10 February 04
The Muck Off the Pond
Maria at Alembic and Lorianne at Hoarded Ordinaries have both within the last week prompted some thinking about the nature of writing. Lorianne’s under a fearsome deadline to get a dissertation finished on time; Maria wondered whether there were enough words to go around what with being paid to write and scrambling to find pieces of paper with words written on them; she suggests writing for oneself first.
Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way is relegated in my mind to the 1990s and a slew of get-rich-quick schemes, none of which really worked in the end. Her point was that if you wrote three pages-the dreaded “morning pages”-every day, you’d be clearing the scum off the pond of your mind, and you’d be able to compose an opera, write a dissertation, paint a masterpiece, or knit a tea cosy before dinner. (Or all of the above, really, honest.)
I used to believe in this model of writing, and I have books of drivel to show for it. I’m grateful to the blog, I suppose, for providing an audience (even theoretical) to keep the drivel somewhat under control. Being on an every-other-day schedule as we are provides a structure for the writing that suits me, at least, quite well. But unlike Julia Cameron, I think there are probably as many models of writing as there are writers.
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I think the secret is to find the method that works for you & then to do it. JC’s method works for some folks, but I wouldn’t say it’s the “only” way. The only way, ultimately, is the way that works for YOU.
This sounds banal, but it comes down to a question of priorities. I had to set aside creative writing entirely for three months this summer/fall to write a lengthy technical report. But it has already paid dividends for our little nonprofit effort, and I can look at what I’m writing now and recognize that it benefited enormously from that in-depth (out of my depth!) pursuit of linguistic precision. What I would say to the Julia Camerons of the world is that we all need to challenge ourselves daily. And obviously there is no one-size-fits-all prescription for that. She’s nuts!
Just as a small note: my complaint in my post wasn’t about the limited supply of words, but about the limited hours in the day. My dilemma was that if I poured as much energy (and agony) into the words I was getting paid for as I usually do into the words of my other writings, then I would likely be too tired to write “down to the bones” or up to some other “creative” exploratory standard … hence the suggestion to dive into that work first. After all, the pleasure of that kind of writing can, in the end, buoy the “mercenary” pieces, those texts composed for dollars….
Perhaps the best answer to this dilemma (which maybe a false one) comes from the stage: “The are no small parts, only bad actors” (or something like it). Which is to say: For a writer, all words—whether they are strung together by command or commanded by a passion for writing—ought o be about the craft of their art.