You need to sit listening to the silence

You need to sit listening to the silence, 

staring at the blank page, 

waiting for words to come, 

for letters to form beneath your pen.

You need to be patient, 

to stop rushing, 

to stop forcing the pen to write 

what it's not yet ready to write.

You need to sit in silence, 

listening to the silence, 

letting the silence wash over you.

You need to embrace the silence, 

welcome it, 

accept it, 

understand that all 

you're able to hear today

is silence, 

and that's ok

You need to know 

writing doesn't come 

with any guarantees.

You need to know 

words are shy, 

often fickle, 

afraid of committing themselves 

to paper.

You need to know 

it's not a sin 

to leave the page blank, 

to sit in silence, 

to listen to silence, 

to rise in silence ... 

without writing a word. 

On days like this 

you need to have faith 

the words will come 

and the ink will flow 

and your hand will move again

and you'll hear a voice in the silence --

just not today.

Time and Patience

Writing takes time 

and patience. You wait 

for words, hoping they'll come 

from wherever they come and 

fill the page with whatever 

is hidden in your heart.

Some days they find their way 

to the page; some days the page 

remains blank. You can't know 

ahead of time what you'll find or 

what might appear.

Some days it's like playing 

hide-and-seek: I see you. 

No you don't. Catch me if you can! 

And what you wish you'd written 

remains just beyond your reach, 

still wordless, waiting for another time 

to reveal itself to you.

And so you keep writing, waiting,

hoping whatever is hidden in

your heart will fill the page 

with words.

What Happens When You Mix Ink and Paper

It’s the kind of morning when I don’t think I have anything to write. 

I don’t feel any need to say anything new. 

I feel empty, in fact. 

Yet here I am sitting at my desk waiting and wondering what I might find on the page today.

It’s just ink and paper, yet there is a kind of magic that happens when you mix the two together. 

You can’t predict what might happen. 

The moment the nib of your pen touches the page—whoosh!—something percolates inside your brain, and your curiosity is aroused, and you wonder what will emerge from the other side of your consciousness. 

So you write to find out.

Maybe it’s a memory that you pull from a far-away time in your life. 

Maybe it’s a dream that haunts you after opening your eyes. 

Maybe it’s just the sight of sunlight falling through the window as you get out of bed. 

Maybe it’s nothing more than the sound of your breath or the sound of your pen scratching the surface of the page. 

Or maybe it’s just the feel of your chest rising and falling and the pulse of your heart beneath that reminds you of the waves of the sea and how you’re part of a universe extending beyond where you can see.

And so your pen takes you to places you might have missed if you hadn’t decided to sit down to write. 

That’s the thing about writing. 

It’s a mystery tour of the inner workings of your mind and heart. 

You never know where you’re going until you get there.

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!

Sitting and Waiting

Are you willing to sit and wait for a while?

Are you prepared to sit and wait for more than a few hours a day, more than a few days a week, more than a few weeks a month, more than a few months a year?

Are you capable of sitting and waiting for more than a year?

If you’re not willing to sit and wait for your characters to reveal themselves to you—however long it might take—then how can you expect to write about their world?

One of my teachers told me long ago that she rarely wrote fewer than thirty drafts of a novel or short story. Thirty drafts! 

Sometimes that's just how long it takes.

So, when you finish one draft, or two, or even three, perhaps you’re only starting the process, and there’s more sitting and waiting ahead.

Writing requires patience. Not just the patience to sit and wait for words to come, but the patience to wait until a character is forthcoming and willing to open himself or herself up to you.

Your characters need to trust you, and they can sense your impatience, your doubts, your discomfort sitting and waiting. They can sense when you are afraid of their story, fearful of the truths that may emerge from their lives, reluctant to face the events they want to share with you, unwilling—or unable—to confront the challenges in their day-to-day existence.

If they sense the slightest hint of fear, uncertainty, or doubt, they will remain silent.

They may show you the surface of their lives, but they will withhold the deeper issues, hide the fissures that cause them pain, and conceal the cracks that reveal their need for love and acceptance.

If you can sit and wait, though, they may grant you a gift.

They may tell you who they truly are and how they live their lives and what they want and what they fear and what they’re willing to do for love.

They may give you the gift of a story.

Sometimes writing isn’t just about getting words on paper.

It’s about trusting and doubting, and about being afraid and being able to love, and about hoping and believing in a story that you can't yet see and in characters who you can't yet hear.

It’s about sitting.

And waiting.

Waiting

It’s painful to sit

and wait for nothing

to happen

just sitting and holding

a pen and looking

at a blank page

listening to your breath

flow in and out—

sigh—

and feeling your

heartbeat

aware of each blink

of an eyelid,

each second that passes

without a word

to break the silence.

It’s painful to sit

and wait for nothing

to happen.

When will you realize

that whatever happens

is invisible, hidden

from sight,

and that words

will rise to the surface

whether you’re asleep

or awake, waiting or not?

Look -- all the time

you thought you were

staring at a blank page, 

and now? 

How do you

explain the words

that appeared beneath

your pen when you

weren’t looking?

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Cultivate Patience

Writing’s not a career for the faint-hearted or those seeking instant gratification.

So much of a writer’s life is spent waiting—waiting for words to come, stories to appear, the next critique group to meet, the response to a manuscript or contract from an editor or agent.

Waiting can transform your writing life into a daunting succession of days filled with agony, self-doubt, and frustration.

But if you're able to take a different perspective, waiting can give you much-needed breathing room from the unrelenting routine (and often confusion) of your work-in-progress.

Perhaps you’ve noticed as you plow through draft after draft that you've grown closer to your characters and more deeply enmeshed in the plot.

Perhaps you’ve noticed, too, you've grown so close that sometimes you can lose sight of where the story is going, or you can no longer understand the underlying motivations for the way your characters are behaving or the reasons for that last plot twist.

Waiting can give you the space and distance that you need to see your work anew.

While you’re waiting, you might decide to doodle in your notebook with a new pen and unexpectedly stumble over a new idea that will let you take your work-in-progress in a new direction, or you might discover a new project altogether.

While you’re waiting, you might take a break from writing and go outside to shovel snow off the sidewalk, or mow the lawn (if you live in Florida), or putter with plants or paint brushes or a new computer program, or bake a chocolate chip banana bread, or experiment with a new recipe for black bean burgers—anything to give your mind a chance to rest, to free yourself from the tyranny of waiting.

For most of us writing is, as E.B. White wrote, “laborious and slow.”

White reminds us that “The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by.”

Writing is a waiting game, and, as writers, it’s our job to wait for the next thought or idea to flash across the screen of our imagination.

“A writer is a gunner,” wrote White, “sometimes waiting in his blind for something to come in…”

But sometimes we can go after ideas and seek out stories instead of waiting for them to appear.

In White’s words, we can roam “the countryside hoping to scare something up.”

Of course, it helps to remember, whether you’re waiting for ideas or scouring the countryside in search of them, stories aren’t written overnight.

It helps, too, to remember the wisdom of E.B. White, and to remind yourself of his advice that a writer “must cultivate patience; he may have to work many covers to bring down one partridge.”