I put myself through writerly hell last week. The experience reminded me of the adage, “I hate writing but love having written.”
The act of choosing words to form sentences that add up to paragraphs that grow into a story that is expected to justify its existence by unleashing an emotional response in a complete stranger…
Is this not a special definition of insanity?
And are those of us who engage in this iffy business not just a wee bit insane?
Writers are all about constructing work that is greater than the sum of its parts, the way the Empire State Building isn’t just a first-generation American skyscraper but a satisfying union of architectural beauty and straightforward purpose. Form following function, function following form…culminating in sui generis perfection—which is what we hope every new story will be before we fall short of this invisible (impossible?) mark.
This particular episode of writerly hell involved my determination to respond to a submission call for an anthology on themes that speak to me like the Sirens beckoning Ulysses: dark, speculative fiction involving social dysfunction.
Oh, yeah, that’s my jam.
I didn’t have much time to get this done. The first few days, I worked on background, meaning, I played around mentally with concepts while tackling a variety of other priority tasks.
By the time I’d cleared the decks for writing, I had about four days to pull the story together (um, what story?) and had already dreamed up and discarded a number of ideas. I sat down to begin the story I thought I wanted to tell.
A thousand or so words in, I scrapped it. Too dull. Too tame. Too expected.
I started over. And over. And over.
I spent hours and hours writing, then stopping. Rewriting. Then writing fresh again. Then stopping again. Re-reading. Re-thinking.
Finally, I thought I had it! But I was wrong.
A process like this leads to an inevitable Frostian fork in the road:
OR
I nearly quit. Rather, I thought about quitting. But I decided immediately that I wouldn’t let myself off the hook. Writing is hard, damn it. When it gets hard, that’s when you do the first of two things that committed writers do: Write through the pain, frustration, and confusion.
After a few days of this, mentally and physically exhausted, I knew my creative well had run dry. And that’s when I did the second thing writers do: I trusted that my subconscious was secretly working on the story and would fish something out for me from all the scraps I’d already gathered. (Hopefully before the deadline.)
Before bed late one night, with roughly 48 hours until I had to press “send,” I typed a half-formed sentence—a new idea—at the top of my current draft and left it for the morning.
That “new” idea seemingly sprang from nowhere, but I believe that’s not accurate. I’d been pushing and pulling at this for unbroken hours on end, thinking about it even when I wasn’t at the keyboard. That half-conscious, half-unconscious work was the gestational incubator for the notion I finally birthed.
All the hours and hours of false starts broke something loose in me. I tugged at form and function until I could see a way to tap into a blend of realism and science fiction that let me venture into absurd, ugly, and uncomfortable territory.
That’s where I always want to be when I write: In an unexpected place, on an unexpected journey, conjuring images and scenes that are supposed to keep you awake and leaning in.
Perhaps geniuses get there right away, on the first pass. I am not a genius. I have to work really hard at this, to get something even half-right.
So I submitted the darn thing. And there’s every chance it won’t be accepted for all the reasons we know and love.
But guess what?
I’m really proud of the hours I spent figuring out this story and writing it to the best of my ability. I’m proud that I didn’t quit when that was clearly the easy and convenient step to take. I’m proud that I made a new “thing” and put it out into the world.
Is it any good? Will anybody want to publish it?
Who knows? I obsess over that stuff more than I should. But this time, I’m going to celebrate that fact that writing is really hard and I did the hard thing.
And I’m quite positive I’ll do it again.
Amy, I am right there with you this very moment. I am six days out from the submission deadline and have started and stopped a couple of times already. Meanwhile, my brain is working behind the scenes and new approaches to the story are flooding in. I want to do it, want to do it. It's not fun, but it's the greatest fun. I'll let you know if I make it. Keep on keeping on.
Wow! I mean, so good. You take us on the journey of conception, writing, editing, contemplating—wash, rinse, repeat—like we are sitting on your shoulder. So powerfully your voice, Amy. And it ends with no expectations but intention to keep writing. On to the next project. Wonderful.