All or Nothing

Many of you know me as an "all or nothing gal". This is often true in my writing. I tend to take chances, push the envelope - especially in my developing fiction. It's always a tough balance to ride the line between good enough and truly surprising.

This is why it was truly surprising when I took a good hard look at my current WIP and found that the entirety of my first rough draft was little more than a character sketch. It made for nice bones, but my skeleton was gaunt. Flesh would have to be built layer upon painstaking layer. Of course, layering takes time. It takes energy. It takes persistence. I had to ask myself if I was content with good or if what I was shooting for was more along the lines of really surprising.

I'd often heard the expression: "Love is a decision". Did I love my story enough to decide to dive deeper? In order to touch the hard places I would need to disregard the bruising. If I was going to press into the sharp places I'd have to ignore the deep pain of repeated puncture wounds.

Why? Because that's when it gets good. That's when the writing really begins to show itself–when flesh touches bone in a way that makes it impossible to separate the joints and marrow. Beauty isn't found on the surface of a thing. It is found between the layers of the deep.

I didn't know if I had it in me. I still don't. So recently I've been asking for help. People I trust to hold me accountable. To be my companions in the journey.

There are many people I go to for advice on writing. Some of them I know personally, and I consider their help invaluable. Others I have only met through the pages of their writing. Recently I got a shot in the arm from one of literary fiction's finest.

Here's what Annie Dillard had to say:

"Push it. Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. Probe and search each object in a piece of art. Do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength. Giacometti's drawings and paintings show his bewilderment and persistence. If he had not acknowledged his bewilderment, he would not have persisted. A twentieth-century master of drawing, Rico Lebrun, taught that "the draftsman must aggress; only by persistent assault will the live image capitulate and give up its secret to an unrelenting line."

Who but an artist fierce to know–not fierce to seem to know–would suppose that a live image possessed a secret? The artist is willing to give all his or her strength and life to probing with blunt instruments  those same secrets no one can describe in any way but with those instruments' faint tracks.

Admire the world for never ending on you–as you would admire an opponent, without taking your eyes from him, or walking away.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: "Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time."    

- Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

I would never pretend to know all there is to know about writing or the writing process. I, like so many of you, am learning as I go. Practice doesn't exactly make perfect, but it does make us better writers. In fact, I don't know much about writing, but I do know this: We have to be willing to dive deeper, to spend it all as we go, having the faith that our well will be constantly replenished. All those saved one-liners need to be written, or else there won't be any room for the new inspiration that is sure to follow once we've emptied our hands and our pens of all there was for the moment.

I don't know much. But I know that I only have one life to live, one chance to write today's thoughts, today's words...And so I have.

Madison Richards tries to practice daily. Her skeleton is getting fatter, building muscles on bone and growing flesh to cover it all. She blogs here and there, and can be found at The Master's Artist on alternating Tuesdays.

Comments

[Tina]

Such a great post and so timely as I dig deeper into my new story. Thanks for the inspiration.

[deb@talkatthetable]

This part resonated with me as well Madison. I haven't done much in the way of writing other than blogging, still "scared", but have shared much that I at first thought to save . If I never sit and pen the other works, the words of me needed to get out there. For better or worse, for now.
Best of luck with your writing. And thanks for this.