On Trusting Our Own Writing Process
Or, on how all the other writers seem like they're performing magic tricks
Every now and again, I'll be reading a magazine or scrolling my timelines or having a writing chat with a friend when I'll come across a little nugget about how other people approach writing a novel. I almost always take notice when this happens. You probably do too. And why wouldn't we? Other people's writing processes are fascinating. It seems a kind of alchemy, how other people go about tying their stories to the page. A kind of magic, though, in truth, I know it isn't. I know this from experience, because it isn't magic that builds my own manuscripts. Rather, it's the simple act of sitting down to work on them, day after day after day.
And yet... I keep on reading how other people do it. And each time I read a new account, I take away something different. Because, though I think it’s true that writing is essentially a simple mechanism, it seems like everyone likes to involve their own cogs in the process.
Some people write and throw away whole drafts with the expectation that anything that was important will somehow remain. Some people write by hand long before they even consider approaching a screen. Some people seek feedback from the very first draft, others not until they’ve reframed and reworked half a dozen times. Some people edit over and over as they go, taking two steps back for every three they take forward. Some people complete each draft in the rush of a fever dream. Some people write for hours and hours each day, others for just little snatches. Some people do their best creative thinking on long country walks, others in the half-awake time before they drop off to sleep.
Sometimes these little glimpses into other people's processes can be inspiring. But other times, they can seem a little alien, or inaccessible, or downright anxiety-inducing. (PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME THROW AWAY A WHOLE DRAFT). There's no one way to tell a story, and just because writers we admire do things a certain way, there's absolutely nothing to suggest that we should do the same.
Because, just like no two novels are the same, neither are any two writers. For one thing, none of us are sitting down to uncap our (possibly metaphorical) pen from the same level starting point. We have different rhythms and needs and goals. We have different dependents and commitments and bodies. What might work amazingly well for one writer in a creative sense might be completely impossible for another from a practical sense. (Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how many times I hear that the best way to untangle a tricky plot point is to go for a walk, I remain physically unable to do so and have to continue to unravel from a seated position).
What I'm trying to say, I think, is that we all need to trust our own process. It's nice, occasionally, to flirt with the way other people do things, and sometimes we might find a way to incorporate some of that inspiration. But it's very easy to look at other people's writing processes – or, more importantly, what other people say about their writing processes – and feel a little cowed. Other people always seem better, faster, more interesting than ourselves. Other people always sound like they've got everything figured out. And once we start thinking like this, it becomes very easy to fall into the sort of logic that tells us that if we can't do things the way our writing heroes do it, then there isn't really any point in trying.
We're back, then, to the idea of other people's creative processes seeming like a special kind of magic. Like all the other writers are performing trick after trick under their hat or behind their cloaks, while we're just soldiering on at our keyboards. But who's to say that those same people aren't thinking the same things about us and the way we do things? I reckon that what feels like a simple mechanism, over and over, to one person might look very much like a complicated alchemy from another perspective.
So! Perhaps we all have a little magic in our fingertips.
Since my last newsletter, I’ve loved:
The House of Fortune by Jessie Burton (A glorious sequel to The Miniaturist, but I think it also works as a stand alone novel.)
The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn (Wonderful, and long enough to really lose yourself in.)
The Castle of Tangled Magic by Sophie Anderson (The perfect children’s book for reading aloud.)
The Secrets of Hartwood Hall by Katie Lumsden (A gothic Victorian mystery filled with secrets.)
Very true. This works for me and some others, have you tried it, is far better than, this inherently works and this doesn't.