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I hope you have been writing for at least 15 minutes each
day of the break. And by now I hope you have a crappy first draft. If not, we
will start to hate you. Anne Lamott describes it this way: “I know some very
great writers….Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of
them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a
rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I
mention this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you’ve
created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same
people you do.)” (Lamott, 1994, pp. 21-22).
By the way, I’ll quote Lamott and others (and include the
citation for their work) in the forthcoming postings, and in the last one I’ll
provide a list of other writing resources. But beware: Reading about writing does not count as your
15 minutes of writing. Organizing your desk does not count as writing. Reading, typing, and
editing your notes do not count as writing. Not even composing mentally while
you wash the dishes constitutes writing. Writing is fingers on keyboard or pen
to paper and producing. Even producing crappy first drafts.
Recall that one of the obstacles to writing is the fear that
what we write will be crap. It’s a common fear...as common as writing crappy
first drafts. Think of them as a necessity. “If you try to write and edit at
the same time you will do neither well” (Sides, 1991). You have to write before
you can revise and edit to get the draft you want.
Lamott has a chapter called “Shitty First Drafts” that
describes the necessity of writing without perfection or editing: “Very few
writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it. One writer I
know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely: ‘It’s
not like you don’t have a choice, because you do – you can either type or kill
yourself.’ … For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not
rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write
really, really shitty first drafts” (p. 22).
She describes her fear of doing even this: “Even after I’d
been doing this for years, panic would set in. I’d try to write a lead, but
instead I’d write a couple of dreadful sentences, xx them out, try again, xx
everything out, and then feel despair and worry settle on my chest like an
x-ray apron. It’s over, I’d think, calmly. I’m not going to be able to get the
magic to work again this time. I’m ruined. I’m through. I’m toast. Maybe, I’d
think, I can get my old job back as a clerk-typist. But probably not. I’d get
up and study my teeth in the mirror for a while. Then I’d stop, remember to
breathe, make a few phone calls, hit the kitchen and chow down. Eventually I’d go
back and sit down at my desk, and sigh for the next ten minutes. Finally I
would pick up my one-inch picture frame, stare into it as if for the answer,
and every time the answer would come: all I had to do was to write a really
shitty first draft of, say, the opening paragraph. And no one was going to see
it….The whole thing would be so long and incoherent and hideous that for the
rest of the day I’d obsess about getting creamed by a car before I could write
a decent second draft. I’d worry that people would read what I’d written and
believe that the accident had really been a suicide, that I had panicked
because my talent was waning and my mind was shot” (pp. 24-25).
That captures it pretty well, right? Many of you report that
you are better editors than writers. Or at least you find it easier to revise
and edit. So write without striving for perfection. “Just get it down on paper,
because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would
never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something
in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you love,
that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be
writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go – but there is
no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half
pages” (Lamott, 1994, p. 23).
[By the way, I sat down to write my 15 minutes today – it
was 90 minutes of intense writing before I thought to look at the clock. Have
you written your 15 minutes today?]
Lamott, A.
(1994). Bird by bird: Some instructions
on writing and life. New York:
Anchor Books.
Sides, C.
(1991). How to write and present
technical information.Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Some of the information in the Break Writing postings is
drawn from previously published work, and I have tried to properly attribute
the ideas and work of others. If I have failed to do so, please let me know so
I can clarify and correct (ja2310@columbia.edu).
Continue to Break Writing #4 - The Last 5 Minutes
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