Letting go

I remember sitting at my desk years ago, alone in my college dorm room, staring at the typewriter’s unmoving keys beneath my fingers and the blank paper in front of me.

I kept wondering where the words were hiding.

I didn’t understand yet—it took years to understand— how writing works. 

How the words won’t come until I begin typing or writing, moving my hand across the page, pressing my fingers on the keypads.

Words are shy. 

They need to be coaxed out of hiding. 

They need to be teased gently into the light. 

They’ll refuse to reveal themselves until you begin moving your hand. 

Once you make that commitment and draw the first letter of the first word, writing becomes like breathing.

You take a breath, then another breath, and the next letter, the next word, will follow.

Let go of expectations.

Let go of what you think you should write.

Let the words come in whatever way they want to come. 

Remember you can always revise the words after they’ve made their way onto the page. 

Start by moving your hand. 

Allow yourself to believe in the mystery, the not knowing where the words might take you. 

Trust the words to know the path they need to take, and follow the words to wherever the path leads you.

Let yourself be surprised. 

Stand aside. (Hint: Get out of the way.)

And open yourself to whatever gifts your pen brings you. 

What you need to do

You need to arrange your life

so that being able to write

is your first priority

(and being able to read

your second).

You need to set aside time

without feeling guilty

you're not earning

a living.

You need to let yourself

enjoy writing... and not 

disparage the process

because nothing comes

of the words you 

put on paper

today.

You need to sit

and think regardless

of what others think

you should be doing,

to daydream, to follow

wherever the path

leads you.

You need to stop trying

to control the process,

to open your heart

and look inside

without flinching

or turning away.

You need to let yourself

feel whatever emotion

you need to feel, to resist

doubt, fear, uncertainty,

to ignore the voice

in your head telling 

you that you have

nothing to say,

nothing of worth

to offer,

no reason to pick up

your pen

or that you're not

smart enough

or imaginative enough

or brave enough.

You need to savor

each day, each moment,

the pen moving across the page

the ink leaving marks behind,

evidence that you are here--

living, breathing,

alive.

 

Swimming against the current

There are some days when writing can feel like we're swimming against the current, and we have to acknowledge we aren't able to make any headway. 

It can feel like we're caught in a riptide pulling us further and further from shore, and even though we keep trying to swim toward our destination, swimming only gets harder.

And the harder we try to return to shore, the more fatigued we become... and the more impossible it is to keep swimming.  

Each stroke leaves us weaker, and each effort we make to keep writing feels more and more futile.

What are we supposed to do? 

Do we stay in the water and keep trying to swim against the current? 

Or do we try to get out?

In such a situation, the first thing we might need to do, I suspect, is to recognize that we're caught in the riptide.

And then we need to stop struggling, stop trying to swim back toward shore. 

I know it sounds counterintuitive, but on days when it feels like we're swimming against the current, we need to let go of what we want to do and allow the current to take us where it wants to take us. 

Only then, when the current begins to slack off and loses its power, can we slip out of its grip and start swimming again-- parallel to shore rather than directly toward it--until we've escaped the current's clutches entirely and can swim back towards shore unimpeded. 

It may take a while when we're swimming against the current to realize “this isn’t working,” and it takes courage to be willing to let go of what we're trying to write, to stop struggling, put down our pen, and refrain from pushing on.

But in order to keep writing, we need to figure out another route, a different path, to reach our destination. 

There is a fear in all of us, I suspect, that if we stop writing, we’ll sink to the bottom of the sea and never return to the surface again. 

Writing is what keeps us afloat, after all.

But here's the thing: when we stop writing, we don’t sink.

We keep floating, sustained by the desire to write, our love of words, our need for stories and poems.

And floating--that stage when we're still in the water but not swimming in a particular direction-- can give us the perspective we need to regain our bearings and see where we are and where we need to go.

Once we're able to stop swimming against the current, we can begin making our way towards home.

If you'd like to check out a few helpful articles on when writing is hard, visit:

https://www.well-storied.com/blog/hard-truths

https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/7-things-to-try-when-writing-is-hard/

https://writingcooperative.com/5-simple-reasons-why-writing-is-hard-really-hard-1cfee9ced1f5

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culturally-incorrect/201804/writing-when-its-hard

https://medium.com/the-brave-writer/if-youre-having-a-hard-time-writing-maybe-this-is-why-f1802a0b86b3

Long Haul Revisions

Sometimes I think revising one’s work is all about letting go.

Like when you fly a kite and the wind pulls the string out of your hand and you have to let go (or get burned by the string) and you watch the kite flying off on its own?

That’s a little bit what revising feels like at the moment.

I’m feeling helpless to guide the characters. They're on their own now, like the kite, free-floating, each character guided by his or her own inner compass, not mine.

But I’m also feeling, after just a half-dozen revisions, that I’m a much more intent observer, trying to take everything in and get it on paper. 

It’s as if I’ve become a recorder of events as they unfold, a conduit, so to speak, for a story that’s happening inside my head as it spins itself out into the world line by line.

If I’m patient and willing to wait quietly—like a fisherman waiting for a fish to bite—I will eventually feel the tug on the hook and know that it won’t be long before I’ll learn something more about the story and the characters in it.

At the moment I’m printing out the latest batch of revisions for a manuscript that I started back in January.

I’m forging forward using one of my writing teacher’s methods of revising, which means that I’ll need to revise these pages in front of me at least 30 more times (thanks, Norma!) before I consider the manuscript finished (or decide if I need to revise for another 30 drafts).

Well, okay, thirty drafts may seem like a stretch--and sixty drafts, well, that's a bit mind-boggling at the moment--but if that’s what it takes, then I’m willing to aim for a high number of revisions, even though it’s daunting to think of revising the same pages that many times.

But here’s one of the surprises that I've learned over the past half-dozen revisions of this particular manuscript.

Revising over and over again is liberating!

The manuscript is still malleable, still a work-in-progress. It can change and grow.

And thinking about revisions in this way—revisions over the long haul—has taken a lot of the pressure off the process.

Instead of trying to shoo the manuscript out the door like a reluctant calf or puppy, I can take my time. I can give myself permission to look at each character with care. I can listen more closely to each character’s voice. I can better understand their struggles.

Until recently I hadn’t realized the manuscripts that I was shooing out the door earlier in my career were too young, too immature, for the world, unable to stand on their own.

In my head they were finished, but on paper they weren’t done and not quite ready to share with readers.

Long haul revisions may seem like a slow process, but, really, it’s just a process of taking the time it takes to get acquainted with my characters and to learn about them on a deeper level, to understand what’s going on beneath the surface of their lives.

This kind of long haul revising is also a process of waiting for characters to talk, to divulge their stories, to share their secrets, so the story itself expands and deepens in ways that I could never have envisioned if I’d stopped revising in an earlier draft.

Truths and lies slip out of their mouths, or they act in ways that I might never have expected. 

And these unexpected moments of discovery take the story on a path that I could never have predicted. They invest the story with life so the story becomes a living, breathing thing, no longer lifeless words on a page but a record of lives in the process of living, searching for answers, exploring the world, and finding… well, each character finds something different, unique to him or her.

Anyway, I’m enjoying the process of long haul revisions (even on days when I have no idea what will happen next or where the story might be going).

I hope you are finding ways to enjoy revising your work, too!

The Power of the Sea

We would stand on the beach at Montauk, a boy and his father, looking out past the easternmost point on Long Island, and I'd strain to hear my father’s words as the ocean waves broke in front of us, crashing and thundering to reveal their power.

“Never turn your back on the ocean,” my father would warn me. “The riptides are treacherous.”

Some of the waves were five and six feet tall, and my father, who was broad-shouldered and a good swimmer, would dive into the waves after issuing this warning, and I’d watch with admiration as he swam under and through them.

Somehow he always managed to emerge safely in the calm sea beyond the crash of the waves, and that’s where he’d wait for a large wave to ride back into shore.

A few times, though, he'd turn his back to the sea, and a wave would surprise him with its power and catch him off guard. And I’d watch from the shore as the wall of water slammed into his shoulders and hips and dragged him under.

Those moments when he disappeared from view were always frightening. I remember waiting anxiously until I could see his head bob to the surface. Only then would I release my breath and feel the tension in my body relax as he stood up and walked out of the sea.

All these years I’ve followed his advice, never turning my back on the sea, except for once —and that’s the time when a strong current took me by surprise.

It happened when I was swimming off Long Beach Island in New Jersey. I turned my back on the sea for a moment, and, without warning, a strong undertow grabbed my arms and legs, and the current felt like a steel clamp as it dragged me away from the beach toward the open sea.

I was scared and tried not to panic. No amount of kicking or swimming could save me. My legs were swept out from under me, and the current pinned my arms to my sides and pulled me further out.

I worried that I would drown if I couldn’t find the bottom with my feet or swim out of danger. There was simply nothing I could do except let the current take me.

And then the current slowed and my toes unexpectedly touched bottom, a shallow reef that wasn’t visible from the surface, and I pushed with all my might and managed to slip out of the current’s grasp into calmer water.

I was breathing hard, but I was safe.

Lately, as I make my way into the deeper water of revisions, I try to remember how letting the current take me was what saved me.

With each new draft, it feels like the current is trying to pull me under again. On some days I feel like I’m being pulled into dangerous water, that I'm out-of-control, drowning.

What I need to remember about revisions is what I learned when I was being dragged out to sea by the current.

I need to remind myself to let go of the need to control the situation, to stop fighting the current.

I need to remember not to panic if I lose my way.

I need to take deep breaths and try to let myself float and go with the current, even as my father's warning continues to echo in my ear. 

Never turn your back on the ocean. The riptides are treacherous.

Yes, I've learned, the ocean currents can be dangerous. 

But if I can find a way to let go of panic and fear, the way my father used to swim through the rough waves off Montauk's beaches,  the current will take me toward the deepest part of the sea.

And that's where I'll find the source of our stories.

Wet Clay

The other day I was talking with a friend about revisions, and he mentioned that the hardest thing for him to accept about the revision process is letting go of his words or, as other writers say, “killing off his darlings.”

He spends an inordinate amount of time carefully constructing sentences and admitted it’s painful for him to delete a sentence from a paragraph, even when he can see and acknowledge that the words don’t belong there.

One of the keys to letting go of one’s words, or “killing off your darlings,” is learning to view the revision process in incremental stages. Revisions don’t happen all at once but rather slowly over time. There are early revisions, later revisions, still later revisions, and, most likely, many more revisions until you reach the stage of “final” revisions before sharing the manuscript with a trusted reader or sending it off to your editor.

I like to view the early stages of a draft in terms of wet clay because seeing the words on the page as malleable and still fluid gives me the freedom to move them, cross them out, or replace them with new words. I can make a mess without worrying about breaking anything. (And if I keep copies of earlier drafts, I don’t really lose anything.)

The problem with seeing the words on the page as set in stone too soon is that you won’t be able to move or change them. They’re frozen on the page, either because you’re afraid of losing what you’ve written, or else you believe that simply because they appear on the page that they cannot be altered.

The medium of wet clay, unlike stone, is perfect as a catalyst for creativity.

You can reshape it, flatten it, mold it, take a stylus and write whatever you want, then wipe away the words and write something else. Wet clay will accept any mark that you feel you’d like to make on the page, even if only for the sake of testing out a new color of ink or a different style of writing.

Hard stone, on the other hand, is inflexible, baked to a solidity that forbids further experimentation with the words on the page.

If you try to write on the hard surface of stone, you may break the nub of your pen or scratch your hand. You can’t erase or rub out what’s there. You can only view it as finished, even when, deep in your heart, you know there’s more work to be done.

How many of us experience the same kind of pain as my friend when facing the task of revising a draft? How many of us are afraid of letting go of the words on the page and diving into our stories again to reshape them, rewrite the words from a different perspective, or use a different voice or tone?

The key to surmounting one’s fear of letting go is to see the pages of your draft as wet clay rather than as hard stone.

Remind yourself that you can dip your finger in the clay and play with words, expand or shrink sentences, move paragraphs, turn the world upside down and then right-side up again, until you feel you’ve shaped the words into a new and satisfying form.

If you feel your words are set in stone and that you can’t touch them, perhaps you need to step back from your project... and try to gauge the stage that you’ve reached with it. Is it really the final stage? Or are you simply wishing for the final stage because you want to be finished, even if, on some deep level, you know there’s more work to do?

For more information on letting go of your words–"killing off your darlings"– in the revision process, visit:

http://brianyansky.blogspot.com/2010/06/kill-your-darlings.html
http://dragonwritingprompts.blogsome.com/2008/01/26/how-to-kill-your-darlings-without-remorse/
http://www.murdershewrites.com/2010/06/17/kill-your-darlings/
http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2010/07/01/kill-your-darlings/
http://onerealstory.com/weekly-creative-writing-tip-kill-your-darlings/

Insights into Writing: Kyoko Mori

In Kyoko Mori’s new memoir, Yarn: Remembering the Way Home, a remarkable meditation on knitting and the themes of love and loss, Mori shares valuable insights into her writing process.

In the passage below, for instance, Mori describes her writing as a process of "holding on and letting go..." that provides her with a way of moving forward into new terrain rather than simply repeating herself.

Here’s what she writes:

Knitting had taught me to plunge into color and swim through it, each row of stitches like a long lap across the pool. Though the motion seemed repetitive, the rows were adding up to a larger design just as the laps were adding to the actual distance I had traveled. My writing, too, had to be a movement and not a repetition. If I could match the perfect knitting tension in my head–holding on and letting go at once–then the words and the sentences sometimes veered away from where they were going and guided me to a new thought that surprised me. I found myself suddenly on the other side of the muddled, tangled phrases, with words for what I didn’t know before. Those were the moments to write for. (p. 146)

Mori notices a tension--"the perfect tension"--in her head when she knits, doesn’t she? Where does that tension come from? She suggests that it comes from holding on and letting go at once. And she discovers that if, while writing, she can match that tension--holding on to the familiar while letting go into the unknown--she can break through to discover a new thought and new words “for what I didn’t know before.”

Here’s another passage:

But in writing, the best passages came to me either as a complete surprise–whole sentences effortlessly appearing in the back of my mind–or else they were the result of so many agonized revisions that, later, I couldn’t bear to recall how I’d arrived at the final version. Either way, the not-knowing was the price I had to pay to write the few sentences among many that gave me the most pleasure. Once I got something right, I couldn’t do it again. (p. 187)

Here Mori points to a slightly different kind of tension, the kind that comes from “not knowing” ... and explains how not knowing can lead to knowing, regardless of whether the words that emerge are the result of numerous revisions or if they come as a complete surprise.

In both passages Mori provides insights into the writing process that might help you as you begin swimming your laps in the year ahead.

For more on Kyoko Mori’s newest book, Yarn, visit:
http://www.gemmamedia.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=18&idcategory=

And for more about Mori, visit:
http://www.eduplace.com/kids/tnc/mtai/mori.html

Letting go

The process of writing a first draft (and even later drafts) involves a continual struggle to let go, to stop trying to control the process, to step out of the way and let the words flow.

Letting go–the ability to surrender to the process–is, ultimately, what every writer hopes to do. It’s why we spend our lives keeping journals and doing writing exercises and reading interviews with other writers and studying books and stories.

We do all this in the hope of learning how to let go, to reach that place where we can let the words flow without judgment or criticism or praise, just let the words be on the page as they need to be.

Letting go means letting the words make their appearance in whatever order or shape they need to arrive on the page... in that moment.

Letting go means letting the words travel that mysterious route flowing from your heart through your hand to the page.

It means knowing that you can rearrange the words and replace them and reshape them after they’ve made their appearance on the page.

It means letting the words come so you will have something to work with on the page (which will involve a different kind of engagement with the flow of words in later drafts).

How do you open the door to your heart in each stage of a work-in-progress? How do you learn to let go?

It’s as easy (and hard) as slipping into the water, except you’re sitting at your desk or at a table in a café, your pen poised, ready to begin writing.

Listen to your breath and relax.

Open to the possibility of dreams and hope.

Let go of expectations--of judgment and praise--and give yourself permission to be curious.

Ask questions.

Notice what’s happening inside yourself, as well as all around you.

And then ask more questions.

Most of all, lighten up.

Let yourself make mistakes, fall down, trip over your own feet, and laugh about it.

Let your pen take you where you need to go.

For more on letting go, visit:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Unstructured-Writing:-Letting-Go-and-Finding-Flow&id=176484
http://wordsauce.com/blog/2009/09/16/letting-go-and-free-writing/
http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2007/10/letting-go-of-t.html
http://community.livejournal.com/thru_the_booth/142704.html