IT’S A MYSTERY: THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You are a writer; an artist. If all your novels, stories and poems flow forth abundantly—golden words, clever concepts, satisfying connections and solid structure tumbling fruitfully from your brain to your fingertips and onto the page or screen, then this week’s posts may be of only passing interest.

If you occasionally struggle, or if you are procrastinating right now because you sat down to write and could not, could not think of a darn thing to put down, read on. Welcome.

I’D RATHER BE WRITING  (NOT)

George Orwell said, “All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

Why do you write?

Because I’m driven on by some demon – whom one can neither resist nor understand.

No, really. Why?

Because it’s all I want to do. And when the creative process works, and I create something I believe is true and right and good, it’s magic.

Magic aside, I’m working on a new project and I’m stuck. I’ve got over 80 rough meandering pages that have run into several dead ends. What IS this story about? Why is my protagonist even involved? Yes, he’ll go back to the past, but why bother upsetting the universe in such a way? What for? Who cares?

I have an idea, a concept I like, a setting I like, and some research and ideas I hope to cook together. Once I have a first draft, I’m OK. I can revise for years. It’s getting the skeleton, the architecture of the story built that I usually find hardest.

So I study process.

I once watched a friend make plum pudding. It was October. She mixed dried fruit, candied citron peel, cognac, spices and suet together and then put it away to sit. “That’s it?” I asked. “For tonight?”

“Oh, no,” she said, then explained the process. A week or so later she would mix the cognac-soaked dried fruit with eggs, milk, port and bread crumbs, and steam it for many hours. Then it was to sit in a tin until she steamed it again before serving.

“Wow, so you have to do this two months ahead to eat at Christmas?”

“No. This Christmas, we’ll eat the one I made last year.” 
  

Make a dessert a year ahead? Way too much preplanning and patience required for me. We will see, however, that this does have to do with the writing process.  

 I’m an “into the mist” writer as Jane Yolen describes it, or a “plunger,” as others have dubbed it. One of those who forges ahead, sometimes slowly, sometimes full speed into the fog or dark, with no lights. Or map. Or recipe.

Despite being a plunger, I’m blocked up (sorry).  I envy outliners.  I can’t know my story until I write it, although I do try to come up with “milestones.” And I love the discovery process along the way.

Presently, I’m discovering nothing but new ways to procrastinate.

Robert Olen Butler says in his book, From Where You Dream, that “…Writer’s block probably suggests that you have an artist’s instinct. [It happens to writers] because  some important part of them knows that they’ve got to get to the unconscious. But they’re not getting there; they’re thinking too much, so there’s nothing there. Except it’s not quite nothing—you sit there thinking, fussing , and worrying: ‘Gee, I’m not writing,’ ‘I’ve got to write now and I’m not writing,’ ‘Oh my God, I’m not writing.’”

Creativity. Visits from the muse. How can we as artists tap into that all important creative part of our brains? Keep it healthy and well oiled? Strengthen it so it’s not fragile and temperamental?

           Caliope, muse of epic poetry

When our writing is not flowing, we’ve got two choices:

Force yourself to work and plunge past the block

or

Back off and give it time

In the end, we must have faith. In ourselves. And, I believe, in the universe.

Remember in the film, Shakespeare in Love, how the theater troupe was always one step from disaster? Financial, creative or legal? But how the production would always come together beautifully, even transcendentally in the end, and the players all had faith in the fact that it would work out?

Phillip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?

Phillip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

Hugh Fennyman: How?

Phillip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.

Well, it is that, for sure. I have as much patience for mysteries as I do for year-ahead desserts. But if there is anything I’ve learned to work on in the writing life, it’s patience. Patience for learning the craft, patience with the process, patience for a “finished” work, patience, lord knows, for publication. And faith all along the way.

That doesn’t mean that I can’t look for ways to improve process. Surely, writing every first draft doesn’t have to be the proverbial opening of a vein. In fact, the more I battle, the worse it gets. I open a vein only to have nothing come out. No blood! Total dehydration!

Guess what? It’s all in the mind, not the circulation system.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the right and left brain and how people with one predominance or the other think and work (because it’s different, and I think, noteworthy).