How B Goes About Writing · 8:12pm Dec 6th, 2019
This is a blog that I've meant to write for a while, but never found the structure for it, really, how does one succinctly explain the long, winding, paved at times, deserted at others, paths I've walked? I don't even mean that to say that as some important adventurer scaling a sacred mountain.
But rather everyone is scaling that mountain. Everyone who's kept in the game long enough to grow decent at it. The path to the top seems like a straightforward way to the peak. And sometimes it is like that. Where everything is going smooth and wonderfully, where you seem to know your stuff, the upward tilted of the ground somewhat steep—but the gained muscles in your calf easing the journey.
Something goes wrong. We have to take a turn. Ceasing to climb and hugging a wall, holding on lest we fall, not wanting to lose what had been gained. For writing and art is much like that, times where you are not climbing, but holding in place, hoping to keep whatever progress you have.
Other times you're moving around. Going in circles but never quite ascending. This too is torture upon the soul. Where all our exhausted momentum is mere movement than progress. Seeing the same sights, learning the same lessons, getting lost in the same forests, over and over, while others ascend effortlessly around you.
But know that experience is needed to better know the mountain, to better know yourself, to better know all the human conditions. For that is what we all are writing about, is it not? The human condition and conditions set in a myriad of situations? Imagination creates the landscapes but experience gives it life.
Hence why one should never despair at despair.
Anywho.
The point I am trying to make here, dear readers, is becoming an artist is more than mere craft, that learning prose and structure and characters and dialogue is only half the gig. Every moment of my life, every feeling and every thought, it informs the work not with an authenticity, but rather, a genuineness.
So the deeper aspects of the job is something I cannot explain or, if I were to ever dare such a great subject with so subpar a wit, that I would need to create a series, be it blogs or videos, touching around the issue as much as possible.
My way and my path are not correct. They will not make you better or worse. But hearing of them may prove useful at the very least. I am still very much learning the job as much as you are. All I can offer is the many things I've boiled, the structure I abide by.
One day I will go into the deeper mechanics of story creations, but for now, let's examine how I go about the job.
PART ONE: WALKING UNTIL INCEPTION
There it is. Be silent for a second and then it sparks. It's a process not even Aristotle could codify but something that happens with apparent ease nonetheless. Do you feel it? The losing of the world and the receding of the one inside your head. The double speed playing of something not previously existing. It catches you, freezes you, carries itself out and then lets you leave with a few blinks returning you to reality.
We are, of course, talking of inception.
Be it what someone said, be it the passive wandering of your mind, whatever the source, the result remains the same: the sudden impact of something that catches you. Blissful obsession appear and life bears a meaning once more.
Like a detective on a case, a viewer presented with a mystery, this idea pulls our heads down from the clouds.
There's a snap to my fingers when this happens to me. Chuckles escaping and plots brewing. When you first get an idea, there are a few ways to go about it. Either you go and you sit down and you write the tale, from start to finish, discovering what it's about as you go.
Discovery writers as they are called.
Then there are others who decided to instead sit back and think. They think a lot. Pacing back and forth, playing out scenes and tasting beats, boiling away the fat, refining the fundaments, discover more as they go.
They take to the page but, this time, they plot it all out, the Acts and the Scenes and the Beats, making it all look perfectly neat. When it comes to structure, of a story feeling proper, these folks take the trophy home.
When I get an idea, there used to be a worksheet I would funnel it through, not a paint by the numbers method, but rather, a list of questions that would help me expand what I had. To make connections, to insert depth, a way of ensuring a story was stuffed with a soul.
Nowadays... I'm more lazy.
When an idea strikes, unless it's truly ready to go then and there, I've always had better luck taking a walk. My best attempts at plotting, something which I'm decent for, always ends in the work being scrapped. Knowing the events makes writing feel like chewing used gum.
The way around this, I've found, is to take walks. If I decide to the page straight away, the result turns out to be utter-rubbish. It doesn't go anywhere or the writing is forced. I do not have some point of which I am trying to go. To flounder on the page is to pee on the reader's face.
But I've found that, when I go for a walk, listening to whatever music that I please that the tunes fade out from my ear. The moving of my legs is the energy to the engine of my head. Parts are being played out, characters speaking their pieces, moments created that pound at my heart or electrify my skin with shivers.
There always seem to be reactions, bodily ones to, to the building of the idea. And, although it's strange to admit I will have to do it anyway to ensure everyone knows we're on the same page. The same logic holds true when it comes to plotting Micro/Macro.
I am less proud of it than you but, as I walk and... plot certain aspects out, it quickly becomes difficult, if the idea is excellent, to complete my walk without the odd stumble. Rest assured nothing ever happens. I acknowledge it while pretending it does not exist.
Anyway.
When you have gone on a walk long enough to figure out all that needs to be done, the structure vague but one built at the very least, you may take to the page. When you are stuck, do not stay there. Go for a walk or write your problems down. The answer is always, always always found there.
PART II: THE WRITING
Once you have your idea, regardless of which way you've gone about it, you now take to the page. Writing spontaneously is a grand way to live but rarely ceases to keep consistent. Even Stephen King, a writer who I love but hate most of what he has written, is true on the subject.
Do not come to the blank page lightly.
Sit down with something in mind, even faint or vague, to paint across the page. That walking and thinking and speculating and feeling will have filled any idea with the material to have it written out. But as for the actual writing itself? Most don't comment.
Here's how I go about it.
Back in the day I used to write 8-10K a day. If you count my blogs and my journal entries on top of my story writing then I suppose I still hit those numbers too. My speed isn't the greatest anymore. 1,600 words an hour tends to be my average. The number could have been as high as 3K back in the day.
And now. I will proceed to take my tiny penis off the table.
Let me start off by saying that you should write every day regardless of the amount. The best answer is always 2K. Write that, maybe more, stockpile as to give yourself days off. You won't get burned out on writing that much over time. But if it's hard then start low.
There is no shame in starting at 250 words a day and, hitting that with ease, going up to 600 words. You are building stamina. Runners who try to run a mile from the start rarely run again. But those who run only a street, and, growing comfortable with that, then taking running to the park will soon see themselves taking to marathons with ease.
Starting low allows you to easily acquire consistency, easily the hardest and most undervalued quality someone can have. Gain that, move upward at your own pace, keeping to your own building speed. But make no mistake. Try to set your eyes on 2K if possible.
Now then. Back to me. Muhawa.
I write no less than 5K a day for it's not as hard as a number as people seem to think. This may be due to me not being a good writer, and thus, the words are easier to type and hammer out. To this... I agree. F'naaa.
Desire dictates direction.
If you are someone who is good, who wants to keep doing good, that knows going beyond their current goal would water down their writing... then trust in your own judged. Always push the bar if you can. But if you care for quality than feel no shame in whatever number you hit.
As for me? I like to write. Maybe it's because I like the sound of my own voice, or perhaps its passion of creation, maybe the joy of watching a story unfold that I so desperately want to read. I cannot give you a reason, only the situation. I write to experience the bliss of prose, to express lodged bricks of black within the undulating beams of golden light within my soul, to have enough micro written as to jerk off to later.
...maybe not every passion is a positive thing, alright?
Now then. Set a goal before you come to the page. Are you the kind of writer who writes it all in one go, or are you better suited to taking breaks? I used to be the former but now I am the latter. Since my goal is 5K, I write in 1250 installments of four.
And I do not allow myself to walk away from the page.
The number has to be hit. There are no excuses even if the writing is not going well. You must persist to know why things are not going well, to break through the block with your best of efforts, to learn more as you go until the counter has been struck.
If the writing as gone well, you break only to enjoy yourself, to do other things, clearing your head before the next pass.
If the writing has gone sour... it's back for a walk again. That's the way it should be. If the writing is not going well then forcing your way through it, although it works, hurts the product. Don't do that. Push through all the same. But go for a walk.
Every time I go for a walk, nine times out of ten, I come back with the answer. And sometimes the answer is that I need to switch projects for a while and then come back to that one with a clear mind. No shame in that. One is allowed to give up on a project—but they are not allowed to give up on writing.
And then you write. I recommended using a spreadsheet to help with this process (you may use that one I stole here) to keep track of all of this. It takes me five hours to get the day's work done. I find that, in those breaks, if you shower or read, taking care of things you should, then the time never becomes wasted.
With your goal, you set down to write, either 1250 or lower, done in bursts or all at once, whatever way suits you best. The writing gets done. What happens within the writing is beyond discussion. Only the way around and about it can be talked about.
PART THREE: EDITING
Alright. Alright! Don't fuckin' look at me like that. Those who know me, even the slightest, must have chuckled with that fuckin' title. Sometimes I do it... and most of the time I don't. It's a complex subject that I haven't sorted out with myself. But rest assured, you should edit. Much like carrots—it's good for you!
When the writing is done, you are free to take a rest from it, be it a day or a week or a month or a year. Want my opinion? Getting a block of sleep between writing and revising is enough for me. You shouldn't touch the work right away, sure, but if you do it the day after, with proper sleeping, then you may begin work.
Once more. This is too much of an innate practice to talk vaguely upon. So I will state that, when you are editing, you are trying to boil down what you got. Omit needless words; tighten up passages. Re-write dialogue. An editor makes the work better. Usually, this means cutting away everything you can, combining and finding better expressions.
But remember this.
A lower word count is not your goal. If beauty can be added to a passage, something that strikes true that didn't occur to you the first time—put it in. Remove remove remove. All of that you should do. But so long as something has essence or is essential, it may stay if endured underneath your best judgment.
PART FOUR: POST
Probably the best act of the job. All that writing and hours, effort and thinking, now slammed onto the page. It helps to have a system but there's nothing wrong with be carefree in this case. Post your work, sit back and watch the live reader count, enjoy the drug that is comments and, before you sleep, twist your fingers for a feature.
And then get back to writing.
Another strange blog.
Writing blogs never seem to go where I expect them to. More often than now, when I appear before the blank page that the same is true of my mind—fucker's blank. I dunno what the hell I'm typing. I can only hope my wit spits something well in the opening passage.
In truth, until the first paragraph is written, I have no clue what I'm going to write. But it's all there inside of me, y'know? Countless thoughts and feelings and subjects I want to ramble about. But I guess there's so many that I cannot pick one. My wit must do it for me. There's too many of them that my wit drops like a claw in a machine, picking up one toy of many for me to do away with.
Beyond that. I guess I'm well? Quitting Monsters again. I'm filled with the strange hope that it will go well this time. Dunno why but, hey, when hope appears—what do you get from doubting it? So I'm going on. And on.
And did you know Harlan Ellison's last story ever was about these perfect creates dying to the end of the universe? It's a nice one. Don't like reading too many of his tales. But that one, the prose at least, did something for me.
Also. I really like RarityEQM. Every time I try reading her work to study it... well, anyway.
To work I return. Did I mention my birthday is this Monday the 9th?
Who said that? I must have been a ghost.
AFTER IT, GANG!
~ Yr. Pal, B ~
I wish I could write blogs like this.
That is a smart way to write, I think. Thank you for the ideas, B.
5165436
Of course, you can! These one's aren't all that good, either. The kings shall always be Aragon and Skirts and Harlan Ellison. Reading one from all three and that's how you end up like me!
You should try blogging more, though. It's great for clearing the mind and finding out what you think.
5165646
Anytime, broski. And thank you for reading as always.
Braggart...
