Write a story every day, part 12: Words of Wisdom
Tuesday, February 3, 2009 at 03:44PM I’ve been writing a short story every day for two years, one month, and three days now. I thought now it'd be a good time to wrap up this blog series with a few shouts into the wind.
You feel totally sure that you couldn’t ever do something such as writing a story every single day, but… have you even tried to do it? Have you tried once for three minutes and failed and given up forever? Have you tried it a second time after you first failed? Right. Call me again AFTER YOU’VE TRIED IT TO BEGIN WITH!
You can develop the most unlikely habits. People are adaptable—different people in different ways. It’s amazing that people “learn” how to smoke cigarettes. You might as well learn how to swallow burning sandpaper. Learning how to write a story every day is easier than a lot of things you’ve learned willingly in your life.
First create, then edit. Before your wicked, amoral, shameless, free, wide-ranging creativity creates something—any one little thing—your inner editor has absolutely no role to play. It’s a universal principle: First the shapeless blob of mud, then the sculpture. First the dead chicken, then the fricassée de poulet à l’estragon. If you’re going to write a short story every day, you need to let those dead chickens come out of the freezer.
You don’t necessarily get better at something by simply repeating it again and again. I know musicians who’ve played in the same orchestra for 30 years and who have completely lost their ability to make music in any meaningful way. (Orchestras have a way of killing people slowly.) But if you practice something attentively and skillfully for any length of time, you definitely improve your craft. Writing a story every day for two years can kinda make you a good writer, know what I mean?
Time to take a break from writing about writing. My next blog series will be purely visual. See it for yourselves!
Reader Comments (2)
Your rather sweeping statement that "orchestras have a way of killing people slowly" is perhaps more a comment on your experience of them?As a full-time orchestral musician in a very busy and successful British orchestra I would like to suggest that it is a choice how one responds to orchestral life.It can be one of the most rewarding and fulfilling careers, admittedly with the frustrations that any creative person might experience in a corporate environment.But it still comes down to choice.I prefer to approach the daily life in an orchestra as creatively as possible, keeping my attention alive to all that is going on around me.The wonderful playing of my colleagues is always worth staying open to.For me that is also part of the philosophy of the Alexander technique. I'm sure there are people in orchestras who can no longer respond creatively in their music making, just as there are people in life who lose their vitality and freshness of response to life's journey.
Dale, you're absolutely right: there's always a choice to be made, and indeed it's the central principle of the Alexander Technique. I coached the members of a French national orchestra for several years. Many of them found it very hard to exercise constructive choices. They've had the same music director for more than 30 years, an inept man who finds it hard to learn new scores and who programs the same pieces again and again. The musicians are all tenured; it doesn't matter how badly you play, you simply can't get fired in France. You can be a very dedicated musician, and your stand partner may be someone who hasn't practiced for decades. It can be tough to stay fresh in such a setting, no?