A Bit of Writing Advice

Today is one of those days where my desire to write is losing the war against my desire to drink tea and watch cartoons. I’ve been having a lot of those days lately, actually, and I’m getting pretty sick of them. So in order to motivate myself, I’m gonna post up a letter that I wrote in response to a friend that is, appropriately enough, about finding the motivation to write. Feel free to chip in with thoughts – I know my process isn’t the only one out there!

I have a lot of admiration for your writing and your style so I thought I should come to you for this matter. Lately, I’ve been thinking of picking up the pen again but… I’m quite rusty and I sort of have panic attacks when I stare at my blank notebook. I read a bunch of stuff I wrote in the past and immediately think I’ve lost it all and that I’m forever stuck in this down spiral… So, what I’m really asking is what advice can you give? Have you ever been in such situation? How do you beat “personal pressure” as a writer?

Honestly? This is something I go through every time I sit down and write. You may have noticed I haven’t updated in a few days – between real life business and just a lack of drive, I couldn’t bring myself to sit down and write.

I find that, for myself at least, the greatest problem I have with writing is that I have lofty expectations of my end product. In other words, I expect that every time I write, I will in short order bang out something brilliant and world-changing and undeniably amazing. Sadly, nobody writes like this, and one of these days I really have to stop deluding myself.

Writing is like any other activity; you need to stretch yourself. Walk before you run. Juggle two beanbags before you move on to flaming chainsaws. And, partially at least, this is the point of this blog – it’s a place for my exercises. Sit down, look at an object, and just begin to write about that object. Don’t censor yourself, don’t overanalyse what you’re actually writing about, just write. It’s how, as Ernest Hemingway would have said, you “get the juices flowing.”

Speaking of Hemingway, although I can’t stand the man’s novels, I’m increasingly attracted to his attitude about writing. In 1934, he wrote a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, saying:

I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.

Unless it's about a fish. PUBLISH THAT SHIT.

See? Even celebrated authors don’t have the greatest success ratio for writing quality work! Hemingway has fewer shots on goal than the Vancouver Canucks, and that’s just how it is. The solution isn’t to despair about your quality as a writer – the solution is to just write more. Always write more. Carry a notebook or a tape recorder so you can get things down. Don’t censor yourself. Don’t sit on the computer and say “I should be writing” – turn the damned computer off, go in another room entirely, get comfortable, and write. It sure as hell isn’t easy. But few things in this world beat the satisfying sound of pencil on paper or seeing the pile of filled pages next to you grow.

Anyway, Hemingway definitely knew what he was talking about. Generally speaking, I think all of us creative types suffer from having to balance practical productivity with whether or not our “muse” or whatever has spoken to us. And in a sense, that’s one of the biggest barriers that makes people with more “conventional” jobs biased against creatives – for good or for ill! Think of anyone you know who has either belittled your creative pursuits as “not real work” or, conversely, someone who has wished they could just “lie around and draw all day.” They’re operating off the fallacy that since creatives usually have an unconventional approach to workflow, they’re lazy or have it easy – and we all know that’s bullshit.

That bias is something we creatives have to struggle with internally, too, even if we don’t always realize it. Turning creative talent into a real profession does require discipline and dedication – if you Google the phrase “hone your craft,” the first five links all have to do with creative pursuits, and the #1 hit on the organic search is about writing!

Let’s think about the use of “hone.” My dashboard dictionary defines it as:

hone |hōn|

verb [ trans. ]

sharpen with a whetstone.

• (usu. be honed) make sharper or more focused or efficient : their appetites were honed by fresh air and exercise.

noun

a whetstone, esp. one used to sharpen razors.

• the stone of which whetstones are made.

ORIGIN Middle English : from Old English hān [stone,] of Germanic origin; related to Old Norse hein.

So it’s a metaphor! One that, at least in common parlance, has evolved away from knifework and towards the concept of refining artistic abilities. Let’s run with that.

Think of your artistic talent as a knife. Not an implement for destruction, but rather one of creation – a chef’s knife, not a KA-BAR. A chef’s knife must be well-forged, balanced, versatile, and requires constant attention so that the blade is always smooth and sharp. A dull, rarely used knife cannot easily transform a random pile of ingredients into a meal – and similarly, unused talent cannot transform the whirlwind of ideas and images in your head into a tangible, accessible work of art.

Most artists and chefs really have a lot in common (I could argue that chefs are artists, actually, but that’s another rant) – we work hours that “sane” people couldn’t stand, there’s a culture with a propensity for substance abuse, and we get a masochistic rush from just barely meeting a deadline. Oh, and I’ve always wanted to wear a chef’s hat, but that might just be me.

So hopefully this has been a helpful rant. The next time you feel uninspired, think of yourself as a chef! Keep your blade honed – it is your livelihood, after all – and even when you have a boring pile of ingredients, use the techniques you’ve practiced since day one to throw them all together anyway.

You might be surprised at how delicious the result is.