Writing Practice

I was at a book launch about a week ago, the author, a respected accountant, auditor and lawyer was introducing his second book on taxes. The event was very well attended and interesting. This was the very first book launch I had ever been to and I compared it to a graduation party. In essence, it was a graduation party.

The guest speaker, a high profile cardiologist, gave us excellent background on the author, who is very credentialed. But also admitted that they have not written a book. He was also followed by some high profile members of society in our country, including some academics at a couple of the various universities, and they too admitted that while they had written academic papers, they never had the courage, or patience, to write a book.

In fact, only one other person in the audience had written a book and when she spoke, gave the audience insight to the difficulties in writing.

Writing a book is hard.

Writing a paper in a subject you know very well is not as hard. It might be challenging, but it's not hard.

Writing a blog, like this one is easy. Because it is personal and the time I have to spend on it is not a lot.

I have written a couple of book-length treatises. I have not had the will to publish them because even when I finished writing them, I was not sure that I had done justice to the story I was trying to tell. After putting down the story for a couple of months, and re-reading it afresh, I thought differently.

Julia Cameron is a published author. I have not read any of her fictional work, but I have read a couple of books that have inspired me to pick up a couple of books that I started years ago with the intention of completing them. Whether the story is successful is not the point. At this juncture, the point is to get a book length book completed.

The first book of Julia's that gave me practical advice was The Artist's Way. This book introduced the practice of Morning Pages. An exercise where you write, on a daily basis, three pages in longhand (not typewritten, but using a pen and paper). You do this every single morning. I started writing Morning Pages in February 2022, and so far, almost 60 days later, I can tell that my attitude to sitting down to writing is very different.

The second book, which I think must be read after one reads The Artist's Way, is The Sound of Paper. In The Sound of Paper, Julia describes the life of an artist in a very human way. The challenges of sitting down to do the work. Periods of droughts. Periods of doubts. Waiting, or not, for Inspiration (capital "I"). The curse of the ever present critic. The disastrous aiming for perfection. Nurturing the inner child. There's a ton of good advice to unpack in this book, but I would have only comprehended it after reading The Artist's Way.

My inner critic is not gone. But they are manageable.

My search for perfection is problematic, because I still pause a lot in the first draft, but I can now see pages happening on a daily basis. They're not all good pages, but I'm moving forward.

Before I read The Artist's Way, I had read Natalie Goldberg's book, Writing Down the Bones. In Natalie's book, a similar writing practice where you do not lift the pen off the page, but keep it moving is encouraged. I admit, it's been a while since I read Natalie's book, and it was Julie's book that actually got me moving on writing seriously again, but the two books fill that need to practice between the serious writing. And so I do both. In the morning, I spend time writing the three pages, longhand. And I do it in the Natalie style, continuous movement without interruption. And then at lunchtime, or when I know I have about fifteen, or more, minutes to spare, I take my pen again and in the style of Natalie, I write.

Right after my Morning Pages exercise, I try to write a couple of pages of my book. Whereas before I would not even dare contemplate writing until I thought I was inspired, I simply sit at the keyboard and start writing. Sooner or later, my muse catches up with me and we work together for a while. Some days I can only write one page, other days more. But the point is that I don't wait to "feel" like writing, to sit and write. In fact, most days I actually don't "feel" like writing, but I open the novel that I'm working on, go all the way to the bottom, read the last sentence and just start. Shitty first drafts, that's what I do.

I said earlier that writing a book is hard. Writing a novel, between 50,000 and 110,000 words is difficult. And to achieve that takes more than talent. Talent accounts for a small portion, dedication and work (putting in the time) counts for much more.

So I'll leave you with three quotes to wrap up this blog, and hopefully encourage you to just to the work, whether you feel ready or not, just do it.

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

-- Thomas Mann

A genius! For 37 years I've practised fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius!
(Spanish Violinist)

-- Pablo Sarasate

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.

-- Michelangelo

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