I’m honored this week at The Irrepressible Writer to have a guest post by Meredith Resnick, whose blog at http://writersinnerjourney.com is a constant source of nourishment and inspiration. I am particularly fond of Meredith’s brilliant, concise interviews that explore the heart, mind and spirit of the writer’s creative process.
I hope you’ll enjoy her – here, and there!
by Meredith Resnick
This is my story about how to avoid stagnation. Actually, it is a post about growth.
I love getting a piece of writing to work. And by work I mean flow—which actually implies that I’ve stepped back and let the words—the work—happen. My ego, on the other hand, would like to take credit for working a piece to death and, in the process, grinding my creativity to pieces. It’s true. I try not to let my ego do my writing for me anymore. Sometimes I succumb. It’s usually the result of comparing my work to someone else’s. I would have hoped to have grown out of that by now but, oh well. If I share my experience with you it will help me, too. So, here goes:
I was the kind of writer that went out and found the right words. Really dug for them. I could spend hours researching a term. There is a place for this type of finishing-touch treatment and—lo and behold—it comes somewhere in the final stages of editing. In other words, it happens best, for me anyway, at the end, after the bulk of writing (story finding) is complete.
If I go out and dig for words too quickly, or scour my brain or dictionary for the perfect metaphor before I’ve found the real story I’m writing, I go insane. Once I’m in the insane place I keep trying this approach. Over and over. The insanity comes, not only in the seeking of the perfect words but after I’ve stepped back and realized the words I’ve chosen don’t fit or mean anything to me. If you’ve ever gone on a binge of any kind, you know what I mean.
But because I worked so hard and dug so deep for a string (gossamer) of beautiful (pulchritudinous) words, I’m likely to not want to let go of them—ever. I start trying to find ways to keep a certain sentence, to mold the story around a turn of phrase. I often fall into the trap of overdoing the flow part. Well, yeah. That’s the flip side. It’s what happens if every writing session is about letting my mind and pen just go wherever they want, all my work turns into a disjointed slew that requires hours of dissection. So instead of finding the perfect words out there in the dictionary, I’m on a treasure hunt across 10 new journals I’ve penned. I may look busy. But I’m spinning (in place). Same stagnation, different disguise.
Granted, I’ll unearth a few gems waiting to be polished (or maybe they come ready to use). But the time I spend untangling the jungle of roots (beginning of ideas) instead of growing those ideas is more stagnation. I waste more time and energy trying to surgically extract the phrases that work from the stuff surrounding it. I get bogged down, pent up and tired. The joy of sitting down to accomplish turns into make-work that keeps me from moving forward. For a writer, this is stagnation.
So what to do? Here’s what I do:
Understand that when I sit down to write I’m treading two paths: I’m simultaneously finding the story and relaying the story with language that moves the story along. In the beginning and middle, I keep my eyes on the finding the story, not on finding the words.
I resist the urge to be seduced by teachers and books and workshops and websites that tell me to focus too soon on technique. (My ego likes those.) Instead, I pay attention to teachers who say simple things like: “Keep going.”
I don’t get bogged down in “the language” and “the turn of phrase” and “the big brush strokes” and any number of other writer catch phrases I may have heard or read about. That comes later. And later always comes as long as I dedicate myself to the process in the correct order: Write first, edit (word find, cut, revise, finesse) second.
Understand that I do have a story to tell. As do we all.
Thanks, Meredith. This is just what I needed to hear today b/c I am just starting to write a new novel. It’s easy to slip into that editor mode too early so the “Keep Going” mantra is simple but powerful.
I agree. I just keep going and tell myself I will fix it later.
We also stagnate if we work on a piece for too long. Thanks for that. Time to get out some new ideas and let the creativity flow. Thanks.
[...] Prompt #186 Today, I read a blog post on stagnation that struck a chord. I’ve worked on my novel for such a long time that it no [...]
This is so true, Meredith, and so timely. I’m trying to let my writing flow free again after laboring over a project for way to wrong. It is so easy to get lost in the language and the perfectionism and completely lose the flow. Thanks for the reminder.
Of course I meant laboring for way too long — kinda Freudian, don’t you think?