Have you ever worked hard and wondered how you got there?
Do you know what that’s called?
Life
Have you ever read something and wondered how the author successfully wrote it?
Do you know what that’s called?
Hard Work
Is there a difference between the two?
I think it was Ernest Hemingway who (immodestly) said he made writing look easy.
Looking at a completed story may seem easy and simple. For those people who think that is true, I ask you to write from point A to point C and hope you make it there.
Writing Without a Plan
Crazy?
No
Writing With a Plan
Makes life easier
Okay, there’s value to writing without a plan and there’s a term for it. It’s called free writing.
Free writing can be the most exhilarating thing. It’s a flow of thoughts, ideas — a stream of consciousness — that you write on the page. It’s pure expression. You write without regard to grammar, spelling, sentence structure, etc.
After that, you read what you wrote and start making the decisions of what to cut, and what to germinate.
You take the seeds and start writing again, only this time with more concentrated thought. You make those words say what you mean. You’re trying to drive home a point.
It’s in the expansion of the piece that you can come across problems. It doesn’t work like you had thought or planned. It feels forced. Knowing when to take a break, when to let the work sit and simmer, when to continue bending and knowing when to let go.
This is where hard work begins and is where I suggest coming up with an outline.
With the outline, you are forced to become more organized and in that organization, the work becomes easier.
Sometimes working from the end is the best place to start. I already know the ending, so I come up with the plot from the end point.
Most writers don’t work that way, but writing from the end point is easier. I wonder what would happen if teachers taught writing from the end instead of the beginning? It would be an interesting way to solve a problem. I have a term for this; it’s called backwards movement. It’s when the story moves forward by moving backwards.
It’s similar to solving a Rubik’s cube. You have to go backwards to solve the puzzle very much like derivatives and anti-derivatives in calculus. You have to undo, to go forward. Think of it this way: you can’t align all the colors on one side of Rubik’s cube to solve the puzzle. It simply doesn’t work that way. But if you figure out the pattern and work backwards, ah, then you’re on to something.
The same can be said about writing.
Look for my follow-up on the writing process in the coming week!