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 On July 3rd, Kevin Lucia posted a blog about what writers should be prepared to give up when pursuing their craft. I’ll start by saying that, while I agree with almost all of Kevin's thoughts, I’d like to build upon his final point: that it is important not to go too far when hacking things out of your life to make room for writing, and would add additional caveats to the ones Kevin outlined.
I’ve seen many writers maintain the illusion that writing is a purely solitary profession, one in which the artist sits secluded in a lushly cushioned chamber (or, depending on his temperament, a pleasantly impoverished one) and reflects upon the distant world outside. There is, of course, some truth in this. Many activities in writing—reading, editing, planning, revising—are best conducted in isolation, as is the sincere reflection that legitimate art requires. Nevertheless, reflection doesn’t do much good if there is nothing on which to reflect. With that in mind, the message of today’s blog is simple: if you want to be a good writer, don’t forget to do something other than write.
Counterintuitive, you say? Simplistic? Perhaps true on both counts…but the reminder is also sometimes necessary. As Kevin mentions, many writers are naturally shy, sticking to what is comfortable, familiar, and consequently they sometimes struggle to generate material. Such writers slouch paralyzed before their keyboards, claiming writer’s block; in worse cases, they substitute tired plots and situations for fresh, sincere experience; in the worst cases, they write maudlin stories about writers with nothing to write about and stick them in the mail.
I would argue, however, that the root of such difficulties is often a lifestyle problem rather than a writing problem. While you shouldn’t get up prematurely (good writing often approaches cautiously, requiring patience), sometimes the best thing you can do for writing is, for the moment, to stop writing and experience something else. Ideally, this should be something that jostles your routine, even taking out of your comfort zone entirely. Such experiences can put your own material into higher relief, sharpening it, and can even give you new material entirely.
This is especially true, by the way, for writers who churn out solipsistic prose, which sometimes results in work without the breadth and comprehensiveness of actual life. One of the worst mistakes writers can make, after all, is assuming that everyone sees things the same way they do, or (even worse) assuming that the only rationale or comprehensible perspective is their own. Both of these illusions are easier to nurture when you only occupy one sliver of the world, and therefore many writers—and, for that matter, many Christians—find it difficult to tolerate conflicting worldviews, ignoring or invalidating their existence rather than seeking them out and grappling with them. Such myopia, I think, can limit growth both as an artist and a person.
For that matter, you never know what encountering new things can teach you about your own craft. For example, one of my fresh hobbies is barbershop music, and a few months ago my chorus brought in a consultant named Steve Jameson who believed that musicality results from a calculated process of sustaining and releasing tension. I don’t mean tension in the voice; I mean tension created around and within an engaged listener. Let me put it like this: a song—through this theory—is compelling because something initially unsettled within the music is soothed (or, in contrast, something tranquil is disrupted). It can be a chord that takes its precious time resolving, a crescendo that drags the listener through the wake of its momentum, a tone sustained beyond its expected breaking point, or a narrative lyric portraying some uneased conflict—anything that causes a shift in the song. These disparities—like a thermodynamic imbalance between hot and cold—create energy that propels the music forward, resulting in a listener’s invited agony as they expect something to happen in the piece and then have those expectations skillfully denied or satisfied. These musical principles of tension and release, of course, are analogous to the notion in fiction of conflict and catharsis, the idea that we read a story because there is something compelling that we wish or expect to happen next. The best writing (like the best music) engages its reader by generating tension—in the drama of a scene, the unexpected collision of metaphor, the balancing act between phrase and line break—and then releasing that tension at key moments to optimize emotional depth. It’s a new—and useful—way of thinking about an old problem, and one I never would have encountered if I’d stayed all cooped up in an office.
And of course, there are all of the magnificent experiences, stories, and people you encounter while out of your shell. I’ve been singing with a barbershop chorus for about two years now, and the variety of people and perspectives I’ve encountered have already begun to infiltrate my fiction.
I think it’s only fair to mention, here at the end, that this is a personal axe for me to grind. I started graduate school at twenty-two (probably too young, in retrospect) and one of my greatest challenges dealt with discovering what to write, as opposed to how to write. Some of my classmate’s assessments, in the first few years, were that I wrote some lovely but unseasoned stories, ones which failed not because of lack of skill, but lack of perspective. I bristled at these comments—they were true—but once I expanded who I was and what I did, I feel that my writing improved. Such activities work best, incidentally, if you make them a deliberate part of your creative process, rather than a distraction from that process. With appropriate scheduling and moderation, outside activities can enhance your writing, rather than restrict it. Previous Articles:
Alan Ackmann, Relief's Fiction Editor, received his MFA in fiction from the University of Arkansas and teaches at DePaul University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Clackamas Literary Review, Louisiana Literature, Ontario Review, and elsewhere. He is a former fiction editor of The Evansville Review and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the 2007 Sewanee Writer’s Conference. Find out more at www.alanackmann.com.
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