I have been asked a handful of times what my process is for creative writing. As someone that is still struggling with the demons of perfectionism and gaps in self esteem, it has taken me my entire life to get to the point where I can write and feel comfortable with the result, including sharing my very rough, amateur output with other living people. Everything carries risk, including pouring a part of yourself into something creative… it is inviting criticism. These facets of creativity can be crippling to many, me included. So what is a person to do?
The first rule: Don’t Wait, Just Do
Writing is a process by which you open yourself to your inner story teller. For me, I consider this force to be a very real, tangible, living thing. The ancient Greeks labeled the force as the Mousai, aka, the Muses. The secret is that this force is not something you wait on, patiently standing by for divine intervention. The force of creativity can sometimes be like a lightning bolt, but more often than not, it is a beast full of fear, cowering in the furthest reach of a dark cave. You have to entice it out towards the light. The only way to be successful is not waiting for it to be standing outside of it’s cave, roaring for your attention, but instead, making it a point to coax it out on a regular basis. Which brings us to the second rule…
The second rule: Discipline, Not Inspiration
As I noted, inspiration is great, but it is fickle and temporary. The sooner you lure the beast from the cave, the easier it will become to lure it out again. And like any exercise, the muscles involved moving the beast towards the light will get stronger, making the effort easier. When I first started, I always was waiting for some grand thought, some magic idea to strike me over the back of the head. But it is not about the idea, it is about the process, and the only way to strengthen the process is to have discipline in working on it. Staying consistent is more important than having grand ideas, because the discipline is what will make the grand inspiration productive and lead to an outcome that you will be proud of.
The third rule: Perfection is Impossible
I realized very early on that I would never be Stephen King. I knew that I would never be Terry Prachett, Neil Gaiman, JRR Tolkien, or Brandon Sanderson. The first is a prolific author that has literally beat his stories against the wall, writing massive amounts to find the stories of gold, which I would never have the time for. The latter are all artists (not that King isn’t), but they are artists that have perfected their craft to a marketable ideal. When I made the realization that I am a hack, and would always be a hack, it was liberating. That is where my domain name comes from… when I realized that everything I wrote could be discarded, that the ego within it should be able to be discarded as well. Discard me along with the words on the page, and that was something that I would have to accept. I cannot be measured by every written word, just like a painter should not be judged by every canvas they practice upon. My writing would not be technically perfect nor contextually perfect, and that is wholly acceptable. Because at least I am making the effort, and the effort is what counts. Luring the beast from the cave is what matters, not the content that wandered its way to the page.
The fourth rule: Editing Has Limits
My first book was a massive achievement for me personally. But knowing what I know now, I overreached. I tried to do too much, too fast, without the experience to do it justice wholly. You can fix a lot in post, making significant changes along the way. You can change style, voice, point of view, even whole characters. But at some point, editing will reach a breaking point. You will have to make a choice, should I push this further, or let it go? Will I tear this apart and start over, or keep going with what I have? These choices are personal, and once you realize they are there, it can be freeing as well. They should not cripple your process, they should enhance it. What if I break a scene apart? What if I tear this character out? What if I sacrifice this cool little idea to make way for a bigger idea over here? This has lead to creative choices in future work, and has made me a better writer. Should I go back and fix my earlier works? The answer is no (at least for me). I think they represent something special in and of themselves, so I let them stand as they are, warts and all. That is the other reason I started posting my writing to this site, even if no one will ever read them. So I could get over the warts. Every time I create something, it has significant faults. Every time, I have mistakes in structure, grammar, style, and the like. But if I just let the perfection go, edit something close to what I envisioned, then that… that is a success. Ship it, warts and all.
Once I realized that one, I would never be a grand author, and two, I would never be a great artist, the process became far easier. I was able to throw my thoughts to the page, opening the conduit within to allow my inner story teller to do her job. My writing is often a tickle in the back of my waking mind, some seed left from a dream, and my muse picks it up, nurtures it, and pushes it through me. Sometimes, it is me just faking it. Sometimes, I fake it only to realize that she has taken over, and I cannot stop her. Some writing is truly magical, where who I consider to be me, is removed from the process altogether, and some powerful universal force is pouring through me, like a great flood overwhelming a small trivial pipe. I think I write for those moments… truly. It is when the story is telling itself, and I am merely a conduit for it to come into the world.
While very few will ever pick up my bound hack attempts at writing, much less read them, my hobby has taught me so very much about myself, the world, and my place within it. I sometimes feel guilty that my hobby brings me so much when others struggle with self expression, self discovery, and understanding their reality, both in their own strengths and shortcomings. Creative Writing is a cheat code. As a kid, I never understood why people would waste time journaling, but now, after all the work and time I have invested in my own hobbyist pursuits, I have come to understand how the written page is a mirror that reflects harshly. It holds to light the parts of yourself that you have locked away, ignored, or thought you had tossed towards oblivion. With a pen, some paper, one can discover a universe within. It is worth the time. Especially in this madness we call “modern” society.