Just Do the Work

I had just finished writing the original version of this post when 'presto' the lightning fast reaction of my wireless mouse made it disappear.

Last week I discovered two e-books by a writer I had never heard before--Steven Pressfield. Both focus on the artist's path to developing craft. The first is entitled, "The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle" and the second is simple entitled, "Do the Work."

I highly recommend them both as good motivators to stop navel-gazing and get on with the business of creating. Both books are relevant to anyone engaged in anything creative and innovative, but particularly to writers.

According to Pressfield, there is a very real, tangible force artists encounter whenever they engage in their work and he calls this force Resistance (yes, with a capital 'R'). Resistance is more slippery than fear. It can convince one to focus too much on preparation--for example, research--and not enough on just getting on with it and writing the shitty first draft.

Here is a quote that really speaks to me from the "The War of Art":

WHAT I KNOW

There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe wrters don't, and that secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write.

What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

When I read those lines I had to face myself and my own Resistance. I flashed back to all of the times I have avoided sitting to just start, coming up with every lame excuse possible to avoid entering the world of fiction. "No one will ever read it anyway." "Who really cares." "The world doesn't need another lame fiction writer." "Fiction never changed anything, focus on real work instead."

Here is another juicy quote from "The War of Art":

THE UNLIVED LIFE

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

That's when I really had to look myself in the eye and face up to the fact that I have also been living my life unlived. I've in fact been pretending that I've been living the life, when in fact it's a just pretend game. According to Pressfield, Resistance is invisible, implacable, it never sleeps, it's universal and it wants to play for keeps. Resistance lives off of fear, so the key is to master your fear. Procrastination is a symptom of Resistance.

So how do we beat it?

We simply sit down and do the work.

How do you know if you are in the clutches of Resistance?

How happy are you? Chances are that if you are miserable, feeling restless and deeply dissatisfied, you are avoiding your work.

If something really scares you to death, then it is likely a good indicator you should be doing it. If you find yourself asking yourself: "Am I really a writer?" then you likely are one.

Check out Steven Pressfield's website and while it's still possible, you can download an e-version of his book "Do the Work": www.stevenpressfield.com.

Another Nanowrimo win

Today marks the official deadline for this year's National Novel Writing Month, which commenced November 1st. I crossed the finish line with just over 50,300 words. The goal is to write at least 50,000 words with the thirty day crunch. This year marks my fourth "win". Yes, I have managed to write that much in a relatively compressed period of time. My body has taken the toll with aching wrists and tense shoulders.

As always, I am not very impressed with the results, but I keep reading in different sources that it is important to just put it away for a while (some suggest two weeks) and then go back with the red pen and your inner editor sitting on one shoulder.

The problem is that I am not finished after 50,000 plus words. I cannot seem to find the beginning, middle or end. What I have is a fairly thick gruel of characters and some possible conflict, but no real plot in sight. I thought the magic would happen,(the magic that I've heard about so many times), but it doesn't seem to work for my brain. I seem to learn things very slowly and ponderously.

I think I will take a couple days off and then have at it again. Not as a rewrite, but as a generating more material exercise so that I have a hope of finishing it at some point.

It can't be that hard. After all, there are many writers out there who aren't particularly very good (I'm thinking of the Danielle Steele quality) who make fortunes off of their meagre talents. There must be hope for me just to finish a book. Perhaps I am more in need of a plot 101 survey course intensive.

The important thing is that I DID it. Again. And for that I am happy with myself.

Still waters and stagnation

I would like to be able to say that I have championed my creativity and now revel in it every day and that all is well in my kingdom. But the opposite is true. I find myself in a state of blandness that is so all encompassing it's as though my entire life is first wrapped in styrofoam and finished off with a thick sheet of bubble wrap. Perhaps it is ennui. Perhaps calling it ennui is just a way of shrugging off responsibility for a chronic state of apathy. Perhaps I just don't have any passion.

There. I said it. I have no passion. I seek passion. I elevate passion to godly heights. But I don't actually BELIEVE that that kind of ecstatic state is relevant to little old plain me.

Ah. That feels better. The clear waters of truth sluice away the grime of confusion.

Yes, that was a terrible erstatz metaphor. And saying erstatz in front of metaphor is even worse.

Ah. It's good to just face things for what they are.

So, I have identified the kernel of the problem. I reject my own thoughts because they are too ordinary, which by extension means my creations are too ordinary. I mean who on earth would care to read what is produced by my humble little mind?

I hate to say it, but this is an archetypal question for artists. It is one of the biggest indicators (and stumbling blocks) of the road less travelled. (Less travelled being defined as the place where some others fear to tread because there are no certainties here, only contemplations and potentialities).

Well. What to do?

What I'm doing already. Express it. No matter how lame and derivative. No matter how lacking lustre. Just get the energy moving. Nothing for it but movement. It's like what will happen to a still body of water over time. It stagnates and perhaps becomes poisonous. The only remedy is a good hard rain.

The first read-through

I spent the past two days reading through my monstrous November Novel, which was an exercise in mostly automatic writing and little plotting. I did that deliberately to discover what, if anything, the characters had to say for themselves.

Naturally, there are passages that make me cringe. There are also lapses of continuity and so on, BUT there are also passages that are very interesting. I was so pleased to discover that some of the exchanges between the characters read very well. They showed distinct personalities and there were many conflicts that arose naturally out of their different world views.

So I have achieved the first step. I have found something to nurture in my little misshapen first draft. The next round is coming up with a macro view of the lay of the land to pinpoint hard research required and the over all structure of the material. The finer points can come later after the first rewrite. I am both exhilarated and a little scared. There is much to learn!

From Dreams to Reality

The new year is just newly born and the time for goal setting and reflection is upon us. I have decided that 2009 is the year of challenging and breaking through more self imposed limitations, specificially with my yoga practice and more relevantly to this blog, with writing.

I have been the consummate creative dabbler, never really pushing myself often enough to finish projects because, well, because I get stuck in thoughts about how many other fantastic artists there are out there and how unlikely it is that my work will ever be published and that there are so many writers scraping by out there who are better, more talented, more dedicated and so on. Of course there are grains of truth to this dialogue and it could be that none of the fiction I write is ever published, but it definitely will never be published if I never finish projects.

So with cynicism and skepticism riding heavily on my shoulders, I am going to challenge myself to the following goals as a beginning:

1 Read through and make notes on my 2008 November novel.
2. Incorporate changes and write a second draft.
3. Repeat step 1 and 2 for as many times as it takes to write a finished draft.
4. Send the finished manuscript to Amazon for the special deal they are offering the 'winners', which is a proof copy of the book.
5. If satisified with the final result, send it out to either agents or publishers.

Through this process I will learn a lot about the process of FINISHING A BOOK, and gain valuable knowledge. If it never gets published, I can at least have a couple of trusted friends read it and provide serious feedback and/or take a fiction writing workshop to improve my chops.

That is my pledge to myself. Already that queasy feeling is arising from the inner doubter in me who wants nothing more than for me to never risk growing in any direction. As an 'antidote' I will think about all of the people who never have a chance to realise their dreams because of real circumstances, not just self-fabricated ones. Right now I am thinking of the hundreds of people who recently died in Gaza and the thousands who were injured. Many of those will be deeply wounded by long term trauma. I think of all of the people throughout time who have been torn physically, psychologly and spiritually by trauma and I send them a prayer of healing and peace. I center myself in gratitude and strength, which is after all the roots of love and compassion. I am grateful that my path in this life has been a relatively smooth one compared to many others.

Creativity is the ultimate radical act because it affirms life.

Post November Novel

For the third year in a row I managed to squeak past the 50,000 word count by the end of November. This year's exploration was a dystopian venture of scattered proportions. I am left pondering the words of another Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) participant, Gayle Brandeis, who happens to be a professional (and therefore published) writer. Here are her thoughts on first drafts:

"It all comes down to love, really. You have to learn to love your sticky, bloody, misshapen novel. Even if a lot of it makes you cringe; even if much of it feels monstrous, find something in it to love. It could be one sentence. It could be one image. It could be one plot twist. It could be one character. Whatever it is, start from there. Love it with all your heart. And with this love, plus a lot of attention and patience, you will give your novel the care it needs to grow into itself, to learn to walk and talk and carry its own weight. Love it, even when it makes you crazy, and one day, it will make you proud."

Wise words. I find that is the point where I become stuck. I find the prospect of writing something that most people will likely never read to be, well, futile. But then one could argue that all creative endeavours are by definition futile, if one took that point of view. The truth is it is just a cop out not to complete things and do the tough work of making stuff up.

So now is time to lighten up and toughen up and knuckle down to nurturing my little montrous newborn, which is tentatively entitled, 'Before the World Ends'. Inspiring, no?

Dredging the Depths

“Sex is a key to enter a spirit....Sex is like a dream when you are awake; I think dreams are collective. Some parts do not belong to yourself.”

The quote is by author Haruki Murakami from an interview he gave a few years ago. I've started this entry with it because there is something compelling in his words, which draw me deeper into some place I cannot name.

That place is where I find myself located now as I struggle to keep with the word count for the National Novel Writing Month. My original idea was to write about something apocalyptic, something about social structures breaking down and the discovery of a hidden species who live in a parallel world to our own (not another dimension, but another habitat niche that currently exists on this one). The idea has since been dominated by a cast of three central characters who are bound together by family and by perception. I am no longer sure where it is heading because the story now seems to be erupting from a part that does not belong to myself. Perhaps I have entered some kind of collective dream?

The act of writing certainly connects me with my life force and with what I essentially believe (as opposed to what I think I ought to believe). My manuscript, however, is not any suitable narrative form. It begins and trails off in diffuse directions. There are too many ideas, too many layers, and all I can do is type out my character's thoughts and attempt to capture a sliver of their inner lives.

But I like the idea of dream time, where all times lines converge and linear time holds no dominion. There all minds can submerge in universal symbols. Of course, there are many who think the idea of some kind of collective unconscious plane is sheer bullshit and should be relegated to the realm of the esoteric. I'm thinking of Sam Harris and his excellent (but weighty) book 'The End of Faith', where he includes Jungian psychology in this category. I'm not so sure Harris' assessment is fair. I think we need some model to explain the creative realm of that exists on the shores of our mysterious psyches. I like to believe that there is still room for the unexplained and perhaps unexplainable. I have to admit, though, that the skeptic in me has serious problems with the idea of surrender. I refer to the surrender to the creative process and the trust required when you happen to be right brained creator like me who can only follow their characters and images into the dark to get a sense of the shape of the story, and not the other way around.

The romantic in me likes to think of these depths as the realms of poets and great artists. Whenever I'm in this frame of mind, I like to believe that we are all deeply connected to realms we can no longer perceive. Our senses have been civlized into obedience. The wildness has been disciplined out of us. There have been so many artistic movements that realized this and tried to break through the patina of the civlized.

In my freewheeling jam here, I question what it means to be civilized. So much horror has been created in the real world in the name of civilization, but I diverge from the point. The point being that perhaps we all are connected in a deeper sense, much like the buddhists believe. We are all part of the net of life. Art, then, is part of this collective dream.

Metafiction attempts, perhaps, to illustrate this point in another way by revealing the artifice of art, but also the interaction of art with life and life with art.

After all, where on earth do characters come from?