The first draft of anything is shit.
– Ernest Hemingway
This striking statement sits on my desk, staring up at me as I write these words. A reminder that the truth contained within them is unavoidable. Often writing something new, like this very blog post, feels like jumping off a ledge headfirst into the abyss. But Hemingway’s seven words are an invocation to trust that this terrifying and thrilling feeling of falling is necessary and natural.
But let’s not gloss over the fact that writing is often a difficult and tricky business. We live in a world saturated with it yet how mysterious and misunderstood writing remains to most people. Most schools focus on teaching the technical skills of writing and how to use those to craft an essay but never delve any deeper.
So like Mr. Hemingway, let’s strive to strike at the heart of the matter by diving deeper into writing and the multitudes contained within. Starting with the most important question of why.
Why Write?
Writing is often daunting and difficult. So why even bother with the hassle?
It is to find excuses not to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. And even if you do finally steel yourself to sit down and write, you’re faced with all the words in the world and deciding which one to use. This leads to the ultimate challenging question of, what in the heck do I actually want to say? Often, people use this thought to justify not writing by claiming that they don’t have anything to say. This reasoning is entirely backwards to the reality of the writing process, but highlighting this flaw leads the way to finally answering why writing is worthwhile.
You don’t write when you have something to say. You go through the process of writing to figure out what you have to say. That is a key distinction to unlocking the profound value of writing.
I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
– Joan Didion
Writing grants understanding. It allows you to understand your dynamic and complex self more deeply. The human mind is brilliant and a prodigious simplifying machine–this serves humans well in many ways but is easily led astray. When your ideas are solely confined within your mind, oversimplification sneakily takes over, glossing over all that you don’t know. It instills you with a false sense of knowledge and that you understand more than you actually do.
The good news is there is a readily available solution to this problem at your disposal: writing.
Writing hardens. Writing is the ultimate accountability measure. Within the rigidity of the confines of the page and grammar, there is nowhere to hide from your own ignorance. The gaps in our ideas and understanding of them become readily apparent. While at times this can be frustrating, ultimately, it’s beneficial because once you see the gaps in your knowledge you can do something about filling in those gaps. And we could all benefit from a deeper understanding of our thoughts and feelings. Not to mention that the more deeply we understand ourselves the better we can connect and understand the world around us.
Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
The Process of Writing
There is a common, almost subconscious, presumption about writing, that it happens all at once. The writer is sitting around when suddenly smacked over the head with inspiration, words flow from their pen in a frenzy until a masterpiece is complete. While this is a rather dramatic and romantic view of writing, it’s inaccurate. The hard truth of writing is that it isn’t a singular act but rather an iterative process.
The most basic way to break down this process is in two separate phases: writing and editing.
Writing
Writing is a burst of unrefined creativity. The goal is to dump the contents of your mind onto the page. Think of this as the raw material that will be molded later. The key here is to minimize the amount of filtering and editing. That is a separate phase that will come later. This is because editing bogs down the process of actually writing so much that you stop writing altogether.
In 1962 John Steinbeck wrote a letter outlining six of his tips on writing. His second tip highlighted and expanded upon this idea of writing without editing:
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
Editing
This is where we take the raw material from the writing stage and start sculpting it into something beautiful. Here the structure starts to take place and you begin to see the shape of things. While limiting edits during the actual writing, when you finally do transfer into editing mode, edit ruthlessly.
Building the Habit of Writing
Once we embrace the division of writing and editing, we simplify the process by breaking up the daunting task of writing something new in its entirety, into smaller, more manageable pieces. This allows momentum to build naturally, which is crucial in establishing a more consistent habit of writing over time.
Here are the words of a few people who spend their professional lives writing, reinforcing the habits of writing.
In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established.
– Working Days: The Journals of the Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Exercising is a good analogy for writing. If you’re not used to exercising you want to avoid it forever. If you’re used to it, it feels uncomfortable and strange not to. No matter where you are in your writing career, the same is true for writing. Even fifteen minutes a day will keep you in the habit.
– Jennifer Egan
Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.
– Jeanette Winterson
Conclusion
Writing doesn’t allow you to hide, it forces you to come face to face with your ignorance. While this confrontation is rarely easy or comfortable, it does force you to come out of the darkness of your own ignorance and into the light. This is the beginning of growth and learning. By taking a hard look within and contending with your gaps in knowledge, you’re already smarter than you were before. Not to mention that by identifying these gaps you now have something to aim towards filling over time.
Keep reminding yourself that writing is a process, not a singular act of inspiration. Don’t let writing become a monolith in your mind. Break up writing into a more manageable, iterative process. The best way to achieve this is to divide the process into two primary modes: writing and editing. Be either in writing mode or in editing mode and try to not let them mix. Mixing causes the whole process to get bogged down and often to come to a screeching halt.
If you do these things, before you know it you will have built a path leading to a consistent habit of writing. While this path will not be easy, nothing worth having ever is, it will be filled with insight, growth, and meaning. So, let’s start building that path today, one small brick at a time. And who knows, you may find yourself one day surrounded by a thousand doors that writing opened for you.
I did not think of language as the means to self-description. I thought of it as the door — a thousand opening doors! — past myself. I thought of it as the means to notice, to contemplate, to praise, and, thus, to come into power.
[…]
I saw what skill was needed, and persistence — how one must bend one’s spine, like a hoop, over the page — the long labor. I saw the difference between doing nothing, or doing a little, and the redemptive act of true effort. Reading, then writing, then desiring to write well, shaped in me that most joyful of circumstances — a passion for work.
– “Staying Alive,” by Mary Oliver
