« Technology Sucks: An Ode to the Lowly Pencil | Main | The Drawer Method »
May 05, 2005
Mysterious Back Injury Brings Writing Epiphany
Hello, and welcome to the thirty-sixth installment of NotWriting.com, an open journal on how one writer spends his time when he really should be writing.
About five months ago, between mid-December of 2004 and February of 2005, I was flat on my back—literally. To eat, get the mail, or use the bathroom, I had to summon all of my strength and bear the pain. And forget about bending over to feed the cat or pick up something I dropped. For those two months, entropy ruled. (Consequently, the apartment was littered with bottlecaps, pennies, paper clips, and socks.)
I was able to do some writing on a old-'n-crappy IBM ThinkPad (which I commandeered from Merrill Lynch when I left after 9/11), but the lack of mobility left me listless and depressed. So, I took to eating box after box of Edy's Whole Fruit Bars (Grape) and reading all of my favorite PI novels in order of publication, including the following three series: Phillip Marlowe, by Raymond Chandler; Spenser, by Robert Parker; and Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Edy's Fruit Bars: Miracle food for writers?
As I tore through novel after novel, story after story, I made a note to myself how much I enjoyed these books. Why then, I asked myself, was I trying to write for a "literary" audience? I didn't understand why I trying to be accepted by a world of small journals that, for the most part, weren't interested in the kinds of things I do well as a writer: clear storytelling, setting, dialogue, and suspense. Too many of those publications aren't interested in the content of the story; they're interested in the artful sentence. While I can appreciate a nicely crafted sentence, for me it's primarily about the story and keeping the reader reading.
So, my epiphany? Simple——
Stop trying to write the stuff that you think will fit into these markets and instead focus on writing the kind of stuff you would want to read.
Not two days later, I stumbled upon a scene in The Catcher in the Rye in which Holden Caulfield is given advice on how to write a book (this is from memory, so it's loosely paraphrased): "Imagine the book you'd most like to read, and then sit down and shamelessly write it."
I think the key word above is shamelessly. Not giving a @#$! what anybody thinks. Letting yourself say everything you've ever wanted to say. Being willing to let go and trust the process.
And that's precisely what I've been doing steadily since March 11——shamelessly writing the book I'd most like to read. I've just reached the six week mark, and I'm less than 100 pages from the end of the first draft. Every morning when I sit down to work, I haven't allowed doubt to enter into the picture. I make myself have faith that the story will advance, that exactly what I need will present itself at exactly the right time. This be what some folks call synchronicity.
By the time I started the novel, my back was better, and I had a vision of the kind of writing I needed to be doing that was as clear as a Maine night in summer. Cliché as it might sound, God does work in mysterious ways.
And to what do I attribute this breakthrough, this epiphany? My aching back and God.
Oh, and the fruit bars. Gotta have the fruit bars.
Posted by corcutt at May 5, 2005 05:30 PM
Comments
you're getting closer but you're still removed.
Posted by: Jennifer Rivera at October 22, 2005 11:09 PM