…than never to have written at all. No surprise there.
But I noticed an odd thing about my writing the other day–or rather, the writing I was not doing. I’d been going through a bout of writer’s block (yes, it is real; I will go to the mat on this), but of late I could feel the ice beginning to thaw. My problem had been not so much that I couldn’t write about anything, but rather that I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to write about. Nothing I could come up with held any interest for me, and what doesn’t interest you won’t interest your reader.
And then something came to me. It concerned a character I’ve written extensively about, so I knew both that I could do it and that I would find it interesting. And yet, I couldn’t get started. Every time I tried a little voice in my head said, “Don’t write that. It won’t be any good.”
I’ve written before about the two halves of a writer’s brain: Let’s call them the Creator and the Editor. The Creator is that spirit that lets you sit down and write something new. The Editor is the one who comes in afterward and cleans up the messy bits, trims the fat, etc. Ideally, these two operate independently, but very often the Editor will try to horn in on the creative process, which only slows it down.
The trick with writing is to tell the Editor to sit at his desk and play games on his phone until the Creator is finished with the first draft, no matter how long or messy that process is. Unless you’re Shakespeare or Asimov, your first draft is supposed to be garbage. (If you don’t believe me, look here.) But with most of us, it’s not that easy. After all, while admitting to your mistakes is admirable, it’s generally considered better not to make them in the first place. Hence your Editor hounding you about revisions even as you’re getting the words down.
I didn’t know it, but my Editor had taken matters a step further. And I didn’t see it until a friend was telling me about a documentary he was watching about the Beatles. He said it was amazing that they started with a fragment of music, added to it until it was a whole song, then honed the song until it became the genius we know today. I said, “The thing about great art is that people don’t see it until it’s great.”
After all, art is like an iceberg. The reader or the listener or the viewer only sees what’s above the surface, but most of the work that went into it lies below. And that theme kind of rolled around in my head until I sat down to write that evening and suddenly I realized that the Editor wasn’t content any more merely with the tinkering that would remain below the water line–he wanted to tell me what to write in the first place.
The second this dawned on me, it was like the proverbial weight off my shoulders. I told the Editor to sit down and mind his own business until I was done. He hasn’t, but he hasn’t tried to stop me any more, either. And now I’m deep into a story that I know I will finish and if it isn’t good enough, well, I know who to call.
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Before I go, I need to mention that I have a new story, “Collateral Damage” out in the inaugural issue of Sally Port Magazine. The tag line is, “The laurel wreath of victory is woven with the bones of its victims.” When wizards fight for the fate of kingdoms, do they remember who it is they’re fighting for?
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Graffiti on the Walls of Time 