Fiction - The Unplanned Birth

In my workshop today, one of my writers touched on the fundamental difference between fiction and nonfiction. She said that she normally writes nonfiction, and that she’s accustomed to outlines and roadmaps for her writing. But she hasn’t liked the results of her planned fiction. She found that she likes the results of her freewriting, but that the process is scary – there is no planning, and editing is needed at the end. But still, the she likes the results.

Part of the reason freewriting inspires the creative process is that it forces the mind to write automatically. The result is that the words you produce are words you’re intimately familiar with. You begin writing about your life, about the things you’ve seen in life, even if the story is not a true story. And it works. It has the feel of truth, because in a deep way the words written on autopilot are truth – your truth. The life you’ve been living.

This is the funny thing about good fiction - it can't be planned. It's as random as our lives, as constant as the stars. Certain aspects of the human experience are accepted as absolute - the need for food, for example, or the strain and exhaustion that come with stress - but the events and decisions of an individual defy outlines. It's a strange phenomenon - generally, most writers avoid crossing back-and-forth between fiction and nonfiction. Before freewriting, I tried to control my writing. I wanted to “make” it good. I believed in working hard to produce the “perfect” story. But results of controlled fiction aren't good, let alone perfect. The characters are stale, the decisions pre-planned, the conflict watered down.

Fiction is not nonfiction. How do I know? Try writing nonfiction without an outline and good sources. That's just not a good idea, not for a longer work. The reader has to believe in the work, and for nonfiction that means believable, reputable facts. And these facts have to fit together tight as a jigsaw puzzle. To make the truth coherent, you have to sit down and plan it out, piece it together, see how every isolated piece matches with every other.

It's not that fiction's any different in that regard - the "facts" must still be "right," and they must certainly "fit together," but the source of these facts is a different place entirely. Some call it the heart, some say it’s the unconscious mind, others believe it's the soul. Tapping it, though, is hard. Allowing the disorder and the chaos of the inner mind to creep out onto the page is a process all by itself. And then telling your conscious mind – the part of your brain that stops you from giving embarrassing revelations at work – to step aside? For some, it’s inconceivable. I've met people who don't believe in freewriting and won't try it - they hold on to the control they have, choking their own creativity. It's not a pretty sight - flat characters, organized plots without purpose, antagonists who don't care about anything except owning the world.

When editors look for good fiction, they aren't looking for someone who can string words together in the "correct" way. They're looking for someone who can reveal a protagonist's inner hate, someone who can show the antagonist's hidden love, a writer who makes us appreciate life in new ways. As you push forward in your writing, make sure that you are learning to write from within rather than simply pen beautiful sentences. Don’t plan your novel to death – write it. Feel it. Express it. And then later, after the words are on the page, after you’ve bled your soul through the keyboard, go back and edit. Assert the control you didn’t need before. Make sure the grammar isn’t too ugly. But don’t do this until you’re done. Don’t edit until after the last line is written. If you’re tempted to edit early, tempted to “tweak” the story a little bit, just keep one thing in mind: you can always edit grammar. You can insert and delete characters and subplots in a finished story. You can even go through and emphasize a theme that didn’t get enough “air time” in the rough draft. But no matter how much you edit, you can’t revive a story without heart.

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About Ryan Edel

Writing through Distraction

Freewriting's open, free-form structure is great for the office, the beach, the classroom - anywhere you go that allows only snatches of time to write your story. Since the free-write is usually not intended as a marketable story, you don't have to worry about typos or smudges or whether you can concentrate enough to make the story "good." But it still takes concentration to write, especially to "get in the groove" and write fast.

This is where your real-world setting can pose some problems. Sometimes, the air conditioner is just too loud. At the beach, you just can't take the glare of the sun in your eyes. And then, of course, there's the chatter from two cubicles down - it's nearly impossible to tune-out a conversation in-progress. For human curiosity, people talking provides too much interest. It's worse even than CNN. When you want to be writing, your mind locks-in full attention on people you don't know and don't care about simply because they're producing words.

But don't worry. You can free-write through such distractions. The key, first of all, is to relax. Writing may feel important at times, but it's rarely important enough to stress over (essays, term papers, and grad school applications excepted, of course...). It's a constant struggle for me, but I've found that placing too much importance on the words themselves hurts the work itself. When I feel pressured to perform, I begin writing words because they sound right, not because they are. Distraction then pushes me over the edge. Perfection in writing is an impossible goal - thinking about it while the AC churns is a headache waiting to happen.

The next trick - and this works really well for freewriting - is to write the distraction into your manuscript. Write about the air conditioner's grim rattle or that too-hot sun - you'll think about it less once you've written around it. I used to think this was a funny idea because I've always been good at tuning things out. My younger brother is autistic, so I grew up learning to read and study while he gave my parents and babysitters hell the next room over. But I can't tune out everything, and I can't control when and where distractions arise. One night, after a very stressful week, I set all my hopes on an hour of writing at Barnes and Noble. That was to be my "unwind time" when I could catch up with the story I hadn't worked on all week. But then there was a very large, very loud man having a one-way conversation with his wife and the entire rest of the bookstore coffee shop. I couldn't ignore him, and I already had a headache from the rest of my week - so I wrote him into a free-write. It wasn't a flattering portrayal, but the writing went on. Strangely, as I wrote more about him, I stopped hearing him talk. It was as if the mind processed his existence and then moved on to other concerns - namely writing.

But then there's the big question: what do you do when you can't write a word? When staring at the page makes you sick? When the AC and the sun and those yapping coworkers simply will not go away? Or, worse, what about when there's no physical distraction? When you're busy worrying about your taxes and your health insurance and the upcoming visit with your mother-in-law? How do you tune out your own mind?

Sometimes you don't. Instead you start writing a journal entry. You call up a friend and gripe. Or you break out the old 1040 and start filling in rows of numbers for the IRS. At some point, you have to resolve the personal distractions in your own life to allow your mind to focus on creative pursuits.

Sometimes, though, even that isn't enough. It's worse, of course, when you're working under a deadline, when you know that you have, say, one week to finish a story for a class. The days get whittled away as you sit at the keyboard contemplating the blank screen, your blank life, the blank career prospects for creative writing. You contemplate ugly notions involving your computer and the window.

That's the time to go outside. Call up some friends and hit the volleyball court. Catch a movie. Stroll on over to the local pub and start talking with random people about random things (if the people are no longer so random, then you know you're a regular). The key is to get out and live a bit. Let the brain rest. Let the ideas simmer without too much thought. Later, when you get back to your page, you'll find that the story is still in there, still ready to come out. It just flows a little better when you're relaxed. And, of course, a beer or two never hurt - never enough that I remember, of course.

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About Ryan Edel

Inspiration for Creative Writing

I once asked my classmates in an online workshop about their habits for "finding inspiration." I think I asked "what do you do to get in the writing mindset." The first response I got back was "You should strike that thought from your mind." According to my classmate, no one who wants to be a writer should wait for inspiration or "the right mindset" - you have to just sit down and write. The next day, our teacher chimed in her complete agreement. Writing, as she pointed out, is a daily habit.

Unfortunately, those weren't the answers I was looking for. Mostly I wanted to start conversation, but also I was looking to get an idea of the sort of writers my classmates were. Writers come in all shapes and sizes, and the reasons for why they write reveal a great deal about their personalities. Some write for catharsis, others for the sheer joy of words on the page, a few here and there for the sadistic pleasure of writing a horrible end to people they don't like (not that any readers here would do such a thing...right?)

But most writers don't exactly know why they write. I can give ideas as to why I write, but no one reason is "the" reason. But the tricks I use for inspiration, those are facts. For a long time, I only had simple tricks. Sometimes I'd take a break and watch a movie. Usually I had a good book sitting by my computer. Every once in a while, when nothing was flowing, I'd play a video game - I don't know why, but it helps.

But then I took a freewriting workshop. For those of you unfamiliar with freewriting, it's a way to channel your unconscious thoughts directly onto the page. To freewrite, you sit down and set a timer for maybe ten or fifteen minutes (you can go for longer or shorter, if you like). During those minutes, you write. You write fast. You write the first thing that comes to mind and the next thing that comes to mind and you edit nothing. Just let it flow. Outlandish, unusual, uncomfortable - whatever the thought is, get it on paper and move on to the next one.

From freewriting, I discovered a whole new meaning for the word "inspiration." Instead of waiting on an outside stimulus to "get my mind going," I learned that the greatest stimuli come from deep within, like the deep ocean waves you never see or feel until they come rumbling to shore.

I've taken a few freewriting seminars, but the course that introduced me was a week-long Amherst Method residency taught by Pat Schneider. Pat's Amherst Method is a complete package for learning to write from within - she incorporates freewriting with guidelines to maintain an open and accepting environment for her writers to share their work. If you can, I highly recommend taking an Amherst Method workshop with one of the many certified instructors nationwide.

If you can't make it to a workshop due to time and/or distance, Pat has two very helpful books on the Amherst Method. Writing Alone and With Others and The Writer As an Artist: A New Approach to Writing Alone & with Others are both great resources for getting in touch with your inner self through the Amherst Method. Also, I have heard very good recommendations for the works of Natalie Goldberg. Her most well-known book on this subject is Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Written in 1986, this book explores Goldberg's own experiences with inspiration and how to capture it on the page - Pat Schneider recommended it to our class as a way to become immersed in the methods of freewriting.

If you have a chance, take a freewriting workshop or take a look at some of these books. And let me know what you think. What do you do for for inspiration? How do you get "in the mood" for writing? Or have you found a motivation that keeps you sitting at your writing desk every morning?

1-2-Writing Workshops Online
About Ryan Edel