Bouncing Toward Writing: A Beginning

Getting started with writing can be elusive. We believe we want to write. We have ideas for stories. We find a phrase turning over and over in our minds. But somehow, we don’t start. Or we do, and it seems to go nowhere. 

This is where the professionals have us. They have habit. They write regularly. Often every day. That habit not only strings words together, but it makes it easy to sit down and capture ideas. For the pros, their expectations are lower than for the rest of us mortals. They don’t expect the perfect draft immediately. They know that the writing will twist and turn away from the anticipated destination. They are confident that some of today’s writing will be thrown away. 

They are confident.

That’s the big thing. They know that by returning to their craft day after day they will amass, revise, refine, and ultimately, after much work, have a text they are willing to share with readers—be they friends or editors or the paying public.

The rest of us have dreams, ephemeral dreams that we worry will disappear in the light of day. And so they do. Because we don’t have habit and we lack confidence and so we let our worst nightmares take over and we don’t sit down and string words together. The feeling of failure grows within and we say, feeling like frauds: “I’d like to write.” “I can’t find time to write.” “Someday I’ll write the great American novel.”

To do that, we must start. One word in front of another, steps across the page. In the best of circumstances, when the phrase gets caught in my head I sit down not just to write those seven words, but to follow where they lead for 20 minutes or so. Most of the time, I don’t even have that much inspiration so I trick myself into beginning. I read a favorite passage from a writer I admire. I google a bit of research on an idea I heard on the radio. I write an email to someone about something I want to write. Each of these tricks moves me toward beginning without calling it that, without putting the fear of failure front and center. 

I also say, “This won’t be part of the story, I’m just getting down some notes.” It’s a little lie, but an effective one. Without the fear, notes can turn into something if I stay with them awhile. 

I’m also not averse to opening multiple documents for multiple beginnings. That act starts a revision process. It signals I’m not looking for perfection, I’m looking for an opening, one that will take me through the door, the door to the other side of consciousness where I let my intuition create and I stop trying to be in control. On that side is a bouncy house like they have for kids’ parties. 

I jump around in pure joy. I sometimes crack my head on someone else’s knee, but only slightly injured I bounce up again and try another tack for where my character might go next. 

Even without the professional habit of writing every day (how we all long for that!), I can establish habits that let me go through the door, habits that let me start bouncing, start writing, without a consuming fear that incapacitates me. 

Or I can wait for tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. And while the petty pace of life beats on, I will not be the writer I dream of, only the nightmarish ghoul I fear. 

When an idea strikes, write it and more. When you find that 15 or 20 minutes and you wonder what to do. Write—or do the acts that lead there—read and research. Lie to yourself that this isn’t writing as you sit at the keyboard and begin: you’re not writing your masterpiece, you’re just writing…one word…after…another.

Begin…

Cutting Out Fish—A Process

Intercut vignettes weave my texts into a whole. For me, it was a common device, long before my novel. I even wrote about it in my dissertation. I’m certain other writers must go through similar processes, and yet I’ve never read about it. So here’s a brief attempt to describe what I do.

I write story after story. Sometimes they are parts of a single monologue, sometimes parts of a novel, sometimes parts of an academic argument I am making. But I start with parts. I don’t plot or outline. I write. With fiction, from the writing emerges the characters. I get to know them, go for walks with them, take them to lunch. I discover what makes them tick.

At some point, I have the body of the work drafted, and I start figuring out what goes where. This is where we get to cutting out fish. I can do all kinds of editing on the computer screen–large and small order. I sometimes have several documents open at one time and cut and paste among them to revise.

But when a text is truly composed of independent pieces which I want to intercut–meaning cut each apart and then paste them back together with part of story A followed by the beginning of story B followed by the middle of story A and then the opening of C, etc.–then I have to print them out and physically cut them into chunks.

I start that process by reading each vignette and selecting possible cut locations. When I’m smart, I do this on the computer before printing so that I have space to cut stories apart or even so that I have to cut fewer individual lines from one sheet of paper to tape to another. Though I often have to do that because I can’t always focus on the computer at this stage. It becomes visceral and I need to hold the pieces, to lay them out across the counter, to scan across quickly rather than read closely.

Once I have the cuts identified and completed, then I number them in a way to keep track of which piece came from which story. So I might have story A pieces 1, 2 and 3 or A1, A2 and A3. Though typically I label them with a word or name that makes sense to me rather than A, like Hawaii or Cho and Hosuk (a story location and the characters from that story in my novel, Isolation). Hawaii 2 makes more sense in the middle of assembly than A2 does.

To assemble the pieces, I read the beginnings and endings of chunks of text (the numbered aspect) to look for connections. The connections are not direct. I’m not looking for one character to talk about eating E. Coli-laden spinach and the chunk next to it to also mention spinach, though that sometimes happens fortuitously. I look for a connection–content is possible but so is mood, language, or activity. This is more intuitive than conscious.

To be honest, while I call this connection, it creates a kind of dissonance for a reader. With the spinach example, a reader might anticipate that she is still reading about the same character and situation because spinach is mentioned, but in fact, it’s a different character and place. The combination of connection and disconnection builds readerly engagement.

I don’t want readers to struggle with this too much or they could get frustrated. So once I have all of the texts cut up and ordered, I read the beginnings and endings again and ensure that I signal where the reader is after each break. I usually do this by mentioning a character by name in the first sentence or two though rather than character, it could be setting or really anything that situates a reader clearly in the particular story and not the former one.

At several places in this process I read the entire section of text I’m working with–all of the combined stories being cut apart. To be more accurate, I read until I stumble upon something I don’t like. Then I either stop and revise a bit of text or reorder again. This might happen repeatedly, or I might put them all together in a readable order the first time. Though even then, if stories change, I might need to redo the entire process–which is why this happens late in the process.

For example, I’d been “done” with Isolation for nearly a year, giving readings, seeking a publisher, sending out shorts to contests and literary magazines. In the process of getting it ready for self-publishing, I received feedback which suggested a massive cutting was in order. In the first section of the novel nearly 50% was cut. Needless to say, I had to re-order the cut pieces which now often started and ended differently than they had in the earlier version.

As I hit the end of page two of this blog entry, I think, wow, this must be complicated. But it’s really not. And it’s lots of fun. As humans, much of the meaning we make in the world comes from juxtaposition. You know the saying: "It’s all context"? Well, that means that the juxtaposition of “things” whether they’re stories or the contents of your refrigerator or the objects on your desk create meaning. Well, the things' juxtapostions don’t really create the meaning, we do—as we look, contemplate, rearrange, reconsider. For me, it's the essence of writing, the essence of creativity.

Somehow, the print I made several years ago “Cutting Out Fish,” which accompanies this article, provides a visual for this writing practice. Rock, paper, scissors. With more than two choices, randomness enters the equation. From the way I see it, that means we all win! Play with cutting up and reordering text. See what happens. And let me know.