Writing on Writing

‘People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them.’

Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

‘JUST WRITE!’ an implausibly tall poet once yelled to me at a party after I’d described my inability to put pen to paper. Thereafter, he would shout this at me whenever we met. Simple and accurate advice which took another five years to take effect. When I was a kid I knew I wanted to write, so I did. Then something went wrong – most probably hormones and the brutality of secondary school – and I became painfully self-conscious, paralyzed by the thought of creative exposure.

Decades later, as a new mum and at a full stop in my career, I read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. The theme of the story, to follow your dreams, is hardly a new one, it is occurs in many different forms throughout Western culture. Maybe I was just ready to hear the message at that particular moment but somehow it touched upon long-buried aspirations. Yes! I thought, I want to write. So I signed up for an English degree: I learned all about other people’s writing, did some creative writing modules and became an academic writer. That is not what I had meant by wanting to write. I still lacked the courage even to aspire to what I truly wanted and was gleefully oblivious that I had veered from my path.

Why?

In the end it was not the creative writing modules or my study of English Literature that got me writing, it was something far more personal and fundamental than that – for me, it was about overcoming the need for perfection. The realisation that writing is a process not an ending finally sunk in: that you will have to produce ‘much crap’ before you can start to produce anything of worth and therefore the ‘crap’ is not crap, but rather, a vital part of that process. If you value the crap there is nothing left to fear.

How?

I took a short online creative writing course which finally showed me in practical terms what a writing process looks like for me. It taught me how to combine ideas and structure, flow and form. In the past I would ‘just write’ fragments which gave me a disjointed section of writing with no palpable shape or carefully work out plot and character sketches for an idea but find myself unable to write anything with such rigid constraints in place. The course enabled me to find a method that worked for me: which was to freeform write from a loose idea and craft it into a cohesive shape in stages whilst the writing was ongoing. I would only carry out my research and structural work after I had begun writing the piece – the exact opposite to the way of working I’d established as an academic writer. Finally I’d found a way to bring my two disparate working methods together and completed my first story as an adult. Ray Bradbury asserts: ‘When you write – explode – fly apart – disintegrate! Then give time enough to think, cut, rework, and rewrite.’

When?

The third part of the puzzle was when to write. There is no longer such a thing as free time, that great time-saving device the internet has put paid to that. This part of the process was also an entirely personal thing, I have a friend who wrote his first novel on the way to work each day using a personal organiser, whilst I admire this tremendously I could not work this way – I need a serene environment and the headspace to write. However, if I waited for the right time this would never happen. For me, the only way to find time is to grab it forcibly, pin it to the ground and not let go until I’m done. This means writing first thing in the morning and allowing absolutely nothing else to creep into that time – it has to be ferociously guarded. For doctor, mother and writer, Jane Wilson-Howarth, this means ‘I need to be a ruthlessly bad parent/wife/daughter and have a sluttishly filthy home to get any writing done at all.’

So, unlike the alchemist turning lead into gold, it is not about changing the material substance of a thing, it is about changing how we view that thing and recognising its intrinsic value. Transforming the yearning to write into a finished piece of writing requires understanding what is stopping you and discovering what process works for you. How can you overcome these obstacles? What does this mean in practical terms? Everyone has their own journey but it always starts within.

‘Why do we have to listen to our hearts?’…

‘Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.’

Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist