I’ve been spending the last few months reexamining what writing means to me. The activity, the craft, the importance. In doing so, I have found my work becoming increasingly personal. I have experimented in various forms and techniques, from free associative sketching to regimented, outlined procedures, from pads and pens to typing in NotePad and beyond. I have created tools to help my own work, and further separated certain work from others, in an effort to section off parts of myself. What I have come to is a series of observations: some examining things that are wrong, some revelations that are evolutionary to me, and some that I feel just need to be written down. Because, as Stephen King said, there’s no reason not to write. Everything in my original post on writing still stands. If anything, what follows here were my next steps from there.
the work as personal
All creative work is personal, even nonfiction, though we find various ways to hide ourselves within it. A lot of writers waste more energy enforcing “ignore me, I’m just the author” when they should be using that force to focus on “here’s what I have to say”. Some of my favorite writers are so on top of their game because they know how to be in control of their act as writers. You, as a writer, should be the last thing you worry about, at least as it comes across on the page.
If the internet has proved anything, it’s that the voice of the writer, in order to be truly heard, must command words and form in ways that are increasingly immeasurable. The strong voices stand out because they realize they’re in an endless sea of shitty bloggers, and they realize that not necessarily being louder results in being better. Rather, striving for a content uniqueness and comfort-of-self is the true path to a good writer. Content uniqueness, (as in to be content, rather than the content of the writing,) being the ability to stand behind one’s work, embedding within it the uniqueness of one’s perspective, while understanding that it is very difficult to be unique among millions. Be content in what uniqueness you can grasp onto, and stop worrying about it. Just fucking write! Maybe don’t publish it, that’s where editing comes in, but you will find that the agency of writing becomes easier as you get more comfortable being yourself as a writer.
I wrote about that before: the ability to find your muse and learning how to softly guide that muse to work for you. Make some tea and sit by the fire for a session of divine inspiration. After awhile, you will find that your muse is always there, and what was limiting you was never anything but your own apprehension and self-doubt. (Please note that you always need self-doubt and apprehension, but in controlled amounts. I will explain later.) One could say that eventually, instead of gently rousing your muse from its slumber and humbly asking it for help, you come to the point where your muse becomes subservient to your ego. You can kick it around a bit, and not feel too bad about it. I’m not saying you should abuse it; I’m saying you should experiment with it. Bondage, S&M, that kind of thing, but never forget to respect that which once was so hard to come by. Sometimes you need to take what would normally be a flash of incredible inspiration and turn it against itself. There was a time when I would have one of those brilliant A-HA! moments, begin writing, and not look back. Now, if I have the sudden need to write something, I first question it. What is it that I’m suddenly finding so important to say? Where does it stem from? What emotion, what event, what acted as a catalyst?
