On Facility and Speed

What's Stopping You?

 Go write something today.

There's nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. —Charles Bukowski

This Is My Letter to the World

The first two lines of this always stick out to me. I think all writers at some point get that feeling of writing to the world and never getting a reply. Of shouting into the wind. It's depressing, and it can lead to questioning why we even do what we do in the first place.

What's the point if everything we do never does anything but stay on a hard drive or in a closed notebook? Never touches anyone? Never makes someone's life even a little bit better?

I have to remind myself sometimes that this feeling — this lonely, disheartening feeling — is something that all writers understand and share. And remembering that and understanding that I'm not totally alone gets me going again.

At least, I hope that every writer has felt this. I would hate to think it's just me and poor Emily. Of course, Emily kept all her poems in a drawer in her room. I wonder sometimes what her life would have been like if she could have blogged.

Have you ever thought of giving up on writing? Have you ever actually given up? What kept you going or brought you back?

Saving Civilization by Destroying It

I'm a big fan of dystopian fiction, novels in which civilization as we know it has been supplanted by something more oppressive and sinister. Often, the new order of things follows an apocalyptic event, but often enough, we don't know how a particular fictional world came to be.

That's one of the joys of fiction: building a world entirely from scratch.

Stay Drunk on Writing

They say the hardest part of writing is getting started, and that has certainly been my experience. I want to believe that there's a zen moment when you start writing and you forget about the world and the words keep coming and the whole thing starts to snowball and you just never stop writing until it's done done done.

I imagine that's what it's like to be drunk on writing. To lose yourself in your pen the way an alcoholic loses himself in a bottle.

I say I can only imagine it because, unfortunately, I've never experienced it.

Or at least I don't remember experiencing it.

Getting started is hard. For many writers, it's hard to get past the first four words in this quotation from Ray Bradbury. And entirely too many writers end up being destroyed by reality.

All Good Writing . . .

When Crap Is the Best You Can Do

Sometimes, when you feel like your writing is crap, you just have to tell yourself that writing crap is okay and then move on to the next thing. Everybody writes crap, but if you want to be a writer, you have to keep writing anyway.

On Fear and Hope

Stephen King once wrote, "The scariest moment is always just before you start." Too often, though, that fear can keep us from actually starting.

We don't start that novel because we fear we'll never finish it. We don't talk to that pretty girl because we fear humiliation. We don't ask for that raise because we fear rejection.

Abandon the Idea That You Are Ever Going to Finish

For most of his life, John Steinbeck avoided interviewing with The Paris Review. In his later years, though, he had a change of heart. Unfortunately, by that time he was too sick to work on it.

Writing as a Constant Search

Writing about things happening to people isn't difficult. But a story — at least a good one — is so much more than just things happening to people. Behind every good story is some truth, some thing that the author wants to tell the world, or get off his chest, or convince herself of.

Unfortunately, that need to have something to say is also what can paralyze a writer, make writing word one a trial fit for Hercules.

Sometimes we stare at the blank page. Sometimes we just start writing and hope to find the meaning as we go.  And often, we fail.

But those few times when it all meshes just right — when the perfect story and its deeper meaning come together like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup — it's all worth it.

The Nature of Writing

"I can't write five words but that I change seven." —Dorothy Parker

Throw up every morning

"Throw up into Your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon." —Raymond Chandler

The Most Difficult and Complicated Part of the Writing Process

"The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning." AB Yehoshua. (TWEET THIS)