Category: Writing

Wasting Paper

Perhaps because writing’s such an isolated profession sometimes, it can be a little too easy to convince yourself that you’re just, so to speak, wasting paper. You read something over too many times and it becomes a little hard to process it properly in your own mind. If you’re particularly incautious, you start changing things – nothing much, a word here, a word there, perhaps a comma or two – and before you know it you’re in real trouble. Each change makes it harder and harder to process and, it turns out, to your now jaundiced eye, to have messed it up completely.

From here to “writer’s block” is but a step.

But I’m here to share a secret with you. Are you ready? You probably already know it, but say it along with me anyway, boys and girls: There is no such thing as writer’s block.

Ah-haha, you might well say, says you – what about my friend so-and-so … We all probably know of someone who’s suffered agonies when the words just won’t flow, but this is good news for them too and is not to belittle their plight. As I say, writers, if left too much alone in their own company, can start spiralling in on themselves, can start overthinking every little thing, can— well you get the picture. Or maybe with you it’s something different. I can’t necessarily tell you how to beat your own variant, but I can tell you one or two things that have worked for me in the past, in the hopes that perhaps by illustrating it, it will help you see a way past it when the wee beastie sneaks up on you the next time.

If I can’t think what to write about, I literally like to start wasting paper. Well, not entirely literally (ah, poor abused word), but I will get a writing-block (sorry, writing pad), and a fountain pen, for preference, and start writing “scratch” notes – just putting down whatever comes to mind or whatever seems to interest me at the time. If nothing else this might get the words flowing again. If I’m in luck, it might help me come up with a whole bunch of ideas for future as well as present use. Writing’s (sometimes) like a box of chocolates, you never know quite what you’re gonna get …

Another way is to put some headphones on and put a movie on in the background, and maybe some music too for good measure. This may seem like overkill, but when anything that might look like that malevolent leprechaun-impersonator writer’s block starts sticking its ugly head over the parapet, I say ‘no mercy, and pass the napalm’. In the light of the flaming ground afterward (which can look quite pretty if your imagination’s in the right place – or quite grisly if it isn’t) you might see the solution to your problems. It’s luck of the draw sometimes – although, looking at the fate of the poor leprechaun, probably not luck of the Irish … Anyhow, if it gets you to rainbow’s end, who’s to complain – leprechauns are good at dodging, and writer’s block is like a cockroach anyway – it’ll survive a nuclear detonation and be scuttling out of its hole just as you stagger out of the fallout shelter. So be of good cheer, and get writing …

Flights of Fancy

Nothing is more fatal to good writing than the temptation to let others tell you what or how to write, against your own best instincts. Writers are only human, and we can all only do our honest best — and we write best when we are most freely ourselves.

An idea that evolves on the page and takes on a life of its own, is more powerful because it comes from within us, and expresses something fundamental about being human.

That’s not to say our every utterance should be inscribed in letters of gold on blocks of polished marble for the benefit of future generations — merely that we write best when we write from the heart.

We may, sometimes, get a little bit carried away (with ourselves, or otherwise), and have to edit out a lot of surplus material. But if we didn’t write it in the first place without trying to second-guess our every thought, we’d never write anything.

And sometimes we just have to take the rough with the smooth – because, sometimes, we have to go through the rough to get to the smooth. Or else the “rough” has a character that’s all its own.

The whole business of writing, as with life itself sometimes, is often about doing our honest best at the time we do it.

It’s about having the confidence to be ourselves. You don’t look to others first for their approval, or for fear of what they might say. Life is too short –so you might as well be yourself.

It is in our flights of fancy, when we let our imaginations flow, our fingertips dancing across the keys, that we as writers are often at our most truly human.

It is when we choose to be ourselves, in everything we do, that we develop who we are: as writers and as people. That’s when we are at our most fully alive, and when we can truly call ourselves human beings.

Let the flights of fancy, flow: and whither they goest, we too shall go …

Dances with Destiny

A little kindness goes a long way. All the way to the heart, sometimes. And, as so often, it’s the little things that make a big difference in our lives.

It may be the little things that build up incrementally, or that happen on a regular basis — a text, a hug, a kind word. Or it may be the isolated little incidents and events, too small to notice at the time, and maybe even afterwards, that change the direction we go in at a crucial time in our lives.

So, little things can make a big difference. Not just when they happen to us, but in how the way we act affects the lives of the people around us. A small kindness at the right moment can change the course of our entire lives, and be the turning point in our existence.

Life is full of such turning points, little crossroads that, cumulatively, amount to a whole heap of difference. They may not mean much in themselves, but in their effect, they live on long afterwards.

That’s why you never give up, no matter how hard or hopeless things can seem at times. Because the future is not written in the stars, or in stone for that matter. It is within ourselves — we get to choose the directions and journeys that we go in and on.

We may not have a very good idea of where we’re going at the time, but we know it’ll be worth it when we get there.

Life, in short, is full of surprises, and nobody ever lost money by refusing to second-guess them.

Similarly, in writing: we may not know how it’ll turn out at the time, but we sit down and write, and suspend our disbelief for a while, and, lo and behold, we surprise our readers (and our doubters) — as well as ourselves.

Our lives, like all the best stories at the time they were written, are yet to be written. We can go dancing with destiny any time we choose. We just have to learn the steps, move in time with the waltz, and never fore-limit our own future: because we’re the ones who are writing it — one step at a time, one dance at a time, one day at a time.

You can dance, or not – it’s entirely up to you. But if you don’t dance, how will you ever know what you’re missing?

Destiny’s smiling at you – you wouldn’t want to disappoint her, now …

Writers’ Rites

Writing is a discipline as much as a skill: There’s the discipline of sitting down and writing each day, whether you feel like it or not. There’s the discipline of editing yourself, and not putting up with any nonsense. There’s the discipline of keeping on writing, even when some inner voice is telling you it’s terrible and should never see the light of day.

Sometimes that inner voice is right; and you should learn to listen to it — judiciously, and at the appropriate time (i.e., after the piece is finished).

So, yes, writing is a discipline. But again, it is also a skill. One you learn through practice and experience – and reams and reams of patience. Not to mention, it’s also an exercise in humility.

Anyone who’s going to write well needs to learn humility from the get-go (some of us are still learning). But humility doesn’t mean false modesty, it means a keen observation of reality, avoiding both the tendency to puff your own ego and the tendency to beat yourself up for perceived “failings” and “flaws” (many of which often turn out to be imaginary, or just a sign that you haven’t been sleeping lately).

It means being realistic about your faults, and working to correct them in practice. But part of that means you don’t stop publishing meanwhile. Sometimes “good enough” has to be, well, good enough (for now).

You give it your honest best, you iron out any typos or errors you’ve made along the way — maybe even cut out a paragraph or two that you may have rather liked, but which really had no place in the piece as written — and then you publish it: you send it out into the world, and start work on the next one. Or have a rest for a moment, and sit back with a cup of tea, put your feet up, and relax …

… until the next piece comes along as an idea insistently poking at the inside of your head and demanding to be written.

It’s a dog’s life being a writer …