I am coming up on one of the most significant anniversaries of my post-college life thus far. In just over a month, it will have been a year since I started writing fiction again, and the confluence of circumstances that got me started and kept me going was just so perfect that it resists easy itemization. Nonetheless, I'm going to try. For the curious, this article is what prompted me to finally write all this down.
1) Audience.
When I was in middle school, I started sending my writing out. Not to literary magazines or contests, but to my relatives and to a handpicked list of teachers and family friends. The feedback I received kept me going. I immersed myself in a series of film noir pastiche stories and taught myself A plots and B plots and episodic vs. serial arcs, knowing that (either out of kindness to me or genuine interest in the story; the distinction didn't bother me that much) someone was waiting to know what happened next. The praise was nice, and continued through high school, because that's what you do when a middle schooler or high schooler demonstrates a commitment to something: you praise them. The praise was nice, but the audience of readers was even nicer. Even after I stopped with the regular mailings in freshman year of high school, I still benefited from a vocal and supportive audience for my writing. My audience that gave feedback, that indulged me as I worked through character developments out loud. I allowed my characters and plots to grow in depth and complexity, not because I was making any conscious effort to grow as a writer, but because those were the types of stories that genuinely interested my audience. The length of time between a conversation's start and an audience member's glazed eyes and lack of attention grew.
A quick word on praise: I almost want to say that it doesn't have to be genuine. Not at first. Not when the first draft could still wither on the vine. I've talked with K a lot about this. She's a teacher, and believes in the necessity of positive reinforcement, especially at the beginning of things. I don't think that need ends with adulthood. If anything, it gets worse, because adults have the tendency to second guess everything.
In sum, tell me my idea sounds interesting, with great characters. Tell me that you can't wait to read the rest. Then, when there is a story, when it's done and there's a beginning, middle, and end, and I'm debating the possibility of sharing it with a broader audience...that's where the audience comes in. Tear it to shreds. We'll call it editing.
Writing is a very solitary pursuit. To a certain extent, at least for me, it has to be. I get distracted easily. Once I get in the groove, it's important to keep going. Nonetheless, it is equally important to pop the bubble occasionally and ask, "Is this working for people?" "Does this interest anyone besides me?"
Writers without readers are diarists, and I was never very good at keeping a diary.
2) Accountability.
This is about more than just an audience. This is about a person (or concept, I guess), who is relying on you to deliver. Playing the Letter Game went like this: K would send me her installment. A day would pass. Two days. Seven. Suddenly, I would start to feel itchy. She was waiting for me to respond. Worse, I wouldn't get to hear what happened to her characters until I let her know what happened to mine. Suddenly, procrastination was not an option. I wrote. The plot threads intertwined. Our separate plot lines united to advance the greater story. Procrastination wasn't even a consideration. The week-long turnaround periods became four days. Then three. Then twenty-four hours.
The Letter Game gave me a person who, more than looking forward to reading my writing, would be disappointed when I wasn't writing. The larger takeaway was that I have to have a reason outside of myself to keep writing. Working toward some large, amorphous I Will Be A Writer goal just doesn't cut it. Not yet, anyway.
3) Interest.
It may seem painfully obvious, but if you're not interested in the story you're telling, you honestly can't be surprised when no one else is. I remember writing only one of the stories I brought to writing workshops at Princeton, and it was one I started writing off-campus the previous summer, out of genuine interest in the subject. As the the other stories I wrote there, if I wrack my brain I can think of a vague plot, one or two characters, or a general hook ("The one with the good sexual tension." The one with the old people."), but not much else. I can't even remember where I was sitting when I wrote these, let alone what I was feeling. That tells me my heart wasn't in it.
I've talked here before about Writing to Solve Problems, which is, in general, what works best for me. The interest has to run on every level: the problem, the resolution (or even, but more rarely, the solution), and the plot and characters who will take you there. Gay seminarians. Long-lost godfathers. What the world will look like deep in the future, how we've moved forward, how we've slid back, and how the people there continue to live with themselves.
4) Feeling.
Every time--and I mean every time--I take the Myers Briggs test, I come out INFJ. Every description ever written speaks to the depths of my soul. It makes sense, therefore, that feeling (that's what the "F" stands for) rather than thinking my way through a story is the best approach. This is as related to interest as accountability was to audience. The problem may be compelling, and I may have a vested interest in its solution, but if I can't fire on all empathy cylinders straight into a feel for the character, then it's not happening. If I'm not driving with the radio on and don't occasionally get punched in the gut by how perfect a certain song is, not from my own perspective, but from the character's perspective, then it's not happening.
The Letter Game was great for this because, for two hours or so every other day, or however long it takes you to respond, you are that character. You may not share their views, or their history, but if you can't put yourself in their shoes and believe what they believe for two hours or so every other day, then your Letter Game won't take off, eat your brain, steal your heart, etc.
If I can't make myself cry, crack myself up, or get myself so tense that I'm moved to administer an awkward self-massage, then it's not happening.
5) No plan? No problem!
This is where the article comes in. For three years in college and one year after graduation, I had this stupid idea that I had to write to an outline. Why? Lord knows. I never had before, and I never had a problem with focus, drive, or creativity. Probably someone told me. Maybe it was an experiment. Either way, I should have stopped immediately and gone back to my old passion-driven scattershot ways. Only I didn't, because I didn't realize my writing process was a process you could wreck, and by the time it was wrecked, it was really wrecked, on multiple fronts (see above; I no longer had access to any of those things).
The Letter Game was tailor-made for a writer like me. You have to start at the beginning and write your way through. (That means no skipping around and writing your favorite parts and giving up before you get to the connective tissue out of some misguided assumption that connective tissue is boring.) You can't outline anything even if you wanted to, because at any moment your co-writer could veer off in an entirely different direction and you have to be ready to roll with it.
For the first time in four years, I finished something, and it happened because, right up until the last sentence, which fell on me fully formed from on high while I was in the shower (go figure), I didn't know where it was going until it got there.
Of course, it's not entirely finished, not really, because writing is never finished and because we're intensively editing now, and probably will be for at least another year. It's not finished, because if it's finished I have to ask myself what the next project is, and although I have several ideas, that's still a question that scares me.
Scares me, but not in a hopeless way. In an excited way. Because now I realize that with an audience, with someone holding me accountable, with genuine interest in the story and a real feel for the characters, and, finally, with absolutely no idea where I'm headed, I can't go wrong.
