friends, our country, our planet. The future of humankind. Hope may be something we have to work at consciously. In your writing, and in your life, I’d like to encourage you to look forward. To forge a new path for your readers and yourself.



Foibles and Fixes

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Creative writing requires recommitment from time to time. Not writing is much easier than writing. Curiously, what many of us find is that although we want to write in theory, we keep letting other things get in the way. If those things involve our health, family or job, then writing may have to wait. But if the problems are our own foibles when it comes to writing, then they may be a form of anxiety avoidance which these strategies may help us to surmount:

1. You love to write, but can’t think of anything to say.

The most common answer to this problem is usually to read. Immersing yourself in great books in your genre will motivate and inspire you. The only difficulty is that sometimes those great books will make you feel more lacking. What could you possibly come up with that hasn’t already been said? My suggestion is that you try reading in a different discipline than your own: poetry to get a fiction writer thinking about character; fiction to lure a poet into diving deeper inside; real-life news articles to spur novelists into creating new “what if”s. Or extend your reach further, such as to the visual arts or music. Try attending a play and jot down notes in the dark. No form of artistic expression is exactly the same in terms of what it does best. If you’re a writer, you’ll sense the holes that writing would delve.

2. You freeze up when faced with an empty page.

This is similar to the first issue, but your anxiety is more formless. You’re so swamped with self-doubt, you can barely bring yourself to try. For this, I strongly recommend Julia Cameron’s advice in The Artist’s Way. She urges writers to start every morning with three pages of free writing. The only rule of morning pages is that there aren’t any rules. You could start each entry with “I hate blank pages” and complain for ten minutes. Cameron believes all that anxious stuff needs to be expunged. You may also find that within that time, you can’t help but shift from paralyzing fear to a more writerly preoccupation with expression. You think: What a great line of swearing. I should have a character say that! And you’re off. If you don’t want to write morning pages, instead try to limit your writing commitment with a timer. Agree to write for ten minutes – how bad could that be? Most writers find themselves resetting the timer again and again. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott reminds us that it’s okay to write shitty first drafts. Try not to be so hard on yourself.

3. You get stuck in the middle of a piece.

Sometimes you write yourself into a corner. The plot sticks or the character becomes unconvincing or the tension flatlines; you know something is wrong, but you don’t know what to do. Staring at the page in a panic only makes the problem worse. In her excellent New Yorker article, “Where Do Eureka Moments Come From?,” Maria Konnikova explains that a focused gaze works with analytic problem-solving, but when further insight is needed, we need to step away and allow ourselves to think more diffusely. In other words, try coffee first, but if that doesn’t help, then go for a walk. Or switch your attention to another project and mull this one over in the back of your mind. If you prefer to stay on task, another trick for writers is to build up the details of the scene. Convince yourself more completely of its reality. Sometimes it helps to go back to an earlier point in the story and work forward from there. You could also try to free write the scene a few different ways. If nothing else works, go out for a drink with a trusted writer friend and free talk the damn thing.

4. You revise and revise, but never finish.

Many writers struggle to complete anything. As long as you’re still working on it, your novel, story or poem could always improve. You can dream and hope without fear. Rejection only happens if you finish and try to put your work out there. Unfortunately, if you never take that risk, then your work may never be read by others. You need to consider what it is you truly want. First and foremost, you should try to finish a piece for your own satisfaction. Think of seeking publication as a separate event. If you decide to pursue it, but are afraid of rejection, then you could try starting small. Send out a version to test the waters. At the same time, make a list of five more places. Some writers benefit from revising between submissions, but if this is your foible, you may want to resubmit as soon as a piece comes back. If it helps, think of yourself as two people: the creative writer and the businesslike submitter. Strip the process of emotional content as much as possible.

In a novel, when a character really wants something, we expect that to increase the stakes. Unless you have an ego of steel, anxiety is part of being an artist. Whether you’re sinking into other people’s art for inspiration or writing your morning pages or taking your issues for a walk, in every case, what you’re trying to do is block out the negative voices and let your focus return to the work. Resilience is key. Recommit as often as you need to.