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Editor’s note: This the third in
a series of articles by Paul Bishop that help you write effectively
and easily. Read part 1 here
and part 2 here.
“It
is not your obligation to complete your work,
but you are not at liberty to quit.”
The Talmud
In marathon running, it is called hitting
the wall. This is the point in a race, usually around the twenty-mile
mark, where muscles seize up with lactic acid overload and your
body tells you continuing to run is impossible.
As a novelist, I have hit a writing
wall with each of my nine published novels around the seventy-five
percent completion mark. At that point, the metaphorical lactic
acid buildup in my writing muscles brings everything to a screeching
halt and I want to throw my computer out the second-story window.
I become convinced my novel is the
worst piece of writing I’ve ever produced. I know my editor will
laugh demonically as she gleefully rejects the manuscript. I have
visions of being forced to return the already spent advance, and
watch my career scattering about me in tatters.
Deep breath.
Deeeeep breath.
Okay, I’m better now.
I have finally learned not to panic
when this happens. It always happens. If I can just goad,
fool, or guilt myself into continuing to put one word after another,
this phase will pass and the story threads will suddenly pull together.
Like a marathon runner fighting through the wall, I have
to persist until my novelist’s second wind kicks in and I find myself
speeding toward The End.
It sounds simple — like Nike pompously
telling you to, “Just do it!” — but it’s far from easy. Finding
the gumption to complete a writing project is to enter into a battle
with all of our writing fears and phobias.
Here are some tips I’ve learned that
can help you break through your own version of the writing wall
and get your manuscript finished. These tips apply equally if you’re
writing the next Great American Novel, crafting a poem for your
sweetheart, or trying to record your own personal history, so if
you want to write anything, these tips are for you.
TIP #1: Embrace Rejection
Fear of rejection can force us to slow
down the completion of a writing project. As long as our manuscript
isn’t finished, we don’t have to show it to anyone and risk their
harsh judgment.
I once received two rejection letters
on the same day. The first claimed I wrote crackling dialogue,
but stated my narrative was clumsy and colorless. The second
praised my narrative as sparkling while condemning my dialogue
as dull and lifeless. These contradictory rejection letters
were for the same novel.
Talk about mood swings – I went from
crushed to indignant to determined.
I still rely on those letters to strengthen
my resolve not to let somebody else establish how I feel about my
writing. Fear of the dark is not eliminated by turning on a light.
Light only eliminates the dark. Similarly, not finishing your manuscript
to avoid negative criticism does not stop the fear of rejection,
only the rejection itself.
So, what is wrong with avoiding your
fears? Nothing, unless you love carnivals but are afraid of rides,
dread heights but want to hang-glide, or yearn to be published but
fear rejection.
Accept rejection as part of your validation
as a writer. Seek it out as a sign you are on your way to success.
By embracing rejection, and sending my novel back for more, it sold
six weeks later to a major publisher who found both my dialogue
and narrative riveting.
TIP #2:
Don’t Confuse Editing with Writing
English classes in high school and
university can sometimes do more harm than good. All that stuff
about spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, grammar, expected
length, double spacing, and using five words from the current week’s
vocabulary list takes much of the creative spark out of writing.
Are those things important? You bet,
especially if you want to sell what you write. However, paying
attention to all those half-remembered rules during a first draft
can bring the entire process to a halt.
The old saw about writing is rewriting
is never so true as when applied to finishing your manuscript.
With your first draft, you must feel free to write what is in your
head without immediate editing. Getting the words down on the page
is the only thing of importance.
Finish the first draft, then go back
and apply all those lessons you learned from Ms. Harridan’s Freshman
English 101.
When you rewrite, order will come out
of the confusion of the first draft, it is the natural way the mind
works. Trying to perfect every sentence and paragraph the first
time through is not only impossible; it is crushing to the creative
muse.
TIP #3:
Write the Best You Can Right Now
When I read a seamless novel by a favorite
author, I often despair over comparisons to what I see as the patchwork
of my own prose. I have to fight the urge to push away from the
computer and abandon whatever I am working on as unworthy.
However, I have eventually learned
I can only write the best book I am capable of writing when I am
writing it. If I were to rewrite my first novel with the experience
and craft I have developed through eight other novels, it would
be a better book. At the time I wrote it, though, it was the best
book I could write.
The first word we write of a new manuscript
will always shatter the ideal novel we envision in our mind. The
perfect piece of writing doesn’t exist. Our objective should not
be to start out being brilliant writers, but to work toward becoming
brilliant writers. To achieve that ambition, we must be willing
to be less than brilliant in order to learn the craft needed to
be brilliant.
I am currently striving to make my
next novel the best I can write with the skills and craft I’ve honed
and earned. It will not be perfect. I will not see it as being
up to the standards of my favorite authors. But it will be the
best novel I can write right now.
So, do not be discouraged by the luminosity
of others, or the flawlessness of writing you have as an ideal.
When you sit down at the computer today, or take out your yellow
legal pad and favorite pen, strive to write the best prose you
can write today.
TIP #4:
Creative Procrastination
About the middle of creating Tip #3,
as I begun to struggle with completing this piece (I’m not kidding),
I began formulating a dazzling story idea set completely
in a police interrogation room. The more I thought about this idea,
the more dazzling it became, and the easier it was for me
to avoid the hard work of finishing this article.
I call this phenomenon creative procrastination.
Whenever we are struggling with a project, our subconscious has
a tendency to soar off in creative fits looking for easier outlets.
Sometimes these new ideas are dazzling, while other times a harsher
look shows their flaws.
At the time, however, the temptation
is to set aside the current project and throw yourself into the
exuberant flush of a new inspiration. The problem arises when you
get into the middle of the new project. Unforeseen problems suddenly
demand solving, and your new dazzling idea becomes as hard to complete
as the original endeavor. All of a sudden another dazzling idea
suggests itself and the cycle continues.
Creative procrastination is a mermaid’s
siren. To avoid being caught in its mystical allure, I keep a plot
book. This is a journal in which I jot character names, interesting
titles, tidbits of overheard dialogue, and anything else I don’t
want to lose — including all of those dazzling ideas brought
on by creative procrastination. By getting the ideas down on paper,
I achieve two goals — making sure the idea is not lost or forgotten
(just in case it is dazzling), and I stop the idea from running
around in my brain, distracting me from dealing with the harsh realities
of my current writing project.
Get those dazzling temptations
written down, and then get back to finishing your manuscript.
TIP #5: Goals
Okay, okay, you’ve heard about goals
before. You’ve heard about them over and over ad-nausea from any
motivational speaker you can name. There is a simple reason for
this – setting goals works.
A couple of years ago, I was experiencing
a career lull. Tired of my whining, my wife demanded I started
practicing what I teach. She made me sit down and decide on some
short-term and long-term goals. I wrote them on a white board,
gave them completion dates, and we talked together about how they
could be achieved. Within six months all but one of the six stated
goals had been reached.
You can’t do everything at once. You
can’t write your novel in a day or a week. But you can write a
page a day. You can write a chapter a week. And, if you do this
consistently, you will eventually finish your book.
Cartoonist Gary Larson, creator of
The Far Side, once related that on the morning of his second day
in kindergarten, when his mother came in to wake him, he rolled
over in bed and groaned, “What — again?”
To endure a career as a writer is to
persist again and again. Set your goals, adjust them if you need,
but write them down, keep them in front of you, and focus on achieving
them.
TIP #6: You are Not Alone
A colorful quote states there are two
types of scuba divers — those who pee in their wetsuits and those
who lie about it. To paraphrase, we can say there are two types
of writers — those who have trouble completing their manuscripts
and those who lie about it.
Statistical probabilities aside, all
writers experience completion anxiety. If I ever see an infomercial
touting a completion anxiety avoidance pill, I’ll be the first customer
on the 800 line. I can hear the announcer now, “For $19.95 you’ll
get a thirty-day supply of Dr. Ritemore’s Anxoidance Formula Plus™
along with Dr. Ritemore’s patented Fingertip Plot Massager™, and
if you call within the next ten minutes, you’ll also receive the
invaluable Ritemore Royalty Statement Decoder Ring™.”
Until that time, however, all of us
will continue to struggle with the dreaded phenomenon. Knowledge
is power. Knowledge that you are not fighting this very personal
battle alone is super power.
Remember, writers are the only adults
who get to spend all day in their pajamas playing with imaginary
friends. We all get to share in both the gifts and the curses of
our chosen profession.
TIP #7: Oh, yeah — TIP #7
I am the poster child for procrastination.
I’ll get tip #7 to you as soon as I win the next game of computer
solitaire, stop worrying if the editor of Meridian is going to laugh
demonically as she rejects this article, do some more editing of
tips 1- 6, go for a run, do the laundry, convince myself I’m not
the only completion challenged writer in the world, and find the
gumption to finish this manuscript.
There are more than enough insecure,
angst-ridden writers out here, so tip #7 really is don’t do as I
do, do as I say. You are all writers endowed with the seeds of
greatness. You can finish your manuscript. Just get off
the Internet, follow these tips, and come out with your fingers
writing.
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© 2006 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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