A Writer's Notebook: Day Six
I am still working on the story, but I am feeling more in tune with it. The beginning will still need work, I imagine, but I am focused on what I am doing at this point, and their are elements of the story that are coming to life in ways that I had not considered. For instance, I had the first introduction of Bimble, and it occurred to me that he was not going to just answer the door, which led to a number of other ideas and I had a far more active scene. It was not anything that I had planned out, but it came from my seeing the situation and letting the character's act.
In essence, at this point, I am inside the story, so I should probably just write the rest and then report on that, but I feel a need to keep documenting the process. First, I don't trust myself enough to not have the concept of a public commitment to make me remain consistent in my work. Second, I want a deeper knowledge of my own process. I am recognizing that I have been educated in how to write, but perhaps I was never taught how to be a writer.
The distinction is not new to my writing here, but it is important enough to be worth considering again. In my education, I was taught how to use the tools of a writer, and how to consider language in my work, as well as how to look at a piece of writing, my own or another's, to see how it is constructed and what is or is not working and why. I have a very fine technical understanding of writing and am trained in the use of language for artistic expression.
At the same time, I did not really learn anything about how to be a writer in a more practical sense. I suppose that an engineer is not taught about living as an engineer in school, but it is somehow different, I think. An engineer or a teacher or accountant or most any person who is educated for a specific industry or career path, is going to have a job. A job is the place where people learn how to "be" a thing. A writer, or most any artist, usually isn't going to be hired to do the work they were trained for. At best, I could get a job doing commercial writing, which I have done before, but that is not the same at all and it never provided me the understanding of how to be the kind of writer that I am seeking to blossom into.
It seems to me that I am not aware of how to be a writer for the simple reason that I expected that knowledge to be given to me, in some way, but it has not been. I could sit here and complain about that, which is probably what I would have done even just a short time ago, but such complaining does not help. I could look for outside resources, and I am not opposed to this, really, but it is only a partial solution. In the end, I need to take ownership of the problem and recognize that I can learn to be a writer the way that an engineer or a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer or anybody else would learn to be a professional, by doing the job.
In the end, I am responsible for that. I am my own boss, and I have been a terrible boss to myself. So, I cannot blame the writer for that. I have to accept that it is a different issue, and one that I am in control of. The solution, obviously, is to do what I am doing, and that is to take on writing as my job. I need, probably, to let that sink in more deeply, and not run from the idea. While I am doing the work of writing daily, I think I am letting myself be rather loose about things, in a way that is still not what I think I really would want.
To some extent, the time that I spend writing is my most important time. This sounds quite selfish, but I do not intend it that way. I mean, I must think of my time writing as the time that I spend doing the thing that is my contribution to society. In the same way that a farmer might think that they are directly contributing to their community by maintaining the land and growing food, I need to recognize that I have a responsibility to do my part by writing. If I am going to consider writing my job in the same way a farmer thinks of working the land as their job, I need to assume that I am doing it for more than myself.
This all suggests a need for deeper discipline. Over the past several days I have been writing, certainly, and I have a new story in the works, and all of that is positive. I have, however, spent a long time each day avoiding writing. While I have gotten the work done, eventually, and am glad about it, I also realize that it is not as if I am doing things in a truly disciplined way. I want to be getting up in the morning to write, and I want to be spending more time doing that writing. I've seen how success comes from that kind of discipline, and I am eager to get their. Besides, I know that I can do it, and the only one that has held me back has been me.
All this is important for me to integrate and understand, though it may not be directly about the story I am currently writing. At the same time, I think recognizing what I am doing and feeling about writing this story is a way of making it easier for me to apply greater discipline. I am currently a bit at odds, since their is a part of me that keeps worrying that I could stifle something with that discipline. In all honesty, it is likely that this is unfounded, at least for me, as I have found that I usually respond well to challenges. I have written stories in very short times if the pressure was on, and have found creative ways to do things that followed the letter of a stupid law while crushing it's spirit, when I've had particularly horrid teachers (for instance, a writer insisting that all stories in class be in third person, even if they are parts of a memoir, and with no actual reason other than the teacher's whim). I think that I just balk at the discipline, and it is time for me to stop letting that happen.
The steps of recognizing my process and knowing how it works is important. Right now, I can see that I begin with a lot of hesitancy, but that I am getting to a place where I feel more comfortable with the work. I also realize that I am capable of more than I have been doing, and I need to realize that I am letting myself off easy. I have to build up, obviously, but seeing my current output through this lens is a way of preparing to step up my output again in the near future. It is about keeping that goal in mind.
As to my current story, if I were to speak about how the process seems to be working, it is obvious that things are getting clearer as I keep going. I begin with a general sense of what the story was about and a few key images. The structure was vague and the central premise was not all that clear. Thinking about it, the idea began to take shape and gain some traction. Character's emerged and new ideas took hold, allowing me to get a better idea of the whole. At this point, I began to play with the language and to think about certain scenes and how I wanted to tell them. I became aware of the ideas I had already accumulated but hadn't noticed before. I started to write and began to let things fall into place. I felt shaky, but then I began to understand more and trusted the story to guide me. Now, that is more or less where I am. I am very general, here, I think, but their are things I am noticing already.
One thing that is important, for me, is the pressure of needing to get the work done. I think that I need a deadline, and I am happy to find that I can apply those deadlines to my work myself. It is much more difficult to do, though, than to have something external. I need to learn how to make the deadlines I create for myself feel and act like one's that are imposed by obligations to others. This blog provides an element of that, but I want to go deeper to a place where I can accept my own deadline internally and place it in the same space as an externally imposed deadline. That will come, I think, but it is also a key to understanding some of the deeper issues that are coming up as I consider all of this. It is about taking myself seriously for myself. Why shouldn't a promise or a deadline from me to me be even more important than one that somebody else imposes arbitrarily?
Putting that aside, though, and I am happy to be able to say that I am on track and will be able to finish the story in the next few days, perhaps even tomorrow. I really would like to be able to get to the point where I am writing two stories a week, or more, and I think that is a realistic goal, perhaps even one I will find easy when I get there. In some ways, it is a minimal ideal goal, but I am not there yet. The path to that goal is clear, though, and the rewards of doing the work are also becoming more apparent to me. I can see how just having more work ready to go will push me to get my work out in the world, and I can even imagine taking risks with work that I currently find imposing, because I know I have a lot more to offer. At the moment, each story I write is a precious thing, but if I am whipping out eight or so a month, that changes the relationship. Even just four or five a month would change that, really. By just doing the work, I am making it easier for me to get my fiction out into the world. While I will still, surely, have a lot more to do and learn in order to build a real audience and develop a career, the central engine of that process will be functioning. Right now, I am still just getting it tuned up, maybe taking some test laps, but I can see the track ahead. This is an important moment, I think, and I am glad to be able to recognize that right now.
In essence, at this point, I am inside the story, so I should probably just write the rest and then report on that, but I feel a need to keep documenting the process. First, I don't trust myself enough to not have the concept of a public commitment to make me remain consistent in my work. Second, I want a deeper knowledge of my own process. I am recognizing that I have been educated in how to write, but perhaps I was never taught how to be a writer.
The distinction is not new to my writing here, but it is important enough to be worth considering again. In my education, I was taught how to use the tools of a writer, and how to consider language in my work, as well as how to look at a piece of writing, my own or another's, to see how it is constructed and what is or is not working and why. I have a very fine technical understanding of writing and am trained in the use of language for artistic expression.
At the same time, I did not really learn anything about how to be a writer in a more practical sense. I suppose that an engineer is not taught about living as an engineer in school, but it is somehow different, I think. An engineer or a teacher or accountant or most any person who is educated for a specific industry or career path, is going to have a job. A job is the place where people learn how to "be" a thing. A writer, or most any artist, usually isn't going to be hired to do the work they were trained for. At best, I could get a job doing commercial writing, which I have done before, but that is not the same at all and it never provided me the understanding of how to be the kind of writer that I am seeking to blossom into.
It seems to me that I am not aware of how to be a writer for the simple reason that I expected that knowledge to be given to me, in some way, but it has not been. I could sit here and complain about that, which is probably what I would have done even just a short time ago, but such complaining does not help. I could look for outside resources, and I am not opposed to this, really, but it is only a partial solution. In the end, I need to take ownership of the problem and recognize that I can learn to be a writer the way that an engineer or a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer or anybody else would learn to be a professional, by doing the job.
In the end, I am responsible for that. I am my own boss, and I have been a terrible boss to myself. So, I cannot blame the writer for that. I have to accept that it is a different issue, and one that I am in control of. The solution, obviously, is to do what I am doing, and that is to take on writing as my job. I need, probably, to let that sink in more deeply, and not run from the idea. While I am doing the work of writing daily, I think I am letting myself be rather loose about things, in a way that is still not what I think I really would want.
To some extent, the time that I spend writing is my most important time. This sounds quite selfish, but I do not intend it that way. I mean, I must think of my time writing as the time that I spend doing the thing that is my contribution to society. In the same way that a farmer might think that they are directly contributing to their community by maintaining the land and growing food, I need to recognize that I have a responsibility to do my part by writing. If I am going to consider writing my job in the same way a farmer thinks of working the land as their job, I need to assume that I am doing it for more than myself.
This all suggests a need for deeper discipline. Over the past several days I have been writing, certainly, and I have a new story in the works, and all of that is positive. I have, however, spent a long time each day avoiding writing. While I have gotten the work done, eventually, and am glad about it, I also realize that it is not as if I am doing things in a truly disciplined way. I want to be getting up in the morning to write, and I want to be spending more time doing that writing. I've seen how success comes from that kind of discipline, and I am eager to get their. Besides, I know that I can do it, and the only one that has held me back has been me.
All this is important for me to integrate and understand, though it may not be directly about the story I am currently writing. At the same time, I think recognizing what I am doing and feeling about writing this story is a way of making it easier for me to apply greater discipline. I am currently a bit at odds, since their is a part of me that keeps worrying that I could stifle something with that discipline. In all honesty, it is likely that this is unfounded, at least for me, as I have found that I usually respond well to challenges. I have written stories in very short times if the pressure was on, and have found creative ways to do things that followed the letter of a stupid law while crushing it's spirit, when I've had particularly horrid teachers (for instance, a writer insisting that all stories in class be in third person, even if they are parts of a memoir, and with no actual reason other than the teacher's whim). I think that I just balk at the discipline, and it is time for me to stop letting that happen.
The steps of recognizing my process and knowing how it works is important. Right now, I can see that I begin with a lot of hesitancy, but that I am getting to a place where I feel more comfortable with the work. I also realize that I am capable of more than I have been doing, and I need to realize that I am letting myself off easy. I have to build up, obviously, but seeing my current output through this lens is a way of preparing to step up my output again in the near future. It is about keeping that goal in mind.
As to my current story, if I were to speak about how the process seems to be working, it is obvious that things are getting clearer as I keep going. I begin with a general sense of what the story was about and a few key images. The structure was vague and the central premise was not all that clear. Thinking about it, the idea began to take shape and gain some traction. Character's emerged and new ideas took hold, allowing me to get a better idea of the whole. At this point, I began to play with the language and to think about certain scenes and how I wanted to tell them. I became aware of the ideas I had already accumulated but hadn't noticed before. I started to write and began to let things fall into place. I felt shaky, but then I began to understand more and trusted the story to guide me. Now, that is more or less where I am. I am very general, here, I think, but their are things I am noticing already.
One thing that is important, for me, is the pressure of needing to get the work done. I think that I need a deadline, and I am happy to find that I can apply those deadlines to my work myself. It is much more difficult to do, though, than to have something external. I need to learn how to make the deadlines I create for myself feel and act like one's that are imposed by obligations to others. This blog provides an element of that, but I want to go deeper to a place where I can accept my own deadline internally and place it in the same space as an externally imposed deadline. That will come, I think, but it is also a key to understanding some of the deeper issues that are coming up as I consider all of this. It is about taking myself seriously for myself. Why shouldn't a promise or a deadline from me to me be even more important than one that somebody else imposes arbitrarily?
Putting that aside, though, and I am happy to be able to say that I am on track and will be able to finish the story in the next few days, perhaps even tomorrow. I really would like to be able to get to the point where I am writing two stories a week, or more, and I think that is a realistic goal, perhaps even one I will find easy when I get there. In some ways, it is a minimal ideal goal, but I am not there yet. The path to that goal is clear, though, and the rewards of doing the work are also becoming more apparent to me. I can see how just having more work ready to go will push me to get my work out in the world, and I can even imagine taking risks with work that I currently find imposing, because I know I have a lot more to offer. At the moment, each story I write is a precious thing, but if I am whipping out eight or so a month, that changes the relationship. Even just four or five a month would change that, really. By just doing the work, I am making it easier for me to get my fiction out into the world. While I will still, surely, have a lot more to do and learn in order to build a real audience and develop a career, the central engine of that process will be functioning. Right now, I am still just getting it tuned up, maybe taking some test laps, but I can see the track ahead. This is an important moment, I think, and I am glad to be able to recognize that right now.
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