The Practice

A Tenth Anniversary Re-Post: May, 2009

 

Stay open for business.
--Gordon Lish

You have never felt more uninspired. You don't have the energy, you don't have the will, you don't have... it. The temptation to avoid the blank page is so powerful that anything -- watching reality TV, scraping poop out of parrot cages, even going to the gym -- seems a vastly more meaningful pursuit. Surely you can skip the hour or two you've set aside to write, just this once. You'll make up for it tomorrow. What could you possibly write, right now, that could be worth the effort? So you close the journal, shut down the laptop, step away from the desk.

You're fucked.

Who is the muse most likely to visit? The writer who's always in her chair at the appointed hour, day after day, or the one who has to be chased down, who shows up when it's most convenient?

How does LeBron James score 44 points in a single game?

An interview with the illustrious producer/songwriter Nick Lowe (you may know him best for his work with Elvis Costello in the late Seventies) can be found in the current issue of The Believer. He had this to say about his process:

Sometimes I find that I have this sort of… this sort of other—I have this person or this thing which I call “the Bloke.” The Bloke is, I suppose, a kind of inspirational thing that—I used to say that when I, you know, was writing songs—I have written a couple of songs, but since I’ve had a little boy, it’s very, very difficult to devote time to it, so I haven’t written much for a while. But I always used to talk about how the best songs that I write are written when the Bloke comes ’round. And it’s this sort of person who I never know when they’re gonna come, or how to get in touch with him, or anything like that, but when they come along, it’s almost like they’re not interested in doing any interviews, they’re not interested in being on the TV or doing any tours; they’re this fantastic songwriter to show me their songs and I write, I do their songs, and claim them for my own. And sometimes the Bloke doesn’t come ’round for months, you know, and I don’t know how to get in touch with him, but I’ve seen him work so many times that I can do a very good impersonation of the Bloke, you know. And I know the difference, I know the difference between my songs, the ones I do and I write, and the ones the Bloke writes. 

I'm going to go out on an extremely short limb and say that Mr. Lowe's Bloke only came round in the first place because Mr. Lowe had his guitar out and his amp on and a pick in his hand.  In the interview, he  marvels at his friend John Hiatt, who really does go to an office every day to write songs, and Nick Lowe professes to be unable to do such a thing.  But given that he also talks about what it takes, in terms of time and energy, to write a single song, I wouldn't exactly call him a slacker:

It takes me months to write one two-and-a-half-minute song. Months! Not always, but—weeks, it can take me weeks to get it, to go over and over it. But I do it when I’m driving my car or I’m doing my shopping or something, and I just think about it and think about it and hit myself with it, you know, “How’s this?” And you jag on a bit, “Woah, hold on, that’s not good,” and then you smooth it out, maybe employ a clever use of a cliché, you know, just to smooth it out, and then you do a clever bit later. So I work on it like mad...

 

For me, writing is like breathing.  I'm always writing something...  Writing is like training for an athlete or practice for a musician.  If you stop entirely, it takes a long time to get your pace back.
--Haruki Murakami

Then there are writers who keep writing, rewriting far beyond the point where some sane people would pronounce a work finished. The method to this madness is actually quite simple:

Writing is like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those  pages you remove somehow remain. There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred pages are there. Only you don't see them.
--Elie Wiesel

Until there is a draft, there is nothing. And a draft is written one page, one sentence, one word at a time. The only way out is through.

Sometimes, if things are going badly, I will force myself to write a page in half an hour.  I find that can be done.  I find that what I write when I force myself is generally just as good as what I write when I'm feeling inspired.  It's mainly a matter of forcing yourself to write.  There's a marvelous essay that Sinclair Lewis wrote on how to write.  He said most writers don't understand that the process begins by actually sitting down.
--Tom Wolfe

You're going to die, along with the rest of us. Are you so fundamentally silly in spirit as to pretend that this fact can be ignored? So, then -- you who are blessed and cursed with the belief that you have something worthwhile to say -- what have you said today? What starting point have you given yourself that can be moved on from, tomorrow? 

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

--Japanese proverb

 

(photos: Catherine's Room by Bill Viola) 

Comments

[E.C. Henry]

Great re-post, Billy. Really apros for where I'm at these days, albeit the editing variety as opposed to 1st draft creation.

Even LeBron James, as great as he is, has to practice at some point. No matter how blessed an athlete or writer is, they have to put in the time to hone their skill to reach those levels that OTHER PEOPLE will consider as being great.

For me, a real key right now is avoiding burnout. Something you didn't touch on in this post which is a real important issue for writers to grapple over and master is how to deal with constant exposure to the same thing.

What do you do when you know the end result of what you want to have, but aren't there yet?

Not all writing is creative in nature, some of it is a grind. After you have your story, you still hafta make it great. To get there you have to repeatedly go over the same material with the goal of which being after each pass it gets better, approaching LeBron James' level of excellence.

Some of us may never reach that high level, but by pushing ourselves we are capable of creating a higher lever of art, at the root of which is, PRACTICE!

[mernitman]

EC: That threat of burnout on a project is a real concern. I've found over the years that having a second project to work on is a good way to go - when you're out of fuel on your primary project, you can "visit" the other one and do some work on it... Often sparks insights re: the one you've temporarily stepped away from.