Hurricane of Words

A gifted writer and former student sent me an email recently. Part of it reads:

"Oh my goodness. The most basic advice you gave, to just write, is the most difficult part for me. I have all the writer's fears, nothing to say, nothing to write, nobody wants to hear, blah, blah, blah. But I am getting to the point where if I don't get the words, and I don't know which words they are, whatever they may be, out of my head it's going to start spinning on my shoulders. When you started writing . . . did you have that problem?"

My reply:

Writing involves a huge amount of trust--trust that the words already know what they want to say and how to say them and when to say them. The story is already inside of us. We are the ones who get in the way. We demand to have Cheerios when the writing says it wants Cream of Wheat for breakfast. In other words, we go by our plan and sometimes our plan isn't the plan that the story, the journal entry, the essay, the novel have in mind.

One of the most difficult things for writers to learn to do (and I know because I have a great deal of practice trying to learn this) is to let go of any preconceived ideas about what ends up on the blank page.

Let the writing tell us. Become a stenographer for the words. Take dictation. Oftentimes if I don't know what to write, I will literally start my journal entry with, "So what do the words want to say today?" That way it has less to do with me. And it should have less to do with me. When we are thinking the process too much, the words get lost in our thoughts. They need a clear path to the page. The best we can offer them is a streamline of pen in hand and letting them (the words) be in charge.

Many times I don't "receive" the stellar journal entry I had planned out in my head, but one of the problems with my receiving that entry is the audacity I had to plan it ahead of time.

Writing sometimes makes us pay the price for not letting the words be in control. I have a lot of bad writing as proof; however, I'm not saying that bad writing is a bad thing. Every word that spills from our pen is useful to our creative learning. The way it is useful may be simply in accepting we can have "average" journal days and "complaining" journal days and "naughty" journal days and whatever we want.

There are no damn rules with writing except to let the words be in charge. They are the master creators. We are merely the scribble-the-words-on-paper person. As writers, this is something we come up against repeatedly. It is a lesson that seems equally as hard to learn the first time as the umpteenth time. But it is an important one.

Another suggestion about allowing words to come has to do with letting up on the pressure. I've been around a couple of pressure cookers that lost their black rubber stoppers and silver rocking knobs and have plastered kitchens with vegetable soup and chili and steam. We have to turn down the pressure sometimes. Be still.

I've gone on solo retreats and have used my journal only as a coaster until it was time to go--not a word written in it. Was that frustrating? Yes. But it was also the best thing for me--to be silent--to let the writing come back home.

I know I could go on and on about this topic and I know if you ask ten other writers what their thoughts are about this you'd get that many more answers and I know that is what I believe is so exciting about writing. Donald Murray says to "write about what makes you different." We are all so gloriously different in this quirky world; we might as well be able to get in our two-, four-, six- and eight-cents worth about it.

We must write about the marked differences that make us who we are. Sometimes I think of myself like a bad hair color I'd like to rinse out of my head, but for some reason, the color stays and stays and stays. I can't rinse out who I am. That is where we should write from. The things that won't rinse out.

My best advice to the writer is to trust their intuition. If they feel so many words spinning in their head that they fear it is about to rocket of their shoulders, then these word messages must be wanting to land somewhere. But they want to do it their way. Offer them a journal and a cup of tea. Take ten deep breaths and tell them, "Say whatever you want to say, and it doesn't even have to ever be good."

Don't ask them to write a novel if they are still a hurricane of words. That may mean their story is part of a huge storm churning inside--searching for the safest place to land.

kss
p.s. A great book about resistance and fear for writers and artists is The War of Art by
Stephen Pressfield, author of The Legend of Baggar Vance.
Copyright 2005 Shelnutt