Writers Need To Write Ten Times More Than Anybody Needs to Read
One winter afternoon in the West Loop, my friend Carol and I were standing at her kitchen island, dipping Damato’s bread into olive oil and freshly-grated Parmesan. We were waiting for her nephew to arrive because she was giving him a not-so-old computer. We were in the middle of a good story.
"I about died, Nance. Didn’t I tell you what happened with that computer?" Carol is a good writer, and a disorganized person. She’s also kind of a brain. Hers is like a poodle’s intelligence–aware of a million things regular dogs don’t notice, yet not any more equipped to DO anything with the information necessarily. I’ve notice this type of prodigious, expressive energy in many writers–it’s as if writers are a breed who produce an excess of psychic content. Before gifting the nephew her computer, Carol had its RAM upgraded and finally backed off several of her old, creative writing files. However, in the upgrade there was a mix up backing up the old files. "I tell you I was sick about it," she said, stepping outside onto her townhouse terrace, to have a cigarette.
Often writers have trouble managing their output; they literally have trouble attending to it’s maintenance, either by disorganization or outright loss of the files or pages. When this happens, I have learned it is a sub-conscious maneuver. More faithful to themselves than they know, writers are ingeniously devising ways to satisfy their need to write more, not to self-sabotage. I know that self-sabotage is a valid point. However the vast majority of writers I have encountered in writing workshops, (who lose their pages), do so for more profound and interesting reasons. Well, actually for one profound and interesting reason: They need to write ten times more than anybody needs to read, including them.
Carol had written extensively on that old computer during a long, difficult period. She had poured her heart out about life as a high school teacher in the inner city and about love and politics and basketball and who knows what else. She’s bilingual and works with a largely Latino population and has a Master’s degree in linguistics to boot. As you can imagine, she doesn’t know what she’s saying half the time. The other half, you don’t know what she’s saying. Although in this case I felt I was slightly ahead of her.
"Nancy I was just sick about losing that material. Then I thought, what does this mean?" she asked, flicking the glowing butt over her sleek railing. This was obviously a rhetorical comment but I couldn’t help myself.
"I think it means you were done with that stuff," I said, glad to be back inside by the fire.
Writing is analogous to food, sex and money in the life of a creative person. Just because you’ve had it once and spent it or eaten it, doesn’t mean that you don’t need to do it again. Writing is a part of the life of the body that survives by being used, fed and renewed. Like food, sex and money, the currency of writing drives the organism forward, to have it’s one and only life. Try as I might to assuage the flailing minds of writers-minus-pages against self-recriminations, it’s not easy. When it’s your writing that goes up in smoke, there’s hell to pay. Yet the only solution is to rewrite the thing. Or should I say, to write it again. And that’s good.
Carol was demonstrating, in her file management mishigas, a principle that pertains to writers across all genres, ages or ability levels: For every sentence that ends up in a finished product there are dozens that have been penned and put aside. In the beginning, writers write for themselves. Which is why, once written, they can just turn around and write that thing again. Often the best thing to do, is to write a page over. THAT you write is just as important as WHAT you write.
This type of *losing writing* behavior is rife in creative writing classes. Writers often arrive to class empty-handed, not because they have failed to write; instead they leave pages on the top of their cars, at their mother’s or, accidently they end up in their desktop trash bin. The playwrights seem to lose scripts on the dance floor. Other writers report having problems printing. In addition, writers have email problems with corrupted file attachments. Of course everybody experiences technical difficulties. That’s not what I’m talking about.
Maybe there are a few psychological reasons are behind writers missing pages–some have conflicts rooted in fear of disclosure. Or like Carol, perhaps their forgetfulness is on the order of dogs with bones. Maybe they simply don’t like writing class. While all of these motives may be true, the vast majority of writers deep-sixing their pages are functioning at the mercy of their unconsciously-driven, writerly minds. Real writers are more truly inefficient than is socially acceptable or cool. Some writers go over things beyond any reason, writing about certain topics for years–being changed by it time and again. That’s the point, evidently.
What’s Up With That?
The reason writers need to write more than readers need to read is because only their essential statement, image or scene ultimately needs to be read. But in order to get at the essentials, it is necessary in the writing process to open all the drawers and pull out every piece of clothing that is relevant to the ensemble. Like going through old boxes in the attic, writing is a form of stopping to take in the memorabilia, to stare into the faces of the beloved or to look up a particular passage from an old poetry collection. This process takes time and emotional energy. Having gone to the trouble of making so many connections and becoming reacquainted with ourselves, it seems a waste to just turn around and write from scratch. So much feeling and insight! Why chuck all that time and effort? Maybe you can leave in that one pet story about your mom or maybe you can let all the permutations of an idea stand, why not? Besides, you really like some of it; in fact you adore it because it thrills you or makes you cry. How can anybody with a conscience toss it away?
Nothing essential to a piece of writing gets lost in subsequent drafts. Unlike life, when you leave large garbage bags at the curb, in writing, the bags of old writing somehow condense and boil down to an essential oil. Like ashes that soften the floor of a fire, all the hard work and feelings and time become encoded in the new try; they become fodder or sourdough starter for the next round. And it’s better, each time. What changes is the writers understanding of what they are writing. It’s not the same, the new one, but it’s the newest and therefore the best ever. And whatever all the previous rambling and tangents gave you, they’re yours to keep, inside. Keeping them on the page is not the proper storage. Keep them in your eyes, in your fingers and breath. If they are real they will feed the fire and your words will burn bright.
Isn’t That What Editing Is For?
Editing comes much later in the writing process. Editing is like pruning bushes, writing things over again is like growing them. Editing is where other people play an important role in the development of your story. But only the writer can make the story for that development. No editor can write what is essential. They can only clear away the scraps and twists that are extraneous. But the shape is your shape to mold and usually this takes many tries. Sure, Aretha Franklin cut a few hits in one take–I’m not ruling it out. I’m only saying be the queen of your own soul. You figure it out.
Are You Writing For A Reader or What?
Still, most people can’t bear to consciously pitch their work. There’s something perverse and wasteful. It’s destructive, isn’t it? There are starving people in this world, there are the poor who are glad of canned goods. Don’t bags of rick-rack come in handy for the annual fair? But in the case of writing drafts, the writer is the one who is starved and poor and needing a trinket. To write over again is a way of refueling, restocking and replenishing the very person who is in need of the precious thing. Initially, writers must write for themselves. And they need it, badly. They need it so much that they hate to admit it, because often writers are comfortable and accomplished so what’s there to be so desperate about? Writing something over again seems excessive. Risky. Besides, it might not come out the same way. Then what? Then there is the reader, that’s what.
The only way to get to the reader is to bring the goods. If writers give and they give (in Chicago) early and often, then why can’t they just give a little more? If you can stand the stress and if you can understand the value, then as a writer when you can write something again. In so doing you will experience the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. What changes is the writer’s understanding of what they’re writing about. You will realize that what is within you is what will be there over and again and nobody is going to take that away. Not even you.
An hour later, Carol’s nephew came and went off with the refurbished computer. He was happy and so was she, setting up a new computer.
"Well, if I wasn’t so lazy or scattered Nanc, and you’re going to laugh at this, but what I had wanted to do was take all my old files and use them to write an updated version of "Up the Down Staircase." It would sort of be loosely based on my high school. I wanted to put in all the gang bangers and the hairdos and Puerto Rican stuff." She holds out both hands in front of her and opens her fists like star bursts, like fireworks. I can imagine that.
"I like that idea. Why not write it anyway?"
There is a fantastic freedom in losing pages. There is admittedly a disappointment, a temporary pang of regret, fear and anger for being so, so, lax or clumsy. Some writers even think the world is conspiring against them. Get over yourselves! Relax, it’s not that bad. In writing you get to keep everything you learn. Just because the one version is gone doesn’t mean you can’t make another. Maybe the second or fourth time around the story will emerge more fully than at the first. What is so hard about believing that your writing could get better? Each time you will keep what is core, what is real and what is true. Or maybe, after you’ve lost all your old work, you are finally free to write something entirely new.
