novel_in_90: Can we talk about this "just get the words down" thing?

geo4real (

geo4real) wrote in

novel_in_90,
@ 2008-01-15 12:33:00

Current location:	getting in everyone's way by inserting this question
Current mood:	curious
Current music:	whirling thoughts

Can we talk about this "just get the words down" thing?
I've been thinking a lot about this whole idea of “writing a shitty first draft,” as the immortal Anne LaMotte put it. I don’t know how it is with anyone else, but for me, there are words on the page, and then there are words on the page - the ones that make you shiver while you’re writing them, and leave you shaky long after you stop. That’s what I think of as “real” writing. That’s where I want to get to every time I sit down. I don’t know how to make it happen at will (don’t we all wish we could!), but I DO know that it only happens at the first go, when I’m finding ‘something’ – ideas, feelings, images – for the first time and translating it into words on the blank page. It never, ever happens for me when I’m going back for a second or third time. Editing, tweaking, making changes; those are purely intellectually driven. The kind of writing I’m talking about comes from the gut, not the head.

So here’s the question: if you’re writing a “shitty first draft,” when, if ever, does the magic happen? Competence, yes. Polish, yes. But … magic?

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anahcrow
2008-01-15 05:51 pm UTC (link)

First, I don't like the idea that you sit down and write something bad. You write something, and if it's not all good, that's okay. There's going to be magic bits in it. If you wait until you're pooping rainbows and unicorns and writing immortal literature, you're going to be sat in Bedlam or the grave, take your pick.

To say there's no magic after the first draft is to me like saying there's no magic in painting or sculpting. The raw materials already exist in perfect form. Where's the magic? Bah.

Then again, I despise the kind of writing that makes me feel shaky and 'magical'. I usually need some tea and brandy and a good sitdown after that, and I've not got the time. Besides, I used to write like that and 10 years later, my writing doesn't look brilliant or shining. It looks like the early writing of a potentially good writer who really needed to learn how to edit.

For me, there is magic in doing something 'right'. That means crafting something elegant and graceful, and that so rarely comes on the first go. There is magic in editing. There is magic in the work.

I get excited when I sit down with my red pen and my manuscript because I am going to find things in there that I never dreamed of in a million years. I have written things I did not know I knew and I have not even written the whole of them, I have simply left myself clues on the page and when I find them -- oh, when I find them -- I go shooting downstairs to put on the tea, raving, "I'm a genius!" to the other denizens (often only a pair of mildly startled canines).

I am amazed at myself. I sit and stare and then I have to work up the nerve to clamber over the bar I've set for myself. I try and if I get it wrong, that's okay. I've simply left myself new clues because I don't know, I don't have the skill, to see all that my muse-mind sees, not on the first go.

The more I learn about the art of writing, the more excited I am about revising. The magic of the first draft is the pure joy of unraveling the secrets, of releasing the work in progress and putting it on paper. Once it's there, then I can really get at it.

It's a huge accomplishment because I have peeled off my skin and defeated the first round of demons. Then I take up my editing pen -- or my knife, as I sometimes call it -- and I carve off my flesh and my bones and my past and my ego, following the story through one draft after another, until I find its true self.

When it's all done, it's completely mine and yet completely its own. Sometimes I have to be forced to stop, to just leave it with all its little flaws and move on. But there's no doubt in my mind that there's magic to be found everywhere.

Edited at 2008-01-15 05:53 pm UTC

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	faithhopetricks 2008-01-15 06:43 pm UTC (link)
	Wow, what an awesome response. That was lovely. (Reply to this) (Parent)

renatus
2008-01-15 07:15 pm UTC (link)

I hadn't read the comments to this post until after I'd fired off mine, gotten distracted, and finally came back to check--and wow, I did echo you! :D I nodded my head all through reading this comment.

For me, there is magic in doing something 'right'. That means crafting something elegant and graceful, and that so rarely comes on the first go. There is magic in editing. There is magic in the work.

That's it, right there. And the revising. And the carving. Yes.

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	sharonskinner 2008-01-15 09:21 pm UTC (link)
	A brilliant and magical response! (Reply to this) (Parent)

Yes Magic

pbmaxca
2008-01-15 05:52 pm UTC (link)

Magic: The art that purports to control or forecast natural events, effects, or forces by invoking the supernatural.

From my own experiences I've had a few supernatural moments in writing. Especially when editing I get inspired magically as if someone else is telling me the words to put on the page...I'm not crazy, but there are phrases and concepts that come out of my head when I'm editing that weren't there the first time around that I've never heard before or used on my own and somehow later when I'm going back over my work I see amazing words on the page. The only explaination I can use is that it's magic.

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	anahcrow 2008-01-15 05:54 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, that! (Reply to this) (Parent)

unforth
2008-01-15 06:01 pm UTC (link)

I don't know about most of this, but I would point out that not every word, not every scene, can possibly be what you call "words on the page". If every scene was like that, the book would be too much for anyone to get through. I think sometimes we write a scene, and we know that it was powerful, and sometimes it's just a shitty first draft; I also think this varies from individual to individual (I know that I can add some of that "magic" through editing; drafts are when I get ideas down, and I refine them and make them awesome by editing, but it sounds like that's not a method that works for you).

So in short, I don't really know. :) I don't think there's a recipe.

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	andelku 2008-01-15 06:21 pm UTC (link)
	If you don't write anything then you can't have the magic anyway. I always read "shitty first draft" as permission, not prescription. You may write shitty. OTOH, you may not, at least on Tuesday. (Reply to this) (Thread)

faithhopetricks
2008-01-15 06:49 pm UTC (link)

//nods Yeah. It's like I need to give myself permission to not be Good -- even if then what I write is okay (it usually is. Frequently fragmented or incoherent or whatever, but not, you know, Bulwer-Lytton). I was reminded by your word choice of this essay by Jonathan Franzen's (I think) ex-wife, which I liked a lot.

I did envy his talent—the way he could go off in the morning and come home at night with five smart pages, the way he could expertly tease out a metaphor, nail a character in a sentence, and tackle geopolitics or brain chemistry without breaking a sweat. I envied the fact that in airports and restaurants, strangers—readers!—would come up to him and rave about his book; I envied his easy acceptance at magazines that had been routinely rejecting my work for years.
For all that, though, I was startled to realize that I didn't wish I'd written his book, any more than I would have wished to wake up tomorrow looking like the beauty from a magazine cover. What I envied were what his talent and success had bestowed on him, a sense of the rightness of what he was doing. I wanted what women always want: permission. But he'd had that before this book was even written; it was, after all, the first thing I'd envied about him. It was arguably what enabled him to write the book in the first place.

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	jewell79 2008-01-15 07:25 pm UTC (link)
	I read and enjoyed that essay too! It was years ago, but I still remember it, and think about it, and chew on it. And that confidence/permission thing is very much under-emphasised, particularly for women, I think. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	faithhopetricks 2008-01-15 11:47 pm UTC (link)
	I keep going back and back to that essay -- it's so inspiring, and almost comforting, for some reason. And HELL YEAH, on the confidence/permission gig, unfortunately. (Reply to this) (Parent)

renatus
2008-01-15 06:36 pm UTC (link)

Nothing is all rainbows and fun all of the time. Not even sex.

There's this mystique surrounding creative activities or indeed anything that someone is passionate about. Modern Western culture puts across the belief that if the doing isn't magical we aren't doing it right (which ties into the belief that since it's supposed to be magical, that ought to be its own reward and how dare we expect compensation for it).

It just isn't so. Writing well is a skill. Developing skills takes work. It doesn't have to hurt and suck all of the time to get better, anymore than it has to hurt and suck all of the time to become physically fit (for instance), but it's going to be hard. It's going to be uncomfortable as one pushes one's boundries. It's going to take a lot of boring, menial, day to day stuff interspersed with occassional moments of "Whoa. Did I just write that?!" Those moments aren't all there is to 'real' writing, any more than the brief moments where running or dancing or lifting that big heavy weight is as easy as breathing are all there is to 'real' exercise. The runner's high is nice, but if you lurch off the sofa and start running around the block expecting it, you're going to be really disappointed.

Learn to appreciate the other parts of the process. Open them up and look at them and see what's actually happening when it isn't all sparkles and faeries. All of that stuff is actually pretty interesting, even if it isn't put onto a pedastal like those 'whoa' moments are. Think of it like sculpting stone, where it is not only usual but neccessary to chisel out a rough shape before you hone the rock to fine detail.

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	faithhopetricks 2008-01-15 06:43 pm UTC (link)
	This is a great reply -- thank you for writing it! //prints out, tacks to wall (Reply to this) (Parent)

anahcrow
2008-01-15 06:52 pm UTC (link)

This is a very coherent echo of my own thoughts. :) I think I might bookmark this whole entry.

Shortly after I started writing full time, someone came home and shouted up to ask me how my day was. I ripped the office door open and shouted back, "How come no one told me this was bloody WORK?!"

Ah, I laugh now. I laugh at myself a lot, because I still think that some days. It really is work. I tell people it's a horrible, horrible job and they should only do it if they can't stop themselves.

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	pbmaxca 2008-01-15 06:59 pm UTC (link)
	I think it's those magic moments that push me to get down and work at a story. I almost feel like if I work at it long enough and get to a certain point in the story that I'll be "blessed" with a moment of magic. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	wldhrsjen3 2008-01-15 08:33 pm UTC (link)
	Well said. And a good reminder...Thanks. (Reply to this) (Parent)

sleary
2008-01-15 09:37 pm UTC (link)

When does it happen? It just does... usually on the days when I've sat down thinking, "Well, no inspiration today, guess I'll go with something shitty." The thing is, the magic strikes more often if you, you know, show up. And even if it doesn't, you have 750 perfectly serviceable words that can be shaped into something better later.

I used to wait around for inspiration to strike. I got some lovely scenes that way. But it took me three or four years to build up the kind of word count I accomplished during the first round of Novel in 90. And you know what? Even I can't tell the difference anymore between the channeled-from-the-muse passages and the ones that started out shitty -- except that the muse-channeled passages often required more editing afterward, because I was going too fast to bother with the kinds of things that ground the reader in the scene -- description, dialogue tags -- since it existed so perfectly in my head.

Giving yourself permission to write a shitty draft is not saying, "I will write a shitty novel." It's saying you're going to sit down and make some progress, even if the muse has gone out for a smoke, and that once you're done you'll be able to go back and fix it. Because you've shown up and put work into it every day, you've been building your skills all along and you'll be in a better position to fix it than you were when you started.

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meandmyradio
2008-01-15 09:50 pm UTC (link)

i forgot which book i read this in, but one writer tracked the days when he felt really good about his writing and tracked the days when he was just writing to get some words on the paper, when he felt shitty about everything he was writing down. what he discovered was that, when he went back and read the complete first draft later, he couldn't remember which sections were the "magical" ones where he felt inspired and which were the "shitty first draft" ones where he was working through writers' block. sure, there were some subtle differences and paragraphs that stood out as either spectacular or as spectacularly bad, but for the most part, the quality was about the same whether the writing had come easily or not. the difference between "magical" and "shitty first draft" was in his head, not on paper. it depended more on his mood that day than it did on how the writing was actually going.

i've tried the same experiment with my own writing and noticed the same thing. since then, i've definitely worried less about writing something inspired and more about just writing something.

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writerknv
2008-01-15 10:04 pm UTC (link)

I don't think magic happens in the editing phase, but I look at editing and revision as totally different processes. I am a firm believer in getting the story down, however it comes out, even if it's "shitty", then letting the writing settle before coming back to the book for a "re-vision."

With my first book, I thought it was wonderful when it was finished. Then, when I came back to it months later, I decided it was all shit, even the writing that I had thought magical at first. I ended up cutting 50,000 words from that novel and doing major re-writes, and only now am I happy with it. Sure, I could pick at it and edit forever, but the major work of story and character is done.

In essence, I discovered that a lot more of my magic happened with those rewrites, the serious rethinking of the story that I had already written, rather than the words I set down the first time. So this time around, I'm not as worried about getting everything exactly right; I'm laying the foundation for the next draft so I can get it right the second or third time instead.

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martyn44
2008-01-15 10:05 pm UTC (link)

It is amazing when the automatic writing happens, isn't it. If we all wrote like that all the time we'd die very young with inane grins on our faces.

Every word you write is practising your craft, helping you to translate your art from inside your brain to the inside of your reader's. Yeah, its tough sometimes. Sometimes it will have you bouncing your head off the wall because failure is so frustrating, but you can't succeed unless you give yourself permission to fall short of that platonic ideal we all have inside our heads whenever we sit down to write word one.

The magic will come when it wants to come. We don't control it. What we do is make ourselves as ready as we possibly can be to serve it when it does make an appearance.

No first draft comes anywhere near what we have in our heads for all manner of reasons, which are different for each of us. We all adopt different tactics as we learn how to make the first draft more closely resemble our dream. The inescapable fact is that none of us will ever get any nearer that perfection unless we finish the first draft.

The dream is the art. The draft is the craft. You don't get the one without the other, and geniuses just practise harder.

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tatterpunk
2008-01-15 11:45 pm UTC (link)

A lot of this post resonates with me. I'm a firm believer in rewriting until your hands curl up from RSS, but I also get those magic moments -- alas, only when writing a first draft.

But I do find the more I just writewritewrite, the oftener those moments occur. It's... it's as if my brain (or subconscious, what have you) were an enchanted forest. The more familiar I become with how to navigate the bracken underfoot, the more experience I have with cutting away dead weight and even dealing the with occasional dragon, the quicker I find myself in those groves where the leaves aren't as thick overhead, the sunshine is bright and warm and yes, there's magic.

As for the rest -- doomed to un-magicness? Sometimes. I think I have to content myself with the fact that, at this point in my life and possibly forever, my drafts are not 100% transportive. But as long as hefty chunks of it are, and the rest polished and perfected to the best of my ability, I'm satisfied. More or less. Until the next story.

And then there's the fact that I personally sometimes have to write a shitty scene in order to figure out how to write it in the first place. This frustrates me to no end. But the truth of it is sometimes I will actually finish a scene before I get a flash of inspiration and think, "ooooh, that's how it should go." This isn't rewriting, technically, because I bin the entire first attempt and start fresh. And I hate it. But it's undeniably more magical.

I guess my point is that the shitty drafts will get you to more magical ones -- eventually. It's like muscle memory. When learning a new way to move your body you will inevitably get it wrong, more often than not, because as much as you are intellectually aware of what you want your body just isn't used to producing it. That doesn't mean you should stop. The only way to get better is to keep aiming for that clean, smooth movement which seems so impossible when you can barely keep your balance. Keep asking for it, and eventually your body will recognize where you're going and even start to make the connections you haven't asked for more than subconsciously. I think the imagination and creative drive work much the same way.

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kelljones
2008-01-16 04:46 am UTC (link)

My experience is very similar to many of those listed here -- that I need to give myself permission to write something imperfect before I'm willing to commit to putting my words on the page, that I find the ability to rewrite reassuring yet difficult, and that sometimes the flow of words is fast and smooth, and sometimes slow and frustrating, but that the words (once they're on the page) are not necessarily affected by the flow of how they got there.

But I'm wondering if there's another component to all of this that we haven't really addressed yet? (Original poster: not sure if this is part of what you're asking or not, but it seems like part of the broad question to me.) That is to say -- when do you write your story? When it's magic/solid/mostly formed somewhere in your brain? Or do you find yourself creating/finding it as you write?

For me, I have to get story bones solid in my mind first (I don't mean a solid plot, but some pieces to hang things off of -- could be an image, character, idea, even language). But then the rest doesn't come (or hasn't yet!) until I start writing. So, I have a process of writing the bones first and then flailing around, teasing and layering bits of cloth and flesh over them, sometimes ripping them off again in favor of something else.

But other people are different. If I waited until I had an entire story in my mind and could just write it all down, a.) I'd be long dead and b.) I'd have forgotten the important bits. But I hear others do their collecting and thinking first and can't write until they know what they're writing about.

What do y'all think? Is this even part of the same question? I realize this isn't an "I know the perfect words" part, but rather an "I know how this scene goes" aspect.

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	o_yannik 2008-01-16 07:00 am UTC (link)
	So many brilliant responses. I would want to appreciate each and every one of you as you just reminded me why I'm struggling so hard, why I want to struggle. But right now I'm choked and as usual have little time and 750 to write today, so just a big general THANK YOU! (Reply to this)

chant_1
2008-01-17 02:25 am UTC (link)

I know someone said this earlier, but I think if you're waiting for "inspiration" and "magic", not a whole lot of actual writing is going on. For a while, I felt the way you did; that if I wasn't inspired and it wasn't coming easily, then it wasn't happening at all. Period. But then you join a group like this, and sit down every day to get your words down. And guess what? As you work out your writing muscle, it gets easier. Sure, it's not always magic. There are times you write something and you're thinking AS YOU'RE WRITING that "this will probably not make the final draft"...but every word is important, is another bread crumb in the forest leading you to your finished novel. But sometimes, there is magic. Something you write just feels perfect, or resonates with you, or gives you an insight to a character, or your story, that you hadn't even been thinking of. But guess what? Sometimes the magic gets cut in later drafts, too!

What's REALLY magic(al) is all of these wonderful responses, and all the support and insight of these fellow writers. You guys ROCK.

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geo4real
2008-01-17 02:14 pm UTC (link)

Wow. What an amazing community. Smart. Experienced. Passionate. Ask a broadly framed and vaguely expressed question, and you get the most amazing outpouring of answers that take you to new places altogether!

Thanks to everyone who took the trouble to respond. Initially I had planned to reply to everyone individually, but right now I just can't - burned out from working (yes, it IS hard work) and inspired by everyone's ideas and observations, I'm dead tired - but in a good way.

I hope someone else poses a question or a discussion topic. I'm looking forward to seeing the replies!

As a final comment, I stole this off my daughter’s Facebook page:

Calvin : You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.

Hobbes : What mood is that?

Calvin : Last-minute panic.

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