Writing Easy: Something Ought to Be Eased
Great Adventures in the Inner Life of a Writer
Writing isn’t easy, but it can ease.
Many a talented artist struggles with what to paint, there are singers for whom song choice is always an inner fight, and many a subtle author has been at a loss for what to write.
It’s hard when you are producing a lot of small pieces. Also, it’s hard when you are trying to pick a subject for one big project. In the first case it’s idea fatigue, in the second there’s a lot to lose if you get it wrong. You could write about anything.
How do you choose?
Arguably, writing ought to ease a pressure in the writer, there ought to be a compulsion to get a story or an idea out. Art is often partly about breaking out.
Writing something because it seems like it would sell might not be a bad idea, on the face of it, but you still have to do the writing and all the conceptual upward rock rolling and without some natural pressure, it’s going to be hard going.
By Natural Pressure I mean you’re fascinated by some things over others.
Some things haunt mysteriously, some haunt for obvious reasons, and some hurt secretly once but reach a public season.
The Subject Haunts You. You’re just into Civil War battlefields. Even with straight nonfiction, it’s possible you’ll need to undike the dam in order to write, that is, find out about why you find them so compelling. If you are writing creative nonfiction, that is, if you are in the story, you have no choice but to figure out why you are so interested, that becomes the whole gig.
If your book is a straight history of the battlefields, maybe your next book is why you personally care so much. Maybe your dad was in the military and you worried about him—maybe it was a class trip to Gettysburg just when you were most afraid, and you’re heart got stuck there, in those grassy, father-haunted fields. In creative nonfiction you bring us on that journey.
Something Interesting Happened to You (Even a Glancing Connection). Having a connection to a story can make you hungry to get your story out there, to get it written and published. Here you’re haunted by the subject but you know why: the famous person was family, or you were friends with him; or you sang some backup pop; or you took the new medicine; or you once won the world cup.
Tell us your insider info — fun for you, fun for us.
Something Bad Happened To You and You Want to Talk About It. The going wisdom is that you shouldn’t write about trauma until you are mostly over the crying, but others say, don’t publish until then, but write your heart out. Readers want to know what happened (and that you are okay now).
We’ll always need yet another story on X if it’s good. Of course, if it’s good, you’re going to find out new things in the writing. I don’t know you, but I can say it without a scintilla of doubt. Your old story has become a box you live in. Art breaks out.
If you don’t know what to write, feel around your guts and life for one of those. Even if you still feel a little closed, like you barely care, start there.
We want revelation, new information, or to watch someone have to change.
That doesn’t mean you have to tell all your secrets, but you might have to tell some of them. How did these secrets get over your head in the first place? You’re a tree planted in a greenhouse, you’re going to bust through the ceiling eventually. You didn’t ask to be born in that weird hot house, it just happened to you. So you’ll crash.
It will be a slow motion crash, with a few dramatic moments. You’ll live. It’s pressure. It’s a start. Art is part of breaking out.
You’re not always repeating to make the material better, you’re at times mostly wearing down the patina of fear you’re still wearing.
Stand up comedians say they run around town doing gigs because that’s the only way to get better. Three years of constant gigs and she might be a star. The aspiring comedian is funny from the start, but not main stage ready. I think it might help if people knew the same thing about writers. People should know it takes a lot of repetition.
The aspiring writer is likely a stand out storyteller to begin with, but still needs polish and that only comes from the assault and battery we call experience. I guess the lesson is write a lot and publish or try to and don’t stop. The pressure of the terror tightens things up.
If you’re a writer not writing, you may have a case of ambivalence.
If you want you can remember that soon enough we’ll all be dead, then yell damn the torpedos and full speed ahead. What to write? That thing that is pressing on your head. How to write it? All the ways. Pressure is your meaning scout. Art breaks out and out. Go get it.
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Okay my absently present and presently absent friends. Like so many of us I’ve always been invisible, armed with some kind of bright light should anyone accidentally catch sight of me, and yet I want to be known. You’re not alone. Stay with us and I shall return to encourage us again.
love,
Jennifer
Are you going to offer this artworks for sale? I really like this overflowing one.