Sunday, May 23, 2010

Writer’s Block: Take Two

Last week I talked about the writer’s block lecture I attended at the Columbus Writing Works conference a few weeks ago. The lecture was extremely interesting and helpful, but I felt that, in general, the entire theme for the conference (or at least, pretty much all of the events that I attended) was how to handle writer’s block and the difficulty of forcing yourself to sit down and write.

Many of the writers talked about how difficult it can be, even for seasoned professionals with book deals and deadlines and no day jobs to distract them, to force the ideas to come. Julie Gregory, the author of the hugely successful memoir Sickened: The Story of a Lost Childhood, talked about going through a period of heightened productivity, during which she would wake up every morning with beautiful sentences in her head. This was the impetus for her writing career, but, she added, it didn’t last. After she actually landed an agent and a book deal for her first memoir, the muse essentially stopped visiting, perhaps having decided that she didn’t need it anymore, and she realized that writing this thing was actually going to be hard work.

This idea kept coming up again and again at the conference (as it often does when a group of established writers pass their wisdom on to newbies): most of the time, writing is not an ethereal experience. You don’t usually feel like there are angels whispering in your ear, and all you have to do is transcribe what they say. That happens sometimes (and when it does make sure you take advantage of the inspiration while you’ve got it!), but most of the time it’s not that easy. Most of the time it really is work.

I want to offer up a few choice quotes from the conference. These quotes say it better than I ever could:

“Writers hate to write, but they love what they’ve written.” (Julie Gregory, who said that most writers have to really force themselves to write, but that it’s worth it for the final product. This is not exactly the same, mind you, as the adage, “Some people want to write and some people want to have written,” which is more, I’ve always felt, about the difference between wanting to be a Writer, capital W, versus actually doing the work to put together a strong piece of writing.)

“Doing it’s hard, but not doing it’s harder.” (Julie Gregory. “It,” of course, being writing.)

“Writing never gets easier.” (David Rakoff, who pointed out that writing is not like some other endeavors, where you eventually reach a point at which it comes easily and you feel that you have mastered it. Writing, he said, continues to be difficult no matter how many books you’ve got under your belt. Your first drafts will, for the most part, never be very good. The quality of a final draft will almost always come down to how much work you were willing to put into it.)

And my personal favorite: “Writing is really, really, really hard.” (David Rakoff)

5 comments:

Justin said...

"You don’t usually feel like there are angels whispering in your ear, and all you have to do is transcribe what they say. That happens sometimes (and when it does make sure you take advantage of the inspiration while you’ve got it!), but most of the time it’s not that easy. Most of the time it really is work."

It's good to hear someone else say this. I typically have to stare at the computer, troll author's blogs, look for interesting headlines from national newspapers, drink more coffee, drink less coffee, do all kinds of things to get that inner-angel to return or even appear. Overcoming writer's block is all about just tugging away at it, trying to rip it down by continually forcing one's self to work. It is (really) hard work. Rakoff's right.

Ashley Cowger said...

Yeah. It was so reassuring to hear all these succesful writers talk about how hard writing really is, how they really have to force themselves to write. Sometimes it feels like there must be some writers who are just constantly inspired, but I don't think that's really true. Even the people who are making a living off of writing still have to force it to come most of the time.

Justin said...

I'd like to believe that Cormac McCarthy is always full of inspired genius and actually has to do the opposite - force himself NOT to write. However, I'm sure that even he has those days.

Anonymous said...

i was in a posh jewellers near sloane square the other day and thought how the necklaces on display are in fact just like the almighty sentences laced through classic fiction. that is, they apear in a reality vacuum, under glass, like they've just fallen out of a dream.

needless to say though, the dimaonds only arrived in Knightsbridge through the dirt, darkness, blood and tears of the slave-worker, and the unglamourous transit of a cargo hold at 35 000 feet.

this metaphor applies for every writer except norman mailer. i like to imagine he just yawned and barfed long strings of priceless sentences.

but more importantly, what happened to the purple blog?

Adam

Ashley Cowger said...

Well said, Adam. And . . . I just got tired of the same old blog and decided it was time for a change.