Friday, May 25, 2012

Making A Mess of It


Being the mom of three kids, I'm no stranger to messiness. Not just the clothes-on-the-floor or food-on-the-face variety, but in everything. My kids love art projects, and I struggle not to roll my eyes when they dive into the art cabinet and begin pulling out markers and play-dough and construction paper and glue. For me, the mess is the price I pay to let them explore their creativity. For them, the mess is part of their creativity.

A few weeks ago, I was reading an article in The Writer's Chronicle (a publication of AWP - The Association of Writers and Writing Programs) entitled "Where do you get your ideas?" by Alice Mattison. The article was not so much about coming up with ideas as it was how we as fiction writers invent stories - from the first idea all the way through the end of the story. How we create.

I'd love to print the entire article here for you, but here is part that spoke to me, especially where I am right now in this writing journey (which is a journey for everyone who writes, no matter how little or how much you are published):

How do we invent? The answer I want won't be simple; it's not a set of instructions.... There is some process we have in common – not a dignified one that could be given the pretentious name "craft," which suggests a number of things that rarely lead to good writing... but a sloppy, embarrassing process involving fooling around, moving haphazardly from whatever we began with, in the general direction of something else.

Craft is something you can do in public and explain in public, while good writing is more like taking your clothes off when that's not appropriate – something that may even do harm or make our friends and family ashamed of us. And "craft" suggests control, while a good book requires surrendering control, at least at times.

There is so much more to this article, things I may come back to on this blog, but right now I'm sitting on this. I am in the sloppy, embarrassing process of creating.

I'm discovering there is craft – which I am learning in school – that is helping my writing get cleaner and more focused, and there is the process of creating, which is messy and embarrassing and often confusing. I disagree with Mattison's idea that craft rarely leads to good writing. I think it's critical to good writing; it just isn't enough on its own.

I think, maybe more accurately, we should say there are two aspects to writing well: one is craft  and the other is the creative process. If craft is defined as the tools and skills that can be learned, the creative process is the artsy, personal side. It's what we as writers have to muddle through on our own, in our own way, which may actually even differ from story to story. The process is something we have to discover and rediscover.

I don't like messiness. I like things to be clean and neat and orderly. I like there to be answers to problems, a clear path from bad to good with a set of instructions to go along with it. But most of good writing isn't like that. It's a big fat muddy mess sometimes.

Maybe this is no revelation for you, but this has been a big revelation for me in some sense, in that I couldn't understand how I was getting so much better at the craft part, and still feeling like my writing as a whole was floundering. I am currently mired in my own creative process muck.

I'm still trying to find ways to make that process less messy. Jolene Perry recommended the book Save the Cat by Blake Snyder to me, and even though it's about screenwriting, I am finding in it terrific tools. But on the whole, I think I'm just going to have to accept that not all of writing is clean-cut. Not everything can be learned from a book or a class or even a brilliant mentor. And that even though some parts of my process are messy right now, doesn't mean other parts aren't making great strides.

Where do you thrive? In the disorderly, creative part of writing, or in the things more systematically and concretely learned?



5 comments:

  1. On kids crafts. They are very messy, for sure. However, one of my biggest fears is that my kids will lose their creativity and desire to draw and paint (I realize this is probably inevitable, but I'd like to postpone it as long as possible). This helps me not worry about the messiness so much.

    "even differ from story to story. The process is something we have to discover and rediscover"

    Yeah, I was just heard/read a famous author say this same thing. I can't remember who said it, though. Possibly Neil Gaiman. Whomever it was, they said they rediscover their writing process every time.

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  2. This paragraph really says it right here: "I think, maybe more accurately, we should say there are two aspects to writing well: one is craft and the other is the creative process. If craft is defined as the tools and skills that can be learned, the creative process is the artsy, personal side. It's what we as writers have to muddle through on our own, in our own way, which may actually even differ from story to story. The process is something we have to discover and rediscover."

    Since I am a combination of my parents - one is very creative, one is very mathematical, scientific, and logical - I need both the structure and the wildness. I realized my plotting process was completely out of whack and I was sick and tired of fighting my novel every time. So I determined to learn how to plot. STORY ENGINEERING by Larry Brooks opened my eyes to the process and I feel MUCH more confident in my plotting skills. I also have realized that having that solid structure has enabled my mind to open itself to new possibilities. So I really think you need both - the structure, the concrete, and the wild creativity.

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  3. I find the structure process of craft quite constricting. I suppose that means the creative element is for me.

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  4. I think that's a brilliant article.
    There is a difference between craft and creation.

    BUT they're merging together better and better the more I write.

    My big thing right now is writing a story commercial enough to sell.
    An editor and I were talking not long ago and she said - there's a disconnect between what people love to read and what the distributors are picking up.
    She said that they're looking for a catchy cover, and the logline. That's how they decide how many copies to buy, and where and how to distribute them.
    They don't care about your writing, how well your story is done - they assume that your agent and your editor has taken care of that part of it.
    THIS is why I said in my email that I'll never again start a novel without a logline first...

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  5. I was organization with a capital O. Essays and research papers were my favourite to write because of the methodical process.Then I came to realize I was falling into the 'control' trap, and beginning to be unable to let go and be where creativity flows. Creativity and craft is a fine balance. I believe creativity comes first then we have the craft to pull it all together.

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