Writing Fresh

I recently heard about a rising singer/songwriter who has found some success on social media who decided to interview herself on her own blog. How does that even work?

ME: So, what’s your main inspiration for writing?
MYSELF: Why are you asking me? You probably know better than I do.
I: Or at least as well.

In fact, knowing me, that exchange would devolve from there into an argument, name-calling, and the throwing of assorted cream pies.

So what is my blog post about this month? Patience…patience…

It’s about inspiration. Not necessarily inspiration for story ideas – I never seem to lack those, and I imagine you, dear reader, are the same – but inspiration for how to tell those stories. It used to be that I would get all excited about a concept for a story or novel and I couldn’t wait to sit and write it. But when I sat and started writing, started getting bogged down in the minutia of plotting and pacing and characterization and grammar and third-person-past vs. first-person-present and on and on and on…and what ended up on the page read decidedly drier than the brightly colored, fantastical vision I’d had that got me all excited in the first place.

It took time to learn to not only maintain the thrill of a new story, but to actually translate that enthusiasm and glee onto the written page. The biggest trick I use is when I sit, I write. I don’t worry about all that other stuff, I just write it all. If what sent me springing out of bed like Christmas morning was the middle of the story, I wrote it. If it was just the concept of a character and his backstory, I wrote that. The point is I just wrote. Before the advent of word processors and computers, my written first draft often came out as a narrow column of scribblings down the center of the page, using up less than half of its width, because I was just spilling my guts onto the page. The point was to get all that hot, feverish excitement onto the page any way, any how, and grammar and sentence structure and plotting and pacing be damned!

When I’d done that, I then went back and filled in any gaps with transitions, lead-ins, fleshing out, whatever was needed. Another pass and I was doing housecleaning, fixing typos, rewording wordy phrases, tightening prose and plotting, etc. In short, I got all the excitement down on the page while it was still exciting. Doing that, it was there for good, and the enthusiasm of that wild, unruly writing was there for me to return to and continue to feed on, inspiration-wise, as I began the mundane chores of making it into a more cohesive text. Themes and motifs emerged, allowing me to bring out threads of subplots and character development, often sparking more inspiration for additional twists and turns in the main plot. I never outlined, and I rarely bothered with a murder-board (not necessarily to do with murders, it’s a collection of plot points and characters strung together by yarn or threads on a bulletin board).

In short, my writing process was like throwing splashes of paint up on a canvas and then making something out of the shapes that emerged. It was exhilarating and free. I encourage anyone to try that approach.

These days, I’ve developed the ability to translate my excitement into a more cohesive and coherent first draft and maintain it as I build from there. Sometimes I wonder if I could go back to that more manic style of writing if I tried.

What’s your process like? Leave a comment below, I’d love to know.