The Myth of the Real Writer

[This is Part 1 of 2. Read Part 2 here.]

The Myth of the Real Writer:

It comes tapping at your mind, a harbinger of doubt and dread, whispering one of your worst fears: All of your attempts are in vain, and no matter what you do, you'll never be a Real Writer. It swoops in at odd times, maybe upon a dreary midnight, or after you've been napping, or while you're reading a book you love. Often it shows up as when you're in the middle of writing a difficult paragraph. Once it takes hold, it's hard to hear anything else besides its heart-wrenching, energy-draining refrain. 

It's time to break free from the Myth of the Real Writer.

What is this myth? It contains many components, a litany of absolutes about what Real Writers do or don't do.

Real Writers... 

• ...write every single day.
• ...get up early to write first thing in the morning.
• ...know the whole story before they sit down to write.
• ...write fantastic first drafts.
• ...never have to revise.
• ...write only by hand in Moleskine journals (or on typewriters or on laptops in cute coffeeshops).
• ...never have writer's block.
• ...never fear the blank page.
• ...are willing to sacrifice anything for their creative work.
• ...have read all of the Classics, all important contemporary literature, and everything in-between.

As I mentioned in my last post, I used to think I couldn't be a Real Writer because my creative process didn't match my ideas of how a Real Writer operates.

I thought:

I can't be a Real Writer because I don't write every day.

I can't be a Real Writer because I have to write a lot of nonsense before I figure out what I'm really trying to get at.

I can't be a Real Writer because sometimes I don't know what to write about.

I can't be a Real Writer because I haven't read Tolstoy yet and I forget the titles and plots of some major Shakespeare plays.

I can't be a Real Writer because sometimes my own writing bores me.

I can't be a Real Writer because I don't write as much in one day as other people do.

The list could go on.

What helped me to see beyond the Myth of the Real Writer?

First, I got to know more writers and realized that most of them struggle with similar issues.

Second, I discovered that every writer's creative process is unique. I learned that there's no universally "right way" to approach writing.

Even now that I know this, I still get tripped up on different versions of the myth. In my next post I'll share a story about how this happened to me just earlier this week.

What about you? Do you have a Myth of the Real Writer in your head, too? What does it tell you? And how do you respond?

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Want to break free from your own Myth of the Real Writer?

Join The Word Cellar Writers Guild, an online community and resource center for writers. 

We have a library of writing modules (like self-paced e-courses) that focus on elements of craft and issues of the writing life, all to help you become the writer you long to be.  

Dispatch from Vermont Studio Center

view of the kahn studios from my vsc studio at night

11:21pm. 11 degrees Faranheit, windchill of 3 degrees. From inside my writing studio I can hear the wind whooshing and whistling through this valley. The river froze over a few days ago, and I suspect it will stay that way until I leave. I've been here at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, since January 5, and the river, which I can watch from my studio window, has been a constant companion and fascination. We've had a polar vortex and a thaw and another vortex, and the river has slowed and quickened, melted and hardened, flowed and frosted. This river, called the Gihon, is quite small. I suppose it's not much bigger than some streams, but it's made for an engaging view. I love that it keeps changing. I had no idea I could come to feel so deeply connected to a river. I'm more of an ocean girl, you know, but I've been pleasantly surprised to find myself so enamored of another body of water.

Yellow light spills out of the windows of an artist's studio in a building across the river, making patterns of tree shadow on snow. I can see the smaller branches waving in the wind, and the larger ones start to bow when the wind reaches a whistle pitch. The artist in the studio across the way has painted the walls yellow and filled one wall with a huge red and white paper creature, a serpentine design that reminds me of a Chinese New Year's dragon from here. I watched it take shape over the last few weeks, and now I'm watching it change shape. She must be dismantling or rearranging it. It seems to change at least a little bit every few days, like the river.

After tonight, I have only four more full days here. Before I arrived, a month felt like a long time to be at an artists and writers colony. I wondered if I should have signed up for two weeks instead. Now I'm wishing I had another week or two here. I've written and done good work during this month, but I wish I could do more. Still, I keep reminding myself that the end of this month and the end of this writing residency doesn't mean the end of my writing life. It feels, in many ways, like just the beginning of its next phase.

{p.s. I've been posting lots of photos from my adventures here over on Instagram. You can follow me (thewordcellar) or see my photos online.}

{p.p.s. I haven't made a Big Official Announcement yet, but if you're read this far, I'll let you in on something: Registration for the next session of Write into the Heart of Your Story is open! This 2-week online course will run Feb. 14-28, and it's all about moving your writing beyond "what happened" and into "what matters." And at $29, it's kind of a steal, if I do say so myself!}

Writing Process Revealed

red mill, vermont studio center

I've been at Vermont Studio Center for one week as of today, which means that I'm one-quarter of the way through my writing residency. I'm not writing tons of words each day, but I am writing so very much more than I have been for a long time. I'm starting to sink into my writing life again, and I'm happy about that. The other day I felt fairly glum about a new piece I was working on, until I realized that I had simply hit a slump that shows up in my process.

This new essay, like many that I write, started with a confluence of a visual and a sentence. (In this case, the view out my studio window and the line, "The statue is closer today.") From there, I was hooked into a general landscape and some meanderings thoughts about what it evokes. I immediately sensed some metaphors that might crystallize, but I was careful to not hold too tightly to them too early, since they might morph along the way.

I wrote a bit about what I saw and thought, and then I did some research about the local landscape. This led me to additional research about the names of things, other local landscape features, and so on down the rabbit hole. As I gather all of this information, I sense connections and a resonance among all the pieces, but I'm still not sure how it's all going to fit together.

Then I went back to the writing and started adding in bits from my research. At this point, I hit the boring and cumbersome phase of the essay. It's at this point -- when I have a bunch of information and some half-formed thoughts about what that information means -- that I'm often tempted to give up. This is the phase of writing when I am sure nothing will come of it.

But this week I realized what's happening on a deeper level during this boring and cumbersome phase: I'm integrating the information I learned in my research into my mental foundation. I'm taking facts and weaving them into my own personal knowledge base. Part of the way I integrate these into my mind is by taking notes (during research) and then writing really boring paragraphs that paraphrase what I've just learned.

Realizing what was happening at this part of the process has been a revelation to me. It helped me to realize that I'm not failing or coming up against a wall. Instead, I'm simply integrating new information into my knowledge bank. And once I have that new data in place, I can use it to write something much more interesting and evocative.

So what I did this time was leave my Word document full of boring research-driven statements, and switch over to Ommwriter to start a new draft of the essay, one that uses my new understanding and begins to build an atmosphere and experience around my original visual and sentence.

In between writing, I've been doing more research, taking notes on this and that, all of which might join the essay. Very likely, I'll research stuff I don't need, and very likely, my first draft will include stuff (facts, thoughts, descriptions, and metaphors) that don't end up in the final draft -- or they might end up in there in drastically different forms.

I've heard painters say that every piece goes through an ugly phase. The ugly phase in my essay-making process can be disheartening. But seeing the process for what it is -- a process with different components and phases -- is helping me to move through the ugly phase and beyond it.

I can see now that this process (initial visual and idea; first bits of writing; research; integration; deeper writing; more research and integration; deeper writing, etc.) is how I've written most of the essays in the collection I've been working on for a few years now. I'm not sure why the process finally took shape and revealed itself to me, but I'm glad that it has. It will now be interesting to notice if this process holds, or if it changes for future essays.

Creativity & Quiet (In The Word Cellar)

A few weeks ago I wrote about creativity and time, about such inconvenient facts as these: 

Ideas don't come down the conveyor belt in perfect succession, spaced apart just so. 

. . .

Creative work needs time and space to breathe.

This week I've been pondering the silence that our creative spirits need.

** ** **

Creativity craves a chapel.

"A chapel," writes Pico Iyer, "is where you can hear something beating below your heart."

This is why I need to write in silence: no music, no background chatter, not even a clock ticking too loudly. I need to be able to hear the words trying to come through me. I need the quiet so I can hear the melody of the language.

This isn't to say that one can only write in literal silence. I could, if given the chance, write to the sound of the ocean surf. I know writers who do some of their best work while sitting in a café listening to music through their headphones. For each of us, there are sounds that allow us to tap into the chapels of our creativity, sounds that enable us to hear the rhythm of our hearts and something beating below that. We need whatever version of sound or silence permits us entrance to the stories waiting for us to tell them.

Eudora Welty said it beautifully. She wrote that she hears a literal voice when she reads and when she writes.

It is the voice of the story or the poem itself. The cadence, whatever it is that asks you to believe, the feeling that resides in the printed word, reaches me through the reader-voice. I have supposed, but never found out, that this is the case with all readers ― to read as listeners ― and with all writers, to write as listeners. It may be part of the desire to write. The sound of what falls on the page begins the process of testing it for truth, for me. Whether I am right to trust so far I don’t know. By now I don’t know whether I could do either one, reading or writing, without the other.

My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make my changes. I have always trusted this voice.

Welty is also known for saying that she listened for stories. 

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.....

I don't know how Eudora listened for her stories when she was on her own. I don't know if she sat in silence, but I know that she didn't have the same temptations I face when I sit down to write on my laptop. She may have been distracted or tempted away from the page by many things, but she never had to fend off the siren songs of the Internet.

Oh Lord, this little white box on my lap and its magical, invisible companion, WiFi. Was there ever anything so marvelous and so terrible? I love this white keyboard (and my high school typing teacher) for the gift of being able to capture my thoughts in nearly real-time. I love the connection this device gives me to the world, real connections that break the bounds of anything virtual. It is ease and comfort and connection, all wrapped up in silicone and hard drive. And yet...

I know that when I hop around the Web, watch YouTube videos, surf the TV set, I turn away and feel agitated. I go for a walk, enjoy a real conversation with a friend, turn off the lights and listen to Bach or Leonard Cohen, and I feel palpably richer, deeper, fuller, happier.

Happiness is absorption, being entirely yourself and entirely in one place. That is the chapel that we crave. ~Pico Iyer

I like the chatter. I like tweeting and updating and commenting and posting. I even believe them to be one way I feed my creative spirit. But too easily I can get caught up in the noise of it all, in the twitchy, buzzy, fuzziness that doesn't make me happy, that doesn't deepen my thoughts.

If I want to write more consistently, I know that I have to invite in the quiet that I crave. I could go for a walk, or sit in the dark listening to music, as Iyer describes. I could read. (I constantly have to remind myself that reading is part of my creative process. I think I'm still incredulous that something I love so much could be so good ― even necessary ― for my artform. But really, could it be any other way?)  I could stare out the window and daydream. All of these things restore me to myself, which, in turn, restores my creativity to me. 

It turns out that I need silence not only when I'm writing, but in the spaces in-between the acts of creation. The silence is part of the "time and space" that our ideas need to breathe.

I sense that I have so much more to write about this. But my cat is currently banging a kitchen cupboard door, which is his noisy way of asking for what he craves (the food inside). Also, it is late, and if there's one other thing I need as much a silence, it is sleep. And so I'll stop here, but I'd love to know: What does your creativity need? What is your kind of silence? What is your chapel?

Sources:

"A Chapel Is Where You Can Hear Something Beating Below Your Heart" by Pico Iyer, originally published in Portland, Winter 2012, reprinted in The Best Spiritual Writing 2012, Philip Zaleski, editor

One Writer's Beginnings, by Eudora Welty

{In The Word Cellar runs on the second and fourth Wednesday of the month. Read other posts in the series here.}

Creativity & Time (In The Word Cellar)

The last "In The Word Cellar" post wrapped up the MFA mini-series. That said, I'm happy to add to it if you have questions, so just let me know. This week I'm thinking about creativity and time. I'd like to write a beautiful, meditative essay about this topic, but that's going to take more time than I have right now. So for now here's an off-the-cuff post instead.

Doing stuff takes time. Doing creative stuff can take a lot of time. It can also make time go all wonky, contracting and expanding it, making it refuse to play by the normal hourly rules.

Scenario #1: You sit down to write and the words won't come. You tell yourself, I'll sit here for one hour and do nothing else but focus on writing. Time limps, drags, scrapes by until you're begging for mercy, aching to stand up and do something more pleasurable, like wash dishes. 

Scenario #2: You set out to write (or paint or dance or take photos) and you shimmy into a sweet groove. You are in the zone. You look up and zip! You've "lost" an hour or two or five.

Scenario #3: This is the in-between scenario: You write something, maybe a blog post. You think it will take about an hour to write it, edit it, proofread it, add a photo to it, and hit "publish." Sometimes it takes an hour. Sometimes it takes three. It's not that time zipped or dragged, it's just that the process was more involved and consuming than you thought it would be.

I was talking about creativity and time with a client the other day. She was feeling frustrated because Scenario #3 happens to her a lot. It happens to me a lot, too. Things often take much longer than I think they will. (Except when they don't, of course. Sometimes I put off doing something because I'm sure it will be difficult and a major time-suck. And then it ends up being easy-peasy and taking five minutes, and I feel like a schmuck, albeit a productive schmuck.)

I've been thinking about the nature of creative work, and how it forces us to play by different rules than if we were just making widgets on an assembly line. Creative work isn't so regulated, so orderly, so perfectly timed.

Ideas don't come down the conveyor belt in perfect succession, spaced apart just so. 

Developing an idea doesn't happen in an orderly, assembly line fashion. It's messy. Things do not always proceed in a linear direction. There is much doubling back, doubling up, rearranging, redoing. I have to remember this every time I start writing a new essay or developing curriculum for a new course. Each time I do it I learn something new, but the learning never stops.

The most important thing I keep learning about creative work is that it needs time and space to breathe. If I sit down to write, I want to be writing--actively. I want to see words filling up the blank page. Letter after letter, word after word, line after line, punctuation mark after punctuation mark. Progress! I worry that if I'm not typing, I'm not doing anything. And if I'm not doing anything, then I must be lazy or stupid or creatively blocked. But no, this is not so. Idling is a good and necessary part of the creative process. Let your mind wander. Daydream. Doodle. Give yourself -- and your work -- time and space to breathe. I mean this literally (meditation, yoga, deep breathing, taking walks -- all good things), and more metaphorically. Let things steep and simmer for awhile. It adds flavor and depth, like a good soup. (Not everything needs -- or can wait for -- a lot of marinating, of course. This blog post, for example, won't get a lot of breathing room. It's a bit more slapdash than that. But the essay I'm working on this week is getting a lot of breathing room. I've been noodling with it since August. This frustrates me, but I also know that it needed this long to come into being and to come into its own.)

Creative work is like window caulking: It needs time to set-up and cure. Or compare it to wine and men: It needs plenty of time to mature. (My apologies to the men. And the grapes.)

(Those jokes probably won't make it into the meditative essay I want to write about creativity and time, so thanks for indulging me here.)

What about you? How does time fit into your creative process?

{In The Word Cellar runs on the second and fourth Wednesday of the month. Read other posts in the series here.}

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If you'd like to explore your own creative process and give yourself the time, space, and permission to write, I invite you to join me for Alchemy Inspiration: Start Writing. This fun, gentle, and encouraging 4-week ecourse is perfect for anyone who wants to start writing for the first time or the first time in a long time. Alchemy Inspiration runs February 6 - March 2, and registration is open.