The only claim I want to make about myself as a writer is that I have worked hard at it. I’ve written close to a million words at Real Live Preacher. And even my most casual pieces get read 8 or 10 times before I post them. There is no way to count how many times I go over my serious stuff. I don’t even want to know.
 
With only that claim to make, I’d like to offer some thoughts about creative writing.
 
The ideas come first. Not always, but usually. You have to be an idea person if you are going to be a writer. You have to love ideas as much as you love the words in which you clothe them. You must be always thinking, always looking, always peering into dark places, always curious, always imagining.

If you are a writer, you’ll probably be caught talking to yourself fairly often. Snickering over some private joke. And if someone asks why you are laughing, you’ll be startled and a little irritated to find that there are other people in the world. And you might not be able to say why you are laughing, exactly, because you don’t have the words worked out yet.

You will pay a heavy price for good ideas. They don’t come cheap. You’ll have to allow your mind to spend most of its time daydreaming. That means you’ll put a sweater in the refrigerator now and then. You’ll sometimes drive to the wrong city. And occasionally you’ll have a hard time remembering what month it is. Sometimes when I am deep in my writing, I can’t remember what season it is.

Is this the end of Summer when we’re moving toward Fall? Or are we at the top of the year, rounding the curve from Winter to Spring?

But let’s imagine that you have your ideas all jotted down in your moleskine notebook, and you’re ready for the meat and potatoes. Ready to lay down the words.

How do you write words? How do you put words on paper so that they seem alive? How do you write in a way that stirs the imagination and draws the reader in? Bad writing causes people’s attention to drift. They will be reading and suddenly find they are thinking about other things. Good writing pulls the reader right into the same absolute focus the writer had when she laid the words down.

Good writing creates an experience for the reader that is like running down a hill. You’re laughing and you are so into the moment that you can’t think of anything else. And you couldn’t stop even if you wanted to. A good story can produce the same result, even if it is not written particularly well. Remember that, because when you combine a compelling story with good writing, you have found the sweet spot.

And the big question, the mother of all writer’s questions: How do you write so that your writing becomes a living voice, where the people who read your work come to believe that the personality they “feel” behind the words is as real as their best friend?

The easy answer: Let that person behind the writing be you. Really you. Try not to hide. Let your weaknesses and your strengths show along with your loves and your desires. It’s okay if people find out things about you. So what?

When you begin to write you need to let go and stop trying to control the words and the process. Most people try to take control of their language when they write. They furrow their brows and immediately start thinking about sentence structure. They plod along, trying to build something. They treat words like bricks. And their writing becomes as generic as a brick wall.

When you want to write creatively and well, you need to do the opposite of that. When you let go of trying to control the sentences, you tap into the part of your mind that remembers music lyrics. You’ve experienced that, I would imagine. Music comes on the radio and suddenly you’re singing the words to a song you haven’t heard in 20 years. THAT is the part of your mind you want to use. That is the part of your mind where the phrasing is, where the style is. That’s where every great sentence you’ve ever read lives and breathes and waits to come out again.

How you will achieve this state of mind is a very personal thing, so I won't be much help with your process. It is a playful state of mind. It is an indulgent state of mind. When I am in my deep writing focus, I regularly use words that I do not know. A word will pop out, and I’ll think, “I’m not even sure what that word means.” I’ll get a dictionary and find that I’m using the word correctly. It was in my mind all along, buried in some phrase that my musical mind remembered and spit out. This happens to me regularly. Only once have I had a word I didn’t know pop out and be wrong. That was when I found out I didn’t know what the word hubris meant.

I can usually achieve that writing state of mind by not thinking about sentences or grammar or even what I’m trying to accomplish. Instead, I listen to the sound of my words. The only thing I care about is how the sentences and paragraphs sound.

Grammar doesn’t matter as much as sound matters, but you better know your grammar. If you know grammar, you can bash it all to hell when you need to. And only when you need to. If you need to include a two-word incomplete sentence to get a paragraph to sound right, then do it. Go ahead. It’s the starting and stopping and slowing down and emphasizing that makes writing beautiful. Use periods, semicolons, and commas to control the length of the pauses between words and phrases, BASED ON HOW THEY SOUND. Let a period mark a long, hard break and a turn to a new idea. Let a semicolon mark a shorter but still significant break to a connected idea. And let a comma mark a slight pause, because you want the reader to slow a bit before going on.

Good grammar requires that you use a comma when connecting two independent clauses with a conjunction. I usually follow that rule. But if it sounds good to have the sentence move right through that intersection, drop the comma and motor on. Don’t make your reader slow down because of some rule if you want them to slow down just ahead for something bigger. Every pause draws attention and uses energy.

And please don’t think that you will create good writing by using obscure vocabulary. When you do that you put your reader on the defensive. She is thinking about how you knew the word and she didn’t. You stopped her DEAD IN HER TRACKS. And you will have to work to get her moving again. Complex, twisting logic and sentences that have to be deciphered do the same thing. When you get your reader moving, you don’t want her to stop.

You must earn the right to use complexity and hard vocabulary. If the reader has fallen in love, you can gently drop a complex word in if you must. If only that word will do. But do it softly. Slip it in nicely, almost apologetically, with some good, rich context to provide clues to its meaning.

You see what you are doing? You are creating a reality and inviting friends over to visit. Be a good host. Lead them along the way. Make your reality sound beautiful. Care for the readers, and they will care for you.

When are you done writing? When you can read the entire thing out loud, start to finish, without getting hung on any clanging sounds or awkward structure, you are done. When it sounds the way you want it to sound, you are done.

And this final word: Don’t come back two weeks later and read what you wrote. You are a different person now, and you’ll hear things you don’t like. You’ll find sounds that you wouldn’t allow now. No one has time for that. Forget the last one and move on.

rlp