Creating Off Course
It’s important to keep writing through some difficulty. While it is no sin to start many writing projects never to finish them, if you want to get anywhere in regards to a work that others can enjoy and possibly pay for, you obviously have to finish. And finishing means, as I said, a good amount of pushing through when it is not exciting.
To be blunt, writing, even if you love it, can be a pain in the ass. But a pain in the ass a writer must be willing to face, I dare say, more often than flee.
Add to this my personal preference to not abandon something once I have started, and you get someone who avoids project hopping as though it were a stinging insect buzzing around his thoughts.
I was well into adulthood before I even allowed myself to DNF a crappy book I was reading.
All that praise for consistently and preference aside, there comes a time when we creatives have to be flexible.
I don’t mean to be willing to take a plot in an unexpected direction, or compose a song that is more upbeat than one initially intended. This is flexibility within a project, and it is crucial to creativity of all kinds. The flexibility I am referring to here is a flexibility of one’s plans–one’s overall focus.
This is where finishing what I start comes in.
I have only ever “iced” two novels in my life. Both times it was only after much deep consideration as to whether they were going anywhere, and whether I was in the head space to complete them. I stand by my choices to back away from those projects, one of which I had spent years working on. Yet the choice bugs me to this day in the back of my mind because, again, if I say I am going to do something, I do everything I can to do it.
Every now and then, though, it is either clear that something is not working and will never work, such as the two shelved novels I have mentioned. But on occasion, a new idea begins to eclipse your current idea for a project, and you cannot ignore it.
Well, I don’t think one should ignore it, when it speaks loudly and regularly every day to a creative.
That is what is happening to me for the moment. And while I cannot fully express the nature of the idea/project that seems to be eclipsing some of my plans for the next year or so, I can say that to pursue it with the vigor it deserves would (probably) mean putting some of my other writing plans on hold. (In this case, not a full cancellation though.)
This is a bit of a tight rope for someone like me. If I am not careful, I could be as I was during my childhood and teen years, which is running this way and that starting many things that pooped into my head finishing none of them. Now I’ll repeat what I said at the start of this post; if you are a writer who gets joy from writing the beginning of something and never ending it, than this is better than not writing at all. Goals vary. Speaking for myself however, I know that if I am to ever present a fully formed project to the world for its enjoyment, I have to err on the side of stubborn and finish what I begin.
That is why, as with the iced novels I mentioned above, I maintain even now some degree of regret for starting something I could not finish.
However, to be a creative is not only hard work and no play. If we are not open to the playing our imaginations are attempting to conduct with us, we lose a large portion of what it is to be creative in the first place. Work and plans are eventually required for most of us, but if we rely too heavily on them, adhere with a rigid tenacity to a previously announced plan at the expense of all other things, we kill the spontaneity that drives art. I do believe we can lose that within us if we entirely ignore it for too long.
You will again have to forgive me for my lack of specificity at this time. I am only just pulling the eclipsing idea together myself. No doubt it is a little frustrating, a little off putting, especially for an Autistic dude who likes to live on plans. Yet if this new potential project accomplishes what I hope to accomplish for the people I hope to reach, it will be worth a delay of some of my other things.
Indeed, it may not even require a delay at all. I will not know that for a while yet. Yet to paraphrase Hamlet, “the willingness is all.” And I am willing this year to be taken somewhere else in my writing than I set out for at the start.
I hope if you are an artist of some kind, you too are willing to be taken off course for a while, if a siren song calls to you. Unlike that Greek myth though, it need not end in tragedy on the rocks.
Best Advice to Build Better Writing
Above all other advice I have about improving one’s writing, I embrace a triumvirate of tips far above all others. Two are talked about often in writing and editing circles.
The first being to read. Read especially within the genre you wish to write in, but any reading on a regular basis is helpful. You need not study per se to improve your writing tendencies and instincts as you read. The mere status of reading regularly will through a sort of literary osmosis improve the quality of your own work.
Which brings up the second obvious requirement; to improve as a writer, you just write.
Not as obvious as it sounds.
Though I used to have patience with people who said, “I wish I could write, I could never do what you are doing, I have no time/energy/intelligence for it,” I find myself bristling more at this notion.
You have to write in order to be a writer. There is no choice and there is no excuse. The direct literal act of writing on a regular basis, if only for one’s self will oil machinery within your imagination and your brain that is not only useful but absolutely vital to your success. (Having nothing to do with sales or marketing.) If you have even the slightest respect for the work and creativity of writing anything you will either cease this pointless lament, or redouble your efforts to write something on a regular basis so as to improve. Practice may not make perfect, but doing nothing will make working writers annoyed with you.
My third piece of highest tier advice as not unique to me. Nevertheless it often gets caught up and lost in the shuffle and noise of methods and how-tos, personalities and plans and so many other aspects of the popular (and for some profitable) world of writing about writing.
It is this: You must be willing to be better.
That’s a silly thing to advise. If I didn’t want to get better, I would not even be asking the question.
But consider the statement again. You must be willing to be better, not merely get better.
That is to say, in short, if you are not willing to admit to yourself and the world at large that you both want and need to evolve as a writer, no other advice will matter in the end. You can craft and methods yourself into oblivion trying to make better writing, to catch up to the expectation of “good,” but you will never chance your powers as a wordsmith unless you can openly say, every day, “I can always be better.”
Now there is a dark side to this all important truth that you must avoid. This cannot be a self-flagellation technique. The road from this important wisdom to, “nothing I ever write is any good,” It is a short and steep one. Do not fall down it.
For to accept there is always something more to learn after each project or attempt is not to dismiss your current or even your past work. How insufferable the artist that proclaims a distaste for their own work because it falls short of the angels or some other delusion of grandeur. Believe in your work, and believe in your right to produce it. Just always be willing to ask the question, “how can I make the next thing better still?”
Once again, it is such an obvious-sounding approach it’s easy to overlook how many people actually reject it. They want to improve their marketing, their sales, get better at copying the masters or raise an eyebrow at their local NPR station. All of that may be wonderful ego fodder, and not bad in its own right. But it is not striving to improve. It is striving to be seen.
Hell, I want my work to be seen more than it is. If you’re a writer you probably do as well. Recognition is a fair, understandable desire for a writer. But if you stop evolving before you can say, “I am better doing this now than I was a few years ago,” what is being recognized?
I continue not to know where my career and status as a writer is supposed to be going longterm. Yet I am willing to be better along the way. At least, that is what I am trying to do.
Writing Advice From the Trenches
Much of what I post here is for writers or those curious about writing. No secrets there. But it comes with this caveat; I am a foot soldier in the trenches of the writing landscape.
Is this a war? In some ways, but it’s not the ideal metaphor. I use it in the sense that writing is not only a fight or a struggle of sorts, but one that by. many metrics I am neither winning no losing per se. I am just an unknown doing his very best to get over an increasingly muddy, challenging hill. Firing at me constantly are lack of connections, notoriety, resources, fame and so on. You know, many of the things people expect from a writer in order to care in the slightest about their advice.
I am no general in this fight. I am not even an officer for that matter. A volunteer, yes, but one that offers the only perspective he has for you for the time being–that of someone plugging along with many many others en masse as we hope to obtain the same goal of increased readership and recognition. And because we are not officers, we can only dig, climb, shoot, duck, repeat.
We blog. We post to writing websites. We publish and market out own work as best we can. We steel ourselves against the potent discouragement of not getting where we want to be while continuing to insist on attaching our names to quality, memorable work. Work that perhaps one day will transcend the life in time in which we toil for appreciation and recognition of any consistency.
Oh, my advice and thoughts on the craft will parallel much of what the “generals” would say. The influencers and the viral sensations sometimes attain their rank through such endeavors and knowledge. Yet while some may have forgotten, (or never knew) the essence of subjecting themselves to the proverbial barrage of ignored or forgotten writing, or at best small-to-modest readership, I live that life every day. Year after year in most cases I gain not miles, not even feet, but inches over challenging terrain. Inch by exhausting, discouraging inch.
My advice and offerings spring from that experience. And if you too feel like you are still fighting in the lowest, hottest, dirtiest parts of the writing battlefield, not wanting to give up everything and still hungry for how to improve your craft if not your lot, what I say and consider here may be for you.
I can offer you honesty even if I cannot offer you glamor. Mind to word, word to page, page to book, I have opinions and warnings to share.
Are you also enlisted personnel fighting for every inch?
Tell Me About Yourself…If You Must
If you’re a writer, you are lightyears ahead of the game if you love to talk to strangers, especially if you love talking about yourself. The great irony of a words-based calling is that the need to construct sentences and words in an efficient, evocative, memorable manner does not stop even with the completion of your final draft. In many ways it has only begun.
Which is why, I say again, if you are both an author, and someone who counts yourself as among your favorite topics of conversation, along with your work, you are way out on front.
You are twice as far out front of the likes of me; I don’t tend to talk about myself fro an extended period of time unless asked. And I am usually not asked.
It is not at all hyperbole to say I never initiate talk of myself or my work. It does not happen. And if this is under “never,” approaching a stranger to do so would fall under the highly scientific category of “never-ever.”
You might be under the impression I never market my work. That’s not true, as you can find me talking about projects and products here on the website, and on my increasingly unused TikTok account. I play up my accomplishments as best as I can given the nature of both my personality and my brain. (I have written about this previously in my Autistic Writer Series from last year if you’d like to check that out.) But when it comes to soft sells, and conversing and “getting out there,” for the most part I don’t because in one part I can’t.
I was not cursed/blessed with the Autistic trait f not knowing when someone is listening. If anything, when people are not listening to me, truly not processing and seeking to learn from what I’m sharing, I tend to know it. Sense it. And talking in most cases to people I barely/do not know is enough of an energy suck. When the other party is clearly not interested in what I’m saying it goes well beyond an energy drain—it’s becomes mentally crippling.
You can perhaps imagine why then I don’t engage in such conversation, talk, chatter, whatever, when the risk of enduring the “I’m only pretending to care,” aura from the other person is so high.
And it is high.
I like to hope that in at least half the cases nobody pays much attention to anything or anyone anymore—that we are all adrift in the flood waters of polite-but-empty attention somehow simultaneously with a drought of interest in other people and their story. That in the social media influencer society of smart phone ubiquity and Brand Name Noise, the sort of imagination and wonder, interest and intrigue I hope to inspire with my craft is dying up more and more each day.
Yes. I tell myself that, not willing to consider the alternate in full—that I’m a bore that produces boring things nobody cares about.
In either sad case, the reflex within me to say less and less about what I do and create multiplies almost with every thing I make available. This is turn feeds the Oblivion Monster, swallowing what chances I have to catch the eye/ear of those most likely to enjoy my work.
Because I also want to avoid vacuous blather when I speak. I have to listen to and watch and read enough of it today, the last thing I want to do is contribute to that mind-anesthetizing glut. I want what I say even about my own work to have substance. So I opt to say even less.
All this by way of saying that there are times we as creatives, and consumers or creativity have to make the choice to be interested. Interest and attention will not always grab us and shake us anymore. There is too much out there competing for our five seconds in the Starbucks line. We need to seek out and engage with people with sincerity. We may not buy their exact product, but we should want to know why they made it.
Nobody owes me or you anything, but in a society of AI and junk-streaming-services of the month, I’d like to see all of us actively choose to embrace and discover, not merely stumble upon independent creative endeavors. With this mindset, you might just find more that speaks to you.
And it would make it a hell of a lot easier for me to speak to you about what I’m creating.
Mechanical Writing.
I do not mean tech writing here.
A lot of mechanics goes into good writing, writing that works well on the brain, writing that seems to have written itself.
Grammar. Syntax. Word count. Sentence length. Oxford comma’s and participles that do not do not dangle.
Significant concepts all.
Be that as it may, if i were given ten minutes only to advise any writer, especially those only starting out, I would include none of that.
That’s because writing advice can, and for whatever reason lately often seems to be too mechanical. Some approaches to writing education approach strangulation on rules and preferences, style manuals and 500 dollars for a proofreader. I am not at all suggesting you should ignore those things, but if this is the extent of the advice someone is giving, (or getting, for that matter), the very essence of writing–the emotional impact it has on both reader and writer is missing.
The heart as an organ may be pumping, but there is no blood to send anywhere.
Can you follow only the so-called algorithm, the pattern, the formula of readable writing and still succeed? Yes, it happens all the time. That may be the problem. Agents, magazines, conventions and forums all seem to advocate first and foremost to the craft, the tools, the procedure of writing, while giving the passion, yearning and drive to create for the world as a secondary consideration.
Follow these steps, and worry about the nuance later, is that in most cases they advocate. And I am here to tell you that is ass-backwards. Believe in it first, bring it to the page and then figure out the “industry standards.”
Or don’t.
If you converse with an obviously passionate person, and stop them to correct their misplaced modifier, you are choosing not to listen. There is a reason very few people in the heat of enthusiasm pause to remember not to rely on adverbs; they are trying to say something and say it now!
By all means be familiar with the mechanics for maintenance. Check the oil, kick the tires of your writing. Make sure it’s ready for the road trip. But removing the engine and taking it apart before every trip to the store is in fact an excellent plan for going absolutely no where.
Ty Unglebower 