An Approach to Writing
This post was written by Tom from Winston-Salem’s Lone Beatnik:
I’ve often thought about how I write; what the process is that I go through when I put pen to paper, or more accurately when I put my fingers on the keyboard. I don’t really know how I write– that actual act of writing, and creating a piece of writing, it’s a mystery to me in some sense.
Writing has always been an organic thing for me. I remember during high school, when we’d do in-class writing, I would always start writing while my peers furiously made outlines. I always ended up doing well, despite my lack of planning and despite finishing much earlier than my classmates (modesty prevents me from going any further with this).
Though I began to write outlines and become more organized as I went through college and into graduate school, I tried to keep things fairly spontaneous. For me, how much time I had to write a paper didn’t matter as much as the point when inspiration would dawn on me. While other students would grind out papers, it seemed as though my papers sprung almost out of nowhere. It could be weeks in advance or a couple days before the deadline, however option #2 happened a lot more than #1. Organic is the way I would describe my writing process; I’m not necessarily in control of it, but it is control of me. When inspiration dawns upon me, that is when I write and not before.
One time, I was meeting with a professor during his office hours and I described to him my approach to writing. I described how I approach writing in the same way as a free-swinging slugger in baseball approaches hitting- say somebody like Vlad Guerrero. I just write, I don’t think about it and I just let the words spill onto the page. Granted I do go back after and clean up and revise (I can be like Kerouac only so much) but for the most part I just write. The flip side of that are the people who meticulously plan, making numerous outlines and taking exhaustive notes. I would compare them to baseball players like Tony Gwynn or Ted Williams. They spend hours practicing, crafting, going over notes or reviewing film (in the case of Gwynn).
(OK, the baseball analogies will stop. I hope that made sense, even if you aren’t a baseball fan. There are other examples from other sports but I like that one the best)
It’s the difference between the “natural” and the craftsman. That’s not to say that one approach is better than the other, but there are very strong and clear differences between the two.
But because of this, I always worried that my “natural” writing ability would escape me at some point. Because I didn’t know exactly I did that made my writing good, I worried that ability would leave me behind and I wouldn’t know how to get it back or replicate it. I feared something that my high school teacher referred to as a “case of the stupids.” But she also said that such things don’t exist and that’s what I continue to tell myself. I just keep on doing what I do, because it’s taken me pretty far. And I don’t plan on changing for anyone, at least as long as I can help it.
But what about you all? Do you think of yourself as a natural writer, or as a master craftsman and tactician? Do you think I’m slightly crazy? Did this article make any sense? Respond away!
