Writing: just do it

[vaneramos]

Toronto City Hall, January 17

This is the second Toronto landmark I photographed for stephe. I was amused to recall, while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on danthered's DVD set, that one episode used an image of this building to suggest an alien cityscape.

~~~~~~~~~~

Trying to overcome the tendency to procrastinate lately, I have been thinking about the advice, "Just do it!" With some things it doesn't work. If I have a long to-do list of bad-tasting tasks, the only incentive to doing the first one is so that the second one can pop up like a monster mask.

I saw the social worker today. Oddly enough, we spent a good chunk of the ninety minutes talking about how I would research and write a magazine article. If I were to write something, say, about the ex-gay movement, the least palatable step would be interviewing someone from within the movement itself. And yet it would be necessary. You can't write an objective article about a controversial topic without bringing in opposing points of view. While preparing to write my novel, Pilgrim's Cross, I read the story of a journalist who had registered for an ex-gay retreat weekend in order to write her essay. She attended, met people much like herself, told them as honestly as she could what she was doing, recorded some of their stories and her experiences.

I could tell my story in the first person: what happened to me. But if you set out to criticize something or someone, editors expect you to let the organization or individuals under scrutiny also speak for themselves. Lining up a willing interviewee will be one of the challenges of this particular project.

Sometimes "Just do it!" works when it comes time to write. I use that tactic every day to sit down at my desk and fill my morning pages.

When I started the new format for my LiveJournal in September I looked forward to it for the first week or so, but then it became tough. Some days I feel I have nothing to say. The only way to be a writer is to keep doing it no matter how you feel. These five or six hundred words a day have become part of my routine, the string that links my mornings and nights together, creating an endless chain of weeks flowing into months. Once in a while I get a gem, but most of it is just thread.

A writer mustn't think too hard about what he's doing. You have to avoid scrutinizing the process to closely, at least while you're doing it. Editing comes later.

It's like trying to get the blurry effect of the Christmas lights by putting your eyes out of focus. I used to do that as a little boy. Lie underneath with Grey Shadow, the outdoor longhair who just loved Christmas trees. We would curl together and gaze up through the artificial needles, gold lights and balls, letting it all go fuzzy.

Sometimes writing takes the same thing: concentrating on not concentrating. You send your mind out to the kitchen to make a carafe of coffee so your fingers can get on with the work of squeezing life out of a fountain pen. Sometimes when you go at it from this angle, it sheers the lock off the shed door, everything spills open, and magical phrases start tumbling across the lawn. The trick is, you don't go looking for magic or it ends up sounding contrived. You might open the shed and find it empty except for a few broken pots and a rusted rake. So you turn and poke around, overturning rocks. Every day you look in different places, never certain when inspiration will arise.

Writing a novel is like digging in the same back corner of the garden for three months, certain something meaningful will finally grow from the mud.

Comments

[stephe.livejournal.com]

Very nice photo. When I visited Toronto as a kid, I was just young enough that the wide-open spaces of the plaza backed by those distinctive buildings were both exhilarating and slightly frightening.

[tbone1961.livejournal.com]

Like you and I have discussed briefly...

Many times the writing happens in its own time and space and can't necessarily be foreced.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

You can't force inspiration, but you have to make room for it by continuing to write even when it feels uninspired. Successful writers assign themselves a certain amount of writing every day. I think of it as an engine. You don't force it, but you have to keep it well greased.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It looks much different with the fountain operating, too. This time of year that area is converted to a large skating rink. I saw a figure skating show there several years ago; it might have been on New Year's Even, I'm not sure. I'll try to remember to go back for some photos in the summer. I'm afraid this photo doesn't capture the essence of the space: it is slightly ominous and breathtaking even to me, an adult. Monday afternoon was frigid and I wasn't sure when the next bus would running, so the photos were taken in considerable haste.

[artricia.livejournal.com]

Those last 3 paragraphs are gems. Reminds me of Annie Dillard in her best moments.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Well you know I admire Annie more than just about any writer, don't you?

[artricia.livejournal.com]

I thought I remembered that.

Sometimes I think she's a little too intense. But in her more relaxed moments, I really like what she has to say. Mostly I'm talking about The Writing Life here.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is one of my favourite books. Yeah, she is intense. And now I disagree with her theology, although I didn't between 1995 and 1999, when it helped me through a painful transition and believing that life was worthwhile. It doesn't prevent me from still loving her mystical approach to things, her writing style. I saw her give a reading from For the Time Being and met her briefly at the book signing (1999 I think). She has this amazing presence in person, which is wonderfully different from, and enriching to, her writing personality. She is charming and funny, a "bubbly blonde" with brains.

[artricia.livejournal.com]

Her mystical apporach is cool. I haven't read Pilgrim yet,; it's terribly famous, and I've heard really polarized things about it -- people seem to love it or loathe it.

It's cool to hear aobut what she's like in person. It's hard to imagine her as bubbly, though I suppose that's not all that far from energetic or intense.