Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. – W.H. Auden
In our previous post on How To Write Every Day we discussed the origins of all writing and the necessity for Inspiration. You can revisit that post here. In this post I want to discuss the next step in How To Write Every Day.
A few years ago I took a writing course at UCLA. Ben Loory was the writer teaching us. If you haven’t read his works before I highly recommend them. His website is here. Often after class I would walk with him to where our cars were parked, probably slightly annoying him with the fact that I just wouldn’t stop talking with him. In one of those discussions he explained to me that most people when they say they want to write, really mean they want to be published. This was extremely meaningful for me to hear and to realize. The distinction between writing and publishing is vital and speaks to the ultimate heart of the matter when it comes to writing every day and “being a writer” as the saying goes. The truth is writers write. NO MATTER WHAT. It’s just as simple as that. Inspiration or not, clarity or not, brilliance or not, published or not, writers write. This profound realization my friends brings us to Step 2 in How To Write Every Day – PRODUCE!
As crazy as it sounds, the only real way to write is…well…to write! Now perhaps you’ve tried to just keep on writing before (or many times even) and it just hasn’t produced very much for you. In that case I would suggest you consider going back to Step 1 and re-source and re-discover your real inspiration. Once your inspiration is alive and flowing through you again, this next step isn’t as difficult – though it is amazing to note just how often the simple act of writing still feels SO DIFFICULT prior to actually just sitting down and doing it. Many times I have to just “push past” all the nonsense that goes on in my head preventing me from writing. Things like “oh I don’t know what to say,” or “oh that’s not a good idea,” or “I don’t really feel like it anymore,” or “I don’t need to write today” or “I have this, that, and the other thing I really have to do today.” The list just goes on and on my friends – as I’m sure you are all quite familiar with as well! To me, in my eyes, these excuses are really like the angel at the gate. It marks the moment when we are just about to cross over the finish line or jump into hyperspace and do something amazing. That’s precisely when these various objections really rise up in our minds and feelings and try to raise all hell to do anything at all to sabotage us and have us avoid our writing. It is actually a sign that we are close to the motherload! We are approaching something powerful, something real, something true. And as writers, that’s exactly what we want to instill into our words and ideas and stories! Something powerful, real, and true. So if that’s the case then we MUST push through to the other side and write! Produce anyway! Write anyway! PRODUCE!
The incredible creativity and satisfaction that lies on the other side of unwillingness and resistance truly surpasses our understanding and comprehension. There are many days when I experience doubts and objections to sitting down and writing my stories, but every time – EVERY TIME – that I hold fast and remain strong and disciplined to my writing, and I just write anyway, I am genuinely amazed at what I produce, at what is written, and all the many doors and possibilities that are opened (and closed as the case may be) with my characters and my stories. Those new doors and possibilities are a renewed inspiration that fuel me through the rest of my day when I am not writing. Inspiration drives me into tomorrow and is the result of my discipline today. Ernest Hemingway describes a similar process with his writing:
You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.
Hemingway is describing here a virtuous cycle for his daily writing, and that is wise. Create a writing practice that can build upon itself for you. Simple discipline can fuel inspiration just as inspiration can propel us into simple discipline. Both are vital keys that work together to fashion us into becoming successful writers.
It really doesn’t matter if what we write is “good,” “great,” or just plain “awful” (whatever those terms mean to you personally). We can always make our works better with revision, but we cannot revise something that is not yet on the page! Remember that – we cannot revise something that is not yet on the page. So get it down onto the page, and see what happens. Interestingly William Wordsworth spoke of a similar process in his ground-breaking Preface to Lyrical Ballads when he famously states:
Not that I always began to write with a distinct purpose formerly conceived; but habits of meditation have, I trust, so prompted and regulated my feelings, that my descriptions of such objects as strongly excite those feelings, will be found to carry along with them a purpose. If this opinion be erroneous, I can have little right to the name of a Poet. For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.
Wordsworth is humbly defending that he has indeed put thought into his revolutionary poems and his radical new approach to poetry. In short he is explaining his process of writing. Isn’t it fascinating to note that even Wordsworth admits that he did not “always [begin] to write with a distinct purpose formerly conceived.” In other words, sometimes he was simply writing without knowing what exactly he was going to say. He was writing freely and, once written, was then able through “habits of meditation” to more carefully craft and form his poems with “a purpose.” Likewise we as writers today, over 200 years later, must let our inspiration flow freely! In order for us as writers to achieve our goals we must first pour out this “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” And the only way we can do that at all is by writing! I know it sounds simple and obvious and perhaps even repetitive, but it is amazing to me just how many people, myself included mind you, just don’t write day in and day out and yet they still want to be writers. You cannot square that circle my friends. If you want to write, you must write. It’s really just as simple as that.
Now it is important to that note that Wordsworth doesn’t stop at the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Oh no! That is just the beginning of the writing process. We must think and feel deeply and write our powerful words down. But once that part is complete, it is with focus and care that we must revise our works, working them into greatness just as Michelangelo would chisel and carve and sand and smooth his unbelievably magnificent statues. Wordsworth continues:
Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. For our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feelings; and, as by contemplating the relation of these general representatives to each other, we discover what is really important to men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings will be connected with important subjects, till at length, if we be originally possessed of much sensibility, such habits of mind will be produced, that, by obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of those habits, we shall describe objects, and utter sentiments, of such a nature, and in such connexion with each other, that the understanding of the Reader must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.
Incredible! Wordsworth is truly a master writer and a brilliant artist. These lines essentially map out the thread of humanity that we as artists and writers must follow backwards within our own consciousness to produce great and meaningful works. This thread begins with our “influxes of feeling,” that is our inspiration, but it then continues deeper still into our own being and whoever we are inside of ourselves as writers. For Wordsworth this is “modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feelings.” And so as writers, whenever we experience the inspiration to write, that flash of brilliance, the muse that comes to us so randomly at times, this experience can actually be tracked back into ourselves, through our thoughts and ideas back to even earlier feelings of inspiration we had when we were younger. Feelings stacked upon thoughts stacked upon feelings ultimately leading us to “what is important to men.” These “important subjects” can only begin to emerge in our stories and writings as we trace this winding path through our own consciousness, and the consciousness of the piece we are writing, until we finally unravel and expose whatever truths lie at the bedrock of our works. It is a journey of discovery both for ourselves as writers as well as for our readers that ultimately leads to something vital, true, and meaningful. Wordsworth claims that this artistic journey where the author is both inspired as well as “possessed of more than usual organic sensibility” and has “thought long and deeply” becomes a cathartic experience for the reader to engage in such that they become “enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.” As writers, our struggles for truth and authenticity eventually benefit not just ourselves but the works we write and of course those that read them too. All are blessed by words. Wordsworth approaches writing as an excavation of his own creativity and consciousness, and finds this process of discovery a powerful means for transferring and imparting experience and emotion onto his readers. This view of writing, is for me, one of the most profound and clear explanations for our chief task and most fundamental trade and concern as writers. To inspire, to discover, to affect – this is what it means to be a writer and an artist. This is what is means to produce!
You may be saying to me as you read this article, “Mario I already know all this! I know what you’re saying is true, but still I just can’t do it! No matter what I just can’t keep on writing day to day.” And so for these people let me address even more directly this common and shared obstacle when it comes to writing, the infamous “writers block.”
The first and only thing to remember is DO NOT JUDGE! As soon as you start judging whatever you are experiencing inside of yourself, whatever art is bursting forth from you (or trickling forth as the case may be), you are putting an unnatural and unnecessary block between yourself and your writing. The powerful discovery for the threads of meaning and truth beyond your feelings and thoughts becomes nearly impossible. When you judge, you become your greatest problem. Instead, simply allow whatever words and ideas, characters and stories that are rising up into your awareness to come forth out of you easily, fully, and freely. Don’t worry about it. It’s still a private affair between you and the blank page. No one else needs to know about it. Let it be a holy, sacred, liberating experience to write the truth within you with absolute abandon. Give yourself that permission. It is a gift to yourself as a writer, an artist, even a human being expressing on this earth. As soon as you stop judging, you will very likely find more inspiration heaped upon you, because you are stepping into more freedom, and freedom is very often a prerequisite to creativity. As a quick side-note this is exactly why in many dictatorships throughout history one of the first major actions they often take is to round up, imprison, and likely execute the artists. This is because art is freedom. So as you give yourself more of that freedom you will naturally find yourself becoming more creative and therefore more inspired. And when you are feeling more creative and inspired, then you can PRODUCE more freely and more fully! It’s a great big beautiful virtuous cycle all designed to help you as a writer. Doesn’t that sound great!!!! The Universe is conspiring, with or without you, always in your favor. Cultivating your inspiration, freedom, discipline, and contemplation are all ways you can support her as she undulates you into greater enlightenment.
After all is said and done, this second step in How To Write Every Day is, in my humble view, the most important as well as the simplest to do. You just have to do it! And when you do it, you’ll be able to look back over your work and at the very least be grateful that you have something to revise and to make into your own image of greatness whatever that may be. The journey is incredible and of course does have its challenges and pitfalls. But with a little discipline, a squeak of elbow grease, some help from our friends and fellow writers today and through the ages, as well as a sprinkling of inspiration, we can all accomplish whatever we yearn to write, to express, to create, and to share first with ourselves and then with the whole world over perhaps even for some amount of time immemorial.