The First Rule of Writing

The First Rule of Writing Is…

The first rule of writing is… I know some of you want to finish that sentence with “…you do not talk about writing.”

But while that may be the first rule of Fight Club, that is NOT the first rule of writing. The first rule of writing, as with most–perhaps all–things in life, is this: You have to start somewhere.

Sounds simple, right? But consider this scenario: You have stacks of notebooks and reference books (maybe left over from your teaching days) sitting in piles in your closet. And those stacks sit next to stacks of memorabilia–notes from your grade school teachers or cards from your 8th birthday. Perhaps you have a basement overflowing with more than fifty years of accumulated stuff. Stuff that you don’t know what to do with. Stuff that you don’t want to part with.

Where do you even begin when trying to sort or organize all that stuff?

The truth is that, for many of us, we don’t know where or how to begin. And so that stuff in the basement or in the closet just sits around for another twenty years. In some respects, getting started on a writing project isn’t all that different. We might know that we have to start somewhere, but we just don’t know where. Throw a pandemic in the mix, and the act of “starting” becomes even more complex for many people, due to the emotional and mental toll of EVERYTHING.

Start with Bits and Pieces of Ideas

This post has taken me an inordinate amount of time to write. Not literal time, but time as space. Some of it may be due to the pandemic, but there’s at least one other reason, too: figuring out what I really wanted to say.

I’d been making notes for a couple of weeks, reading interesting, semi-related articles that I thought I’d include as source links somewhere. But try as I might, I couldn’t make all of my notes come together into something cohesive. In my mind, it seemed like all of these bits and pieces of ideas should fit together like a puzzle, neat and succinct, filling in a bigger picture. A universal truth, if you will. I even had a dream of puzzles one night amidst this initial note-taking. In my dream, I had two puzzles that were coming apart–there were pieces all over the floor–and I was frantic to keep them together.

The dream, in fact, spoke volumes about what I was trying to write. The day after the dream, I looked at all my “pieces” of notes; and it was suddenly clear to me that these articles I’d been reading and these notes I’d been making were more or less disparate bits. They didn’t belong together and, in fact, were clearly two separate ideas/subjects. That clarity of subject didn’t come to me in a dream. I mean, it does seem that my subconscious was trying to tell me something, but the clarity was also a consequence of heeding some of my own advice.

What I Really Want to Say

The day after the puzzle dream, I was giving a client some advice to help them better focus their writing. I suggested that they engage in a few minutes of freewriting, starting with this phrase, “What I really want to say is…” and see what emerges. This is a prompt I often used with my academic writing students to help them focus their writing. [Note: I didn’t come up with this prompt myself–I read it somewhere many years ago but do not know who to credit for the idea.]

Many of us get so caught up in WHAT we’re writing that we forget WHY we’re writing. This purpose (the WHY) encompasses both the broad intent (e.g., to entertain) and the more specific intent. The WHO (the intended audience) is intertwined in the purpose, too. Who is our intended reader, and what do we want them to gain from reading this? Are we writing to inform? To entertain? To persuade? None of these is distinct. That is to say, one can certainly do all three. In fact, I believe most (if not all) writing is persuasive writing, but the level of persuasiveness can vary greatly. But knowing the primary purpose of a piece is key.

I thought about what I had told my client and realized that I needed to take my own advice and figure out what I really wanted to say. It was after completing the freewriting exercise myself that I came to the realization that I had two different post topics brewing in my mess of notes, with possibly two different intended audiences.

Lose the Comparisons

Something else that can trip a writer up is fixating on what we are or are not doing, especially in comparison to others.

We all have to start somewhere. And sometimes when we start writing, everything falls in place nicely. I’ve written pieces that flow so smoothly that I even amaze myself. Wow! I wrote THAT in just an hour! Then, there are pieces–like this one–where I look at it and think, How did I spend three weeks on this!?

One thing I know for sure, though, based on my own teaching, writing, and editing experiences, is that no two writing projects involve the same level of energy. Furthermore (and importantly!), there is no standard writing pace.

To put a blog post together–from start to finish, including editing/revision and proofreading–it can easily take me a full eight-hour day (though it’s usually done over a span of days–an hour here, two hours there). Revising one of my short stories, though, is a much more intense process. A much lengthier process. In short fiction, every word matters. Every sentence needs to pull its weight. As such, I can literally spend a full hour revising one paragraph. I’m much less concerned about the nitpicky details in a blog post, as my purpose (and audience) is different. In a blog post, I care about content, accuracy, and coherence–and not necessarily if the post has any literary merit.

The first rule of writing is to start somewhere, and this “somewhere” will differ from project to project and from person to person. It will also vary depending on where you are in the writing process. When I finally forced myself to sit down and write, I wrote two to three pages in maybe 30 or 40 minutes. But that draft was disorganized and possibly incoherent at places, as first drafts tend to be. When I reorganized the draft, trying to make a cohesive and, hopefully, interesting piece, my pace was substantially slower. Honestly, though, I don’t keep track of how long it takes me to write; instead, I tend to get lost in the process–I enjoy it. But not everyone is going to enjoy the process…or enjoy it equally each time.

So, start somewhere, but lose the comparisons. Don’t compare your writing pace or productivity to the pace or productivity of someone else (or a previous writing project). Remember that each piece is a new piece in its own right. Just because one piece goes smoothly doesn’t mean the next one will, too. In general, comparisons are unfair and can cause unnecessary anxiety.

Procrastination vs. Motivation

I sometimes think of procrastination and motivation as two weights on a balance scale. It’s not necessarily a typical balancing act though; procrastination and motivation are not complementary in that sense. And a person certainly doesn’t require procrastination in order to be productive, which is what the balance scale metaphor would imply. But for those of us who are natural procrastinators, we require certain forms of motivation, both intrinsic and extrinsic, to level us out and propel us into action.

For me, deadlines are a powerful motivator, as is a paycheck. But a lot of my own creative writing is not driven by either deadlines or money. The drive comes from within. That said, finding motivation during a pandemic presents its own unique challenge, which is where this balance comes into play.

I cleaned my whole house the other week just to avoid sitting down to write. And then I decided to do my laundry and wondered why I had so much laundry to do–since I’ve essentially been wearing the same thing every day for a month and a half. I want to write, but I feel a sense of stagnation as I look at the same walls of my house all day every day. I imagine many others feel something similar. It may be grief, doom, fear, or anything else. There can be a lot of things keeping us from doing something that we really want to do.

My goals have changed during the pandemic, too. One goal I made for myself last week was to try and not eat a whole bag of Doritos in one night. It was a short-term goal, of course, and not an overly “serious” goal. I was mostly concerned that if I ate the whole bag in one night, I wouldn’t have anything left to nibble on for the next six days–until my once-weekly grocery trip.

How motivated was I to stick to that goal? Not very. The bag of Doritos lasted about two days. Therefore, on my last grocery trip, I picked up a box of cauliflower crackers instead, not even making eye contact with the flock of Doritos.

Avoiding Distractions: A Writing Exercise

Because of the nature of the current pandemic and the uncertainty around it, many are struggling with anxiety, depression, and grief. Avoidance is a common strategy for dealing with such psychological issues. We might find things to distract us in order to avoid the mental and emotional energy or anguish that comes with writing. Writing involves a lot of discipline. It involves self-awareness. And for many, it involves acknowledging events, circumstances, or emotions that we might not want to acknowledge.

To get started in writing–to address that first rule–one needs to be in a physical and mental space that allows “starting” to happen. This means avoiding avoidance. Try the following exercise:

• Take out a piece of paper and freewrite for three or four minutes. Use this prompt to get started: “I haven’t been writing because…” Allow your emotions to drip onto the page.

Example: I haven’t been writing because I’m scared. I haven’t been writing because I slept in too late and had too many other things to do. [List those things.] Etc.

Congratulations, you’ve just mastered the first rule of writing: You started somewhere!

• Now freewrite for three or four minutes using this prompt: “What I really want to say is…”

Talk about Writing

What I really want to say is that it can be difficult to get started and it’s not always something one can do on their own. Add in the turbulence of COVID-19, which has brought with it disrupted routines and added stressors, and productivity can be even harder to come by. So, let’s not call it procrastination. Call it whatever it is for you. Maybe it’s survival.

If the first rule of Fight Club is not to talk about Fight Club, the first rule of writing is just the opposite. Talk about it. Or write out your fears. It doesn’t have to be clear; it doesn’t have to be neat. Allow it to be messy and unorganized. Allow it to be incoherent.

Because sometimes that’s the only way to get started.

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