Slow Wave

Reflections on the writing process

by Daniel Gilliland

THE ABSTRACT

This is an article about creativity. It’s about creativity in writing, learning to appreciate conditions conducive to the flow of any art — giving birth to something new without an agonizing, crushing attention which strangles the “fetus.” The mama matrix is there to nourish without becoming obsessed with the creation or losing her own balance.

This is about writing something new, in a safe isolation, while still managing to be relevant. About buffering oneself not only from internal critical voices, but also from the hyper-oscillating themes and buzzing collective consciousness of the moment.

It’s about motivating myself, and always having something to refer back to ‐ not only as proof of my own creative powers, but of the possibilities ALWAYS waiting and ready, only to be tapped. It’s to prove that great effort or mental strenuousness is not required.

It takes a cue from dreaming, which is utterly effortless, and yet profoundly fertile and vivid —an endless fount of creativity, in the absence of the waking, striving mind. Getting started no matter what —turning off the judgement, and knowing that the process takes time, and a certain daringness to “put something out there,” without regard for how it might look. It WILL change with time. That much is certain. So why stress unnecessarily with perfectionism?

This essay actually began its life as something else entirely. There was an idea, a title and a theme … but the actual written words were showing me something new, a different purpose from what the logical, critical mind was initially aware of. It turned into something about my own writing process, and how I’m looking away from the endpoint, the place where the writing is ultimately delivered ‐ in my case, the Internet ‐ into realms quietly accessible at my kitchen counter, writing by hand the old-fashioned way. WRITING!

Writing for its own sake, for the joy of committing words and lettering to paper. Beginning, and beginning, and beginning again. Until there are a considerable number of words on the page. Was what I initially wrote or conceived a waste? Of course not. Certain core ideas and movements were engaged and experienced, and traces of them still inform this. They are the roots, the necessary preliminary roots. If I had not put down those first tentative words (many of them not present here), I would never have arrived at this. They exist implicitly, like revered ancestors.

Non-JUDGEMENT

If you’re going to write, you have to put pen to paper. Let that not be a sense of a strict requirement, a “must” or “ought.” It’s more a definition. Ink on a sheet, even the smallest, most effortless amount, constitutes writing of some sort.

You really don’t have a problem starting. Someone could ask, “Hey, Daniel ‐ if you could write about a subject right now, what would it be?” And the words which are emitted in response, themselves would be a beautiful — and immediately useful — beginning.

But of course, you’re trying to accept that you have a lot of … training, a lot of ideas about what’s “worth” being read or written. And the initial writing is usually very harshly judged on that count. “Is this part of a book? Something good?” You’re apt to compare yourself to someone making a living in the field. Kids in a garage band want to be the next U2 (or whomever) — forgetting that even such a famous group, was itself a garage band once. And such was their initial appeal.

But if you stop the process, for one moment stop your own self-appreciation and switch to a comparative mindset… then you’re dead in the water. Comparison is best reserved for when you have too much creative material, too much generated. Then the critical faculty can come to the rescue, can decide on the proper order of things, and what can be safely left aside for awhile. But it is a dangerous tool when used prior to this. Clipping your fingernails as an adult is one thing, but the same clipper could easily remove the entire hand or arm of a developing fetus.

If you find yourself struggling to begin, just attempt to paraphrase. What would you like to be writing profusely about? Answer that question in the roughest terms, in writing. There is your start! Even a modestly good interviewer could begin to elicit a book out of anybody. Anybody.

ISOLATION and BUFFERING

or, how to cultivate your literary pond-scum

Your most relevant work can, and probably will, be produced away from the obvious trends, the desire to say something in the split-second you think it’s required.

Rare is the human with real-time wit: one thinks of something clever to say at a party, or as a retort to a snarky comment. Typically, this would-be uproarious riposte occurs half-an-hour after it would have been useful. One wonders what life would be like if only the appropriate responses, verbal and emotional, were immediately available. A little Oscar Wilde in all of us!

In terms of the writing and creative process, and in the larger context of the sum total of human discourse, what I’d advocate instead is taking one’s time. It will work to your advantage in the long run. Reflect upon those past experiences and come up with entirely different scenarios and conversations that didn’t even occur. In that richness, you’ll create not a single comment, but an entire wellspring of possibilities and personas. Once born within you, these can inform and permeate your responses for the future. You are that person. You are your own inventions.

Recently, one of my online acquaintances was lamenting his lack of time and motivation to post quality content on his blog. This, on his blog. He was wondering how professional bloggers found ways to really write stuff of substance, with so many distractions available. However, he updates his Twitter very frequently, spewing out five or ten micro-updates very day. [For those who are unfamiliar, Twitter is a “micro-blogging” service which allows a person to post bite-sized status updates, much like might be sent in the form of a text message over a cell phone]

Before I get into what I told him, it would seem his solution would be simple: to instead hoard all his thoughts and ideas until he can write more about them. A huge element of the joy of sex is how long it’s been since the last time ‐ the age-old principle of damming up the flow of something, in order to have a reservoir. And so with writing. I find the more I’m saving up and directing my thoughts and “fractional output” toward a specific Work, the more interestingness festers and broods within and amongst the pieces, like intricate weavings of algæ or pond scum. But the building blocks are nothing but the simplest thoughts and observations, initially — none seemingly worth writing, much less publishing. Certainly many of them seemed too obvious or atomic to be the stuff of an essay.

… which was pretty much the gist of my response to him, although I was also harping on the benefits of relative isolation when working on any creative item. There’s something about pissing oneself and one’s “goodies” away with too many tendrils of self-extension in social settings, real or virtual. New writers are commonly admonished not to speak of their newest ideas to others before completion, lest they jinx themselves, frittering away the energy of something new.

And think of the lifetimes which prove to be such engaging reads in biographical form: we weren’t privy to play-by-plays over the years. The perspective, the coherence comes in the form of a memoir, a retrospective perusal of discrete memories. True, there are some exceptional cases ‐ authors prolifically self-documenting their existences. And I’m not against the “twitterings” of a wired generation, per se. I’m only trying to indicate that it’s all representative of a different kind of relationship with text and authorship, which is not particularly conducive to generating the kind of voluminous books you’d want to take with you on vacation, or curl up next to a fire with. Put another way, the over-arching themes and continuity of human-written texts are inventions used to tie together the disparate moments of life. It’s very difficult to pick them out without the entire corpus of material in front of you.

And at root, that’s what we appreciate. The packaging is just as important as the content. The great anecdotes need to flow together and give us some impression of a coherent, unified whole. This benefits not only the reader, but serves to encourage the writer, as well.

WRITING Away FROM THE EDGE

I seem to get into some of my best writing when I’m totally burned out on the Internet. As I wrote the other day, after FINALLY getting away from all the distractions, back to my kitchen countertop to write something completely unconcerned with the input or interaction of others, intimate or casual or anonymous:

“Argh, writing at last. Is this what is really takes to get going, an isolation from the Internet and all fun? How I loathe the idea of discipline, and the implication that it’s required of me. To think I am so easily sidetracked and ready to hand over the self-determination of my own free time to myriad minor gods, all demanding a premium of my time for their dubious ‘services’.”

I’m not sure there’s much positive to say about the Internet in this regard. If you intend to write, use it at your own risk. I’m still not convinced that writing on an Internet-connected computer is a good idea. Typing things up is one thing ‐ great for mass edits, moving entire paragraphs around and the like. But when it comes to, well, “putting pen to paper,” there is no substitute. Get away from it and clear your mind. Better yet, go write someplace else. Isn’t that the joy of writing? I find it one of my highest callings for that very reason — I can write on the back of a napkin someplace. More realistically, in a small notebook on any flat surface. It also mixes very well with drawings and sketches. All of this is still difficult on a computer.

So much of the Internet is hearsay, and that can be very detrimental to writing. The sheer volume of it is likely to clog your writing circuits, leaving them abuzz with words and fragments from disparate, disembodied personalities. What is the value of that which is merely digitally “churned,” rehashed and regurgitated from so many online sources, all of which are the fading echoes of a single novel event? Merely recombined, unartfully, like so much particleboard? Real wood ‐ grown ‐ has value. The hand-worked sculpture of nature.

I liken all this to a metaphor: imagine throngs of people all amassed and pressed into each other at the front of a sea-going vessel. Most have a difficult enough time seeing, while those with the best views are smooshed and pressurized by their ostensibly advantageous positions. Mostly it’s just a compressed, many-headed-hydra of mediocrity. It is not even that the individuals themselves are merely average, but their positions forcibly limit the available perspective. Those who cannot see clearly or consistently are often only repeating what’s been reported by those a few inches ahead, and slight discrepancies in points-of-view collide with varying degrees of heated bickering.

So: why not retreat backward, taking an overview of what everyone is saying as a group, watching the crowd in its entirety and therefore not taking issue with any individual viewpoint? This buffering, in addition to allowing space to breathe and collect oneself, allows one to take account of peripheral vision, noticing new possibilities to the left and right, and sharing them with those huddled, time-bound masses at the front (to whatever degree they are comfortable with the insights gleaned from a sideways perspective). Taking the analogy further, one might even ascend a mast, gaining a higher perspective on that which is already clearly seen by others.

So there is a value to escaping, de-clutching like the brain in its dream states — briefly disengaged from its role as body’s helmsman. It needs time to process certain things within itself. We all know how amazingly creative dreams can be. There’s a purity to it, the disconnection and pristine isolation required to birth something fresh and untainted — organic, non-digital, creative.

And even this work itself, is something that I’m sitting on for awhile, allowing it to ferment. It’s almost complete in terms of length, but the “pond scum” hasn’t formed yet, generating a cohesive matrix within which all the sequenced paragraphs and idea-arcs can reside. [Of course, if you’re reading it now, it’s done — about a month from when it started]

Writing, ultimately, is a process which requires this gestation time. The words begin their lives on paper, in the moment, where they are motivated and scrawled in the inkblood of emotion and sharp, immediate importance. But you have to let it simmer awhile, subconsciously. Come back to it in a few days or a week (or longer) and revise it, respond to it. The author really does some of their best work as the First Reader. The words written days or weeks ago will evoke something different as time passes. The things you encounter in the world in the meantime will raise different elements of your entire being to the surface, and these will interact with the text in new ways, birthing some avenues while de-emphasizing others.

I’d like to think that you could have written a draft twenty years ago, and with a few weeks of this kind of “slow-cooking” interaction, it would by no means be out of place in the present. Ideas are like that. They are always expanding and growing. It’s just a matter of refining and “nipping” the work at a certain point to present it as a finished product. But there is really no end to the explorations, and the inner and outer stimulations which lead to the evolution of any form of art.