Strike While the Page is Hot
I apologize for being late writing this, tonight, but I have been busy today. Most of my day has been spent at work, but my free time has also been rather productive. I have made significant progress on story I’m working on, “The Pious Road to Perdition”, and will soon be releasing the next chapter. This comes on the wake of a bit of a breakthrough in how I’ve been writing.
You see, if you’ve been following me at all recently, you do know that I’ve been suffering from a bit of writer’s block the past year, and I haven’t really known how to get through it. Thanks to this new way of thinking, I think I might just be able to get past it.
The equation is simple: write when you feel like writing.
There’s a lot of advice out there, and what I say may not work for you. I certainly don’t claim to have the answers for everyone, all I can do is tell you what has worked for me. Different strategies have worked for me in the past, but not all of them were working for me anymore. In fact, one of the reasons why I have struggled so much over the past year, is because those strategies were no longer working.
This one is different. Most of the strategies I employed in the past were about getting a certain amount of words per day, setting a goal of writing a chapter a day, or telling myself I had to work certain number of hours each day. These are great at teaching you discipline, and I learned a lot from trying out these different strategies.
But there came a point when discipline wasn’t enough, and it came around the same time I finished my novel “Weightless”. At that time, I became more concerned with the art, and less concerned with getting words on the page. I wanted my writing to mean something — it couldn’t just be about getting work done, it had to be about making good art.
And this led to a lot of introspection. It led me to places I never thought I would go, down some roads which were dark, and others which were illuminating. Each of them taught me something, but none of them had the answer I needed.
Because even when I wanted to make good art, I continued to be bogged down with the thought that if I wasn’t producing all the time, then I clearly wasn’t doing my job.
What I’m here to tell you today, is that’s pure bullshit.
Because your job as an artist, is not to produce art according to a schedule. It is not your job to punch a time clock, or even to answer to the dictates of even your own deadlines. No, your job is singular.
Make good art.
To do that, only two things are required: emotion and your readiness to translate that emotion into form. Everything else is extra. Everything else is only a tool to assist you in your task. Humans have been making art long before we had history. We’ve been making art for as long as we’ve been alive. Before there were fancy pencils, drawing tablets, or the speech to text program I’m currently using to write this article, we found a way to make art, and make it last through the ages.
We’ve always had emotion, and we’ve always wanted to understand it.
And emotions don’t work according to any human timetable. They will come and go without regard to the amount of words you want to write in a day. They will pay no heed to the number of hours you work, or your chapter-writing goals. You can attempt to force them, and sometimes that might work, but it will never be a guarantee.
So how do you make good art when the emotions won’t come?
I don’t have all the answers, but I do know one thing based upon my experiences in the last twenty-four hours. Last night, when I was tossing and turning my usual insomniac state, I had my story on my mind. I’d spent most of the day attempting to write, and barely managing to push out a couple hundred words. I needed sleep, and, like most nights, I spent some time trying force my mind to quiet down so that I could get some rest.
But then I realized something. The story was there. The story was fresh. I got up, turned my computer on, and I started to write. In thirty-five minutes, I’d written fifteen hundred words, completing the final scene in the chapter I was working on. On my best writing days, I’ve never written so quickly.
And it’s because I wrote when the story wanted to come, when the emotions were there, and when I was ready and willing to translate that emotion into form.
This may not work for you, but if you’re stuck, give it a try. Strike while the iron is hot. Quit trying to batter cold iron into the form you desire it to be. People can tell when something has been beaten into shape instead of forged, and they will appreciate the quality of the latter.
Now, I’m off to be a blacksmith.
Peace and love,
Samuel D. Roe (Cynus)
Written on 8/7/2017
P.S. Did you know I write fiction? Did you also know I have a Patreon and would love your support? You can find out more about both of these items here: https://www.patreon.com/Cynus
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