Sometimes I can physically remember what it was like, early on in my career – what it actually felt like in my body — to write in those early days. The wiring was just starting to stitch my mind to my hands to the page to the structure of a story to its characters’ inner worlds – and mainly how gawky I was. Writing as a tiptoe, then galumphing, how unsteady I was word-by-word, how much of it was an intellectual practice, so self-aware.
But even then, there were those moments when there was a tidal momentum that carried me from one word to the next and something was written without my full awareness. Those moments were addictive. I knew that they were essential. At first, it was words that sometimes took hold with their own momentum. Then I learned how voice could ground me in those moments and take over. And, finally, that flexibility was something I came to rely on.
There are still moments of what I call “making it up.” I talk to my students about this feeling, trying to put it into words. Of course, we’re always “making it up,” as writers of fiction – and too as poets and memoirists (as rebuilding memory and expressing it is an re-imaginative act). But I hate these moments when I feel myself writing. Sometimes they last just a few minutes until I find a way in to the work. Other times, the feeling endures – usually when there’s something new about what I’m writing, something I haven’t encountered before – it feels like I’m out of my depth, at sea. This is ultimately a good thing. I’m teaching myself something – new wiring is being formed.
I’m demanding about generating pages when teaching emerging writers – fiction, poetry, nonfiction and screenplays. The practice of writing pages helps you create pages, but also leads to those glorious moments when the work begins to write itself.
In sports – stay with me non-sports types, trust me – good coaches always make sure that their players have endurance because that conditioning is in their control. They can’t, for example, teach hunger for goals or ambition and drive. But like workshop leaders, they can help to create an atmosphere of taking risks and encouraging ambitious moves.
Can a good coach breakdown skill sets? Yes, and so can a good workshop leader – an exercise on dialogue, another solely on surface tension, another on subtext. But can they teach what’s perceived as athletic clairvoyance and split-second intuition? No. Those moments that seem like clairvoyance – on the playing field and on the page – you know what I mean, right? You’re writing without really thinking about writing. Split-second decisions are happening word by word and you’re not conscious of those thoughts. It’s as if your mind is fully wired to your fingers at the keyboard just as the athlete’s body is wired to the ball, the field of play, the defense…
How does this wiring happen? It’s not God-given alone for either the writer or the athlete. What you’re actually seeing as a fan or a reader is the result of hours drilled into a craft. This might seem obvious to many of you. But for so many reasons, we believe athletes are born athletic and writers are born creative. What’s talent without time spent tending to that talent? It’s typical. It’s the rule. But, again, stick with me on this athlete/writer comparison.
Here’s a quote from Tracy Steven Peal, a speed coach and poet.
“I am very privy to the highly programmable nervous system of elite players. What is logically deemed as athletic clairvoyance, is actually a mapping, let’s say habitual patterning, that’s actually rehearsed over and over and over again on the field of play. What the spectator is seeing is actually the resultant – what makes it special and unique, is how individual athletes process this sensory information and know how to act (react is too late)… [An athlete can have] this anticipatory knack, which is more seamlessly hard-wired into his consciousness, his being. Great athletes create on the fly, sifting through the myriad of options (Bernstein’s degrees of freedom, I suppose), to find the most logical solution to the competitive matrix. It truly speaks of inspiration, perception, neuroplasticity, skill acquisition, talent, fascial networking and spatial awareness – all in a matter of milliseconds.”
What the writer is doing when at the page is this mapping, this habitual patterning. The hope is that you are going to find more and more stretches of time in which your work seems to be writing itself. So many processes that are intellectual and very conscious – and sometimes self-conscious – when you’re at the early stages of your craft are going to become unconscious. Like when you first learned to walk, it was a very conscious effort that has become unconsciously wired now.
That said, writing for writing’s sake – just to drill in the hours – shouldn’t be blind practice. As Peal would remind us, drilling in bad practices only reinforces bad habits. Having a good reader, someone trusted and smart, with a keen eye is crucial. You need to be practicing the right moves or else you’re doubling down, making bad habits worse – florid prose, for example, or great banter with no stakes.
While creating pages at an ambitious rate, you’re also practicing strategies that help you block out distraction and get you to the page. You’re figuring out how to carve out time, to refresh and recharge, and then returning to the page. Perhaps you’re also learning how to move between projects. Maybe you’re teaching the people in your life that this discipline is important to you and that it will require some understanding and support on their part. In this way, you’re hopefully working toward a sustainable practice.
But, again, what’s really key is this shift – skill after skill – from the very conscious effort to all of these unconscious moves. As your endurance and understanding of your process improves, the work is also hopefully getting more automatic moment to moment. Put these two trajectories together and your payoffs start to compound.
Of course, as I mentioned above, many of these skills are transferrable, project to project, but the truth is that each project has its own set of issues and teaches you how to write it. This work will always humble you.
There should be a positive kickback of endorphins as you see yourself taking great strides on the page, getting better at your craft. But what you also should have faith in is what you can’t see – all of that wiring deep within your brain.
WU’ers: What is your experience with automatic writing? Do these moments come regularly to you, seldomly, or not at all? What, if anything, do you do to nurture/encourage automatic writing? And if it is a part of writing life, how would you describe it – how does it feel to you?
About Julianna Baggott
Julianna Baggott is the bestselling, critically acclaimed author of over twenty books. Her novels Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders and Pure were New York Times Notable Books. She writes under her own name and pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode — most notably, The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, and, for younger readers, The Anybodies and The Prince of Fenway Park. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Best American Poetry, and on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered, and Here & Now. She’s the creator of a six-week Jumpstart program to get writers generating new material and Efficient Creativity: The Six-Week Audio Series; listen to the first episode is available, for free, on SoundCloud. Learn more about Julianna and her books on her website.
For me, writing is a tough slog. Perhaps it is just my lack of imagination combined with trying to stay within the guidelines of the craft. Only on a rare occasion do I fall into the sweet spot of automatic writing.
I wrote the first f draft of my second novel with a book coach. 20 pages every two weeks. The accountability stretched me and eventually became normal. I got flagged on bad habits and detours bi-weekly, which saved me so much pain. Once I saw my weaknesses, I could start un-doing them by learning skills. My coach’s sharp gaze sharpened my own. I start with an outline (not married to it!) because if I have a structure I trust, I can let go and write deeper. For me, writing is very physical so I love the athlete-comparison. All that training seeps into your muscles and hopefully frees you. Beautiful post. Thank you!
I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about. The entire time I was reading this post I was chuckling and saying, “Yes, yes, yes.” On the outside, it looks like me drafting a full novel last month and then finishing a novella on the 30th. In December I draft short stories and novellas and so began another novella on the first.
On the inside, though, the numbers are meaningless. On the inside, my brain becomes a team of players, each doing rather than thinking about doing. “Playing fast,” football players would call it.
I see the words on the screen while another part of my brain is simultaneously seeing the story unfold. I hear the voices. I visualize the story from even outside the POV I’m writing. Meanwhile, troubleshooting is going on. If the story is about to stumble, in a flash “the film” resets before I reach that point. Also in the background, I’m reworking the bigger story to accommodate what’s written in the present.
It’s like visualizing all the possible moves on a chessboard. I “just know” other character motivations and what’s happening “off camera.” There’s even a part of my brain that’s cursing my fingers for not keeping up.
All of this is happening in micro seconds while I work and it’s rare that I’m aware it’s going on. When awareness does intrude, I pull back from the keyboard, laugh, take a drink, and continue.
I’ve reached this state more frequently as I’ve aged because I’m a more honest writer now. I toss out logic brain and allow creative brain to rule. She has access to that higher state.
I read recently in a book on the characteristics of bestsellers that most writers plan their characters. I had no idea! Mine just pop up in my head (or dreams), and while I might change their name and how much of a role they play in the book, the characters themselves are fairly constant.
I don’t even know how one would go about consciously creating a character. And now I’m wondering if that’s a weakness.
I do a mix. There are times when flow is at work. When it’s not, that’s a great time to let my analytical mind look at the broad strokes, look at act structures and breaks and think about how character informs plot (or IS plot ideally) — and how best to amplify and exploit the concept that I have. I toggle between the two mind sets (or multiple blurs of those mind sets).
The idea of automatic writing scares me somehow, but as you describe it here, Julianna, it sounds aspirational. I describe my best writing moments so far as a fusion of “making it happen” and “watching it happen.” Not automatic, I think, but perhaps close.
This works. I think that there’s a sense of continuity between words and fingers at keys that’s essential — when things are going well. I should write a post called WHEN THINGS ARE GOING BADLY. (And WHEN YOU SHOULD GIVE UP ON A PROJECT … b/c sadly there’s that. I face that a lot no matter how long I’m at this …)
This is how it’s been for me for awhile now, however, the struggle is to create something new that I haven’t already written before elsewhere. Does that make sense?
When I read a new John Irving novel now, though, it’s freeing of this. He has his obsessions and he will keep writing them. And he doesn’t care. I do worry. And it’s a main reason why I write in different genres. I should do a post on this.
I also read this article with interest. After completing three novels where I felt I didn’t know what I was doing a significant part of the time, I’ve been working on number four the last two months and it is flowing so much better. I think the main difference is that I now know WHEN to let the words flow, with the security of knowing I can tweak them later. I can also recognize when it it NOT working and can mark those sections to fix in the second draft. Writing is always going to be a lot of work, but taking advantage of the automatic moments is key not only to creativity but to voice.
Interesting. I’ve also seen automatic writing described as psychography, channeled writing, spirit writing, guided writing. However it’s described, it all falls under the umbrella of psychic mediumship. I was thrown by the sports analogy – but I can see how it fits. It’s absolutely possible to enhance, amplify, and prolong this skill by cultivating good habits and exercising the skill into muscle memory. Thanks for this reminder.
So much wisdom here, thank you. I absolutely love the encouragement to *practice* writing, so that the mechanics of it become (as you so aptly compare) as natural as walking. But you pair that with the reminder that there are good habits to work toward, and bad habits to push away from, too. Walking is not just walking.
And I love love love: “This work will always humble you.”