On Writing

Katie D.

April 12, 2009 - 3:00 PM

I spend a lot of time writing. I have for years. Ever since my fabulous middle school English teacher Diana Solis showed me that I could be more than just a consumer of fiction and poetry, but also a contributor to the field.

Since then I have turned to the written word at every stage of my life: when I have been most happy, most distressed, in the midst of planning or mourning or confusion. I have published several poems, of which I am exceedingly proud. I also have an entire notebook, representing roughly two years, of poems so embarrassing I nearly threw the thing away. At times in my life I have journaled religiously or not at all, have written a poem every day or not for weeks, or have spent so much time on academic writing that the only time I have for creative writing is moments of boredom in class when the back pages of my notes turn into poems and short stories.

I even wrote a novel. Oh yes, a whole novel. We're talking 53,000 words, 91 single-spaced pages. About as long as The Great Gatsby. Plot line, original characters, beginning, middle, and end. I wrote it on a whim, one might say. Over winter break my sophomore year I was planning to check out The Writer's Market from the library, which is basically a catalog of publication opportunities for short stories and articles. But the book wasn't available, so I picked a book at random. The book was called No Plot? No Problem and is by the creator of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. So I accidentally ended up with a book that was telling me to write a novel in a month. If you write 2,000 words a day you can do it. I wrote my book between December 8th and December 31st, 2007. And I am very, very proud of it.

The process of writing that novel was such an amazing feeling. I lived my life as usual: catching up with my Colorado friends, spending time with my family, spending some time in the snow. But the thought of my novel haunted me-it was constantly in the background, and I spent the idle moments in conversation or driving imagining what might come next in the story. I would get home in the evening and write. No matter what time I got home I would write. Night is always best for me: I've had a whole day to process ideas and to think of new twists. So either after dinner or after a night with friends, I would sit down and pound out 2,000 words. I wrote fast, and without looking back. I created characters and then threw roadblocks up for them, and watched them react. The creation of a character is like the process of getting to know a person: after a while you are not inventing the action because there is an obvious way that person will react. Maybe that doesn't make sense. I have been very heavily influenced by the book On Writing by Stephen King, which advocates a style of writing that is more right-brained than plot mapped, and has more spontaneity and feeling of liveliness than a feeling of outlined structure.

I wrote it so fast that there are huge discrepancies between the first part and the last, including changes in characters and styles. I had to make a decision last winter when I went back to edit-I had to decide whether or not it would be worth it to make it into something publishable, something to show the world. I decided it was a book written from a very specific time in my life, and that a project I would undertake at that point, six months later, would be very different. Rather than be limited by a work in need of editing, I decided to let it sit, and to continue with new and different writing projects. It was a wonderful life experience, one of those things I'd always wanted to do and was always afraid I wouldn't be able to. I take that accomplishment and call it good, without needing to do any more with it than feel proud for what I'd done.

That fast-writing style, and the breakthrough into a long genre, has really helped my writing since then. That's how I write most things, actually. I spend time thinking what needs to be said, what could possibly happen, and then when I sit down to write, doing an outline would be like throwing up blocks in the realm of artistic possibility. That's how I write fiction, blogs, poems, and academic papers. I'm not saying that's the best way to go, but that my writing is something that grows, not something that is built.

In the last year I have also helped put together a writer's group at my Wesley Center club. For the first time in years I have a group of fellow writers who help peer-edit my work, and with whom I can discuss the frustrations and joys of writing. It makes a huge difference to my peace of mind.

And finally a new writing form has taken over a good amount of my creative time: the blog. This process of blogging has been a very interesting one. I am writing edited, planned-out pieces every week. I'm thinking all the time about what might be blog-worthy. And now that I have this body of work published online, I have the opportunity to look back and reflect on the process of writing, and to push myself to polish my blogs to the point that I feel comfortable having unknown strangers (such as yourself, my dear reader) reading them. This also means that, for the first time in my life, I have a consistent audience. That is something to work seriously for.

Blogs, poems, short stories, novels, bad haiku, essays, thesis. Write on!