Ducks @ Oregon - University of Oregon

Writing about writing

Katie D.

September 18, 2009 - 5:00 PM

Today I'm going to write about writing.

Lots of people do it. Some of my favorite authors have written books about writing: books about characters, about research, narrative strategies, ways of dealing with writer's block. Poets write about poetry, suspense writers write about suspense. But the point is that writers tend to be introspective types, who give a lot of thought to the shape of their actions. I've considered myself to be a writer for many years now, since middle school when a fabulous teacher first told me that I was capable of writing the books I so loved. She helped me learn to write poetry, which is how I expressed myself for years. Two years ago I wrote a novel that remains an unedited monument to what I can accomplish. I've published poems in several venues, including a young poets' contest and three Honors College Creative Arts publications. I've also now worked to publish in the Comparative Literature Program's NOMAD journal twice, freshman year and this past year. And now I write these blogs: two blogs a week, every week, since November of last year.

I want to write about writing in general. Maybe sometime I'll go through and write about these individual types of writing I do, because they require different mindsets and motivations. But for now I just want to write a little about writing, about why and how I do it, and about what I think of other people who write regularly.

My two favorite books about writing are written by two of my favorite authors: Steven King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. I remember reading them both for the first time, long after I'd begun writing poems. They both speak to the process of writing as discovering and releasing ideas almost as if they arrive at your fingertips without a great deal of effort or planning. Anne warns of the dire consequences of leaving home without writing material, least your Muse should desert you and go find her instead. They also both advocate a style of writing very different than the ones I've been taught in class. Generally, teachers tell you that the most important part of the essay or short story is in the outline, the pre-writing. By the time you sit to write your piece, you already have the whole thing mapped out with Roman Numerals and sub points.

There's no way I can write like that. I don't write my essays that way, and I certainly don't begin poems or short stories with any idea where they'll end up. With blogs, I simply pick a topic and see where the subject will take me. Writing is like telling a friend about a subject you both know well: you simply say it. There's no place for note cards or plot maps in this kind of thinking: you simply walk around with an idea for a couple of days (or wake up to one in the middle of the night, confused and panicky that you'll lose it) and then you sit down and write it out. Steven King advocates book writing in a single fast-paced sprint, that doesn't involve much re-reading or any editing as you go along. You write you piece, put it away for a week or month or two, and then come back to it later to find out what it was you created. Anne Lamott tells us to give ourselves permission to write "shitty first drafts."

For both these authors, it seems obvious to me that there was no question as to whether they would be writers. They were meant to write. Everyone knows that Steven King has some dark things inside him, and Anne Lamott has her own difficult realities to work through. They write because they have to. Just like some people have to have adrenaline or new cars or wild parties. Sometimes you pick up a book and know that it demanded itself into being. I'm no great author myself. But I write because I feel like I have to. That if I don't put pen to paper (or now, fingers to keys) that things will go rotten inside of me. I've got so much to say, and folder after folder of Word Documents socked away to prove it. I'm proud of the things I've published, but I'm also proud of the work I've done that no one will ever see. It is not just therapy, it is something I was meant to do, just like some people have obvious talent for athletics or music or computers.

Writing this blog has helped immensely in my understanding of myself. I go through my weeks paying attention to what I do, imagining what will make a good blog. I notice more and more that I get more out of my experiences when I know I'll be writing about them. I also know (although this is no great revelation) that I remember things better once my impressions of them have been written down. This blog has also added discipline to my writing. Two blogs a week, every week. That's a pretty high demand to put on myself. But I sit down, give myself permission to mess up, and just go. I write fast, usually under a half an hour, and then I let the blogs sit for a day and then fix them up and send them in.

When I wrote my novel, I wrote the whole thing in under a month. I picked up a book about writing, and it turned out to be part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) that encourages people to finally face up to their dreams of authorship. I got it on December 8, 2007, and finished my 53,052 word (that's 91 pages, if you're curious) novel before New Year's Eve festivities on December 31st. Maybe I'll write more about that experience sometime. For now, I'll just say that it was the most intense project I have ever undertaken, but that it didn't shut me off from the other things I was doing. Like my blogs and my class essays, I simply lived my normal life, but with the book always in the back of my mind, developing even as I thought about other things.

Maybe that's what I've been trying to say this whole time: For me, writing is not so much an action as it is a way of living. It is paying attention, listening for what the world is saying. Poems arise from the view from my window or from a beautiful walk home from school. Novels from short stories from a single snippet of overheard conversation, or a passing thought during a late-night walk. And blogs arise from everything: from classrooms, politics, plans, activities, trips, and the general joys and concerns of life.

And when you have the immense honor of being read by strangers, that is when you feel that you are truly arriving at a place when your words matter. So thank you, readers. Hopefully I'll still be writing and you'll still be reading through another year of adventures and ideas, plans and dreams. Anyway, thank you for being an audience for my writing. I don't think you know how important this has become to me.