Running first

Graphic by Peg Ihinger

Whoever said “walk before you run” never spent much time with toddlers. Sure, toddlers start off trying to figure out balance and hanging on to coffee tables and couches in order to stay upright. But every last one of the ones I’ve met, once they let go and start moving around freely, starts running. It’s when they pause to look at something that they plop down unexpectedly.

Writers have this problem, too, and for a lot of us, it isn’t just a problem at the start of the process. It hangs around, popping up regularly throughout one’s career. Because every book or story you write is, in some sense, the first one. Sure, there are parts that are generally similar—dialog, action, description—but there’s still always that exhilarating, frightening moment when one has to let go of the coffee table and take a chance on the unknown.

People tend to approach this moment in one of two ways: either they try to map what they’re planning to do onto what they already know (or can find out from other people), or they charge out like a toddler making their first run from Mom to Dad. Each approach has its point…and its problems.

Beginning and early-stage writers are particularly susceptible to assuming that if they’ve done enough practice and enough reading how-to-write books and blogs, they will be able to handle whatever their new story throws at them. (Sometimes, it’s less an assumption than it is a desperate hope.) These writers aren’t completely wrong-headed—some aspects of writing benefit greatly from practice and planning ahead.

What these folks always seem to overlook, though, is that they aren’t putting the same jigsaw puzzle pieces together into the same picture. They’re putting different jigsaw puzzle pieces together to make a different picture. Every. Single. Time. Different pieces plus different picture means, at the very least, putting those older skills together in new and different ways. Frequently, it means needing to supplement them with entirely new skills and techniques that one didn’t even know existed. In other words, you still have to let go of the coffee table at some point (even if it’s a more advanced coffee table with this book than it was with the last one).

A good many of the writers who simply charge confidently into their next book are suffering from overconfidence. If they don’t actually think they know what they’re doing, they’re sure they can figure it out as they go along. They’re depending on their initial momentum and enthusiasm to keep them going. Again, they’re not completely wrong—you can cover a lot of ground if you’re running full tilt. Running is also easier if you have momentum. And figuring it out as you go is how all of us have to work, at some point. It’s just not as simple as you think it’s going to be when you’re admiring the scenery ahead of you, instead of slogging through the process of how to get through the bushes and the swamp that were so pretty when they were just a picture in your head.

And again, these writers seem to forget that, while they’ve written other things, they haven’t ever written this thing before. Also, the problem with figuring things out as one goes along is that things still need to be figured out. The new-technique fairy doesn’t drop things into your head or onto your computer in the middle of the night, so they’re all ready for you in the morning. Sometimes, you have to stop and think. A lot. Sometimes, you have to try something for a chapter or two before you realize it’s not working…and then drop back and try something else.

The only actual difference I’m sure of between beginner/early-stage writers and writers who’ve been publishing for decades is that the longer one has been at this, the more one is aware—and accepts—that hitting the Wall, or the First Veil, or the Opening Roadblock, or whatever one has decided to call it, is part of the process. It’s not writer’s block; it’s not even getting stuck. It’s just a point where, like the toddler, you have to stop and look around to decide where to run to next…and while you’re looking, you lose your balance and plop down for a minute. And then you get up and charge off in a new interesting direction.

Which is not to say that we don’t complain about the situation. Bitterly, sometimes (especially if there are deadlines involved). But most of the writers I know who’ve been doing this for a while don’t take this part of the process too seriously. It’s going to happen; we’re going to stall for a bit; and then we’re going to dump out a bunch of new words until we get to the next wall/veil/roadblock.

What doesn’t work for most writers I’ve known is being overly cautious. Trying to get everything “right” before writing anything down doesn’t work, because until it’s words on paper/pixels, you can’t be sure it’s “right.” What looks “right” in your head doesn’t always work on the page. The coffee table only reaches so far; if you want to get across the rest of the room, you eventually have to let go.