Writing Wednesday: Waiting to Share

When I was a beginning writer, I heard about a much more experienced writer who had left our writing group and rarely shared her books with people until she had finished them. Even then, she tended only to ask for her agent and editor to read her book. This seemed a little arrogant to me. We talked a bit snarkily about it in the group and said that she should really be taking more advice from us, and we really thought her books would benefit from a wider audience's reading. Later, I heard her explain that she felt that sharing her books too soon often led to her losing her passion for them and so she just waited.

Fast forward ten years and I found myself today giving the advice to a friend who was struggling with a novel that she was perhaps sharing her novel ideas too soon and with too many people. I explained that for me, it is hard to change easily from my editor side to my creative side. I have to protect my creative side from my editor side. This often means that I do not do much critical work on my writing while working in a first draft mode. I find that if I go back and ask myself too many critical questions about if the characters' actions make sense and so on, I lose all interest in going on. I end up thinking that there is something wrong with the book and I put it aside. The creative part of me just doesn't get along with that critical side and goes into a corner and hides.

I find that I write a full draft much more easily if I just get it down very quickly and uncritically. Now, I will admit that this first draft sometimes bears very little resemblance to a final draft. The ideas are there, maybe the sweep of the book, sometimes a character or two is right or just needs a little tweaking. But they are very, very rough. I do that because it keeps my creative side protected and motivated to keep writing day by day. Then I let others read the book and let my creative side rest for a while.

The hardest stage for me is actually the third or fourth draft stage where I am still needing to use my creative side a lot in changing things, but the critical side is also very active. I still don't like to have comments about the language when I am at that stage. It just focuses my energies on the wrong things, makes me too critical when I should be trying to dream still about the manuscript and think how great it is going to be.

I think Orson Scott Card talks about how a writer has to hold simultaneously in her mind the faith that she is the best writer in the world and also the humility that this book is the worst piece of crap ever written in the English language. I think that is what I am getting at, in a way, only for me I can't hold them both in my mind at the same time. I have to hold them in my mind one after the other, in different stages of writing.

More and more, as I give advice to other writers, I find that I am focusing less on the mechanics of writing, the skills, and more on the psychology of writing. I don't know what that means. Maybe it's just because that's the part I am still struggling with.