David Amerland's Blog: David Amerland on Writing - Posts Tagged "writing-skills"
Working On a New Book
Well two actually. I am working on two books. I am in the process of carrying out editorial changes in one and putting together a complex, expanded outline in another that is part of the requirement for the discussion on it. So, why am I writing this? Why, at 3.00am when I have had a long day that started with a business meeting and has been followed up by over ten hours’ of writing, am I doing more writing as a break?
Well, because this is my mental recharge. The brain gets tired, like a muscle. It gets tired not from working (because unlike a muscle it never stops) but from working in a certain way, thinking about specific things, going over grooves it has already worked on again and again.
Structured work and order, it seems, the things that make our civilization functional are anathema to our brains. And this writing I am doing now is about as far from structured work as writing can get. Instead of starting out with something to say, some meaning to confer I am using it as a data dump of a sort. Unforced writing that allows me to see what I think which in a way also makes me aware of how my mental equipment functions.
I know it sounds a little clinical and probably more than a tad insane but when you work inside your head for hours and hours at a time you forget that there are processes taking place there which make what you do possible. But because your work relies on them, hooking them, occasionally and dragging them to the surface makes it all the more possible to refine them and actually make writing (and thinking) better.
When you work on a book and you have planned everything out and you are putting flesh to an idea and a surmise that before was mainly bones something funny happens. Your brain goes into an altered state where the words you write are not quite the words you want but rather the words dictated by the task at hand.
I know it sounds weird to say that as an author I don’t quite control the words that are supposed to be part of my job but what I’ve noticed is that afterwards, when I am editing, when I go and read what I’ve written I am as surprised by the insights or the points being made as, I suspect, the reader is when they first read them. It’s not that I don’t know what’s being said, after all the stuff has been inside my head, but some neurochemical configuration inside my head has made it possible to express it in ways that are novel even to me.
That’s why I am writing all this now. Capturing a snapshot of the writing mind is what writers always aspire to in the hope that we will, somehow, recreate the state of it, at will. Well, we shall see. In the meantime, the next book? All to be revealed in a few days.
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Well, because this is my mental recharge. The brain gets tired, like a muscle. It gets tired not from working (because unlike a muscle it never stops) but from working in a certain way, thinking about specific things, going over grooves it has already worked on again and again.
Structured work and order, it seems, the things that make our civilization functional are anathema to our brains. And this writing I am doing now is about as far from structured work as writing can get. Instead of starting out with something to say, some meaning to confer I am using it as a data dump of a sort. Unforced writing that allows me to see what I think which in a way also makes me aware of how my mental equipment functions.
I know it sounds a little clinical and probably more than a tad insane but when you work inside your head for hours and hours at a time you forget that there are processes taking place there which make what you do possible. But because your work relies on them, hooking them, occasionally and dragging them to the surface makes it all the more possible to refine them and actually make writing (and thinking) better.
When you work on a book and you have planned everything out and you are putting flesh to an idea and a surmise that before was mainly bones something funny happens. Your brain goes into an altered state where the words you write are not quite the words you want but rather the words dictated by the task at hand.
I know it sounds weird to say that as an author I don’t quite control the words that are supposed to be part of my job but what I’ve noticed is that afterwards, when I am editing, when I go and read what I’ve written I am as surprised by the insights or the points being made as, I suspect, the reader is when they first read them. It’s not that I don’t know what’s being said, after all the stuff has been inside my head, but some neurochemical configuration inside my head has made it possible to express it in ways that are novel even to me.
That’s why I am writing all this now. Capturing a snapshot of the writing mind is what writers always aspire to in the hope that we will, somehow, recreate the state of it, at will. Well, we shall see. In the meantime, the next book? All to be revealed in a few days.
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David Amerland on Writing
Writing has changed. Like everything else on the planet it is being affected by the social media revolution and by the transition to the digital medium in a hyper-connected world. I am fully involved
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