How Writing is Like Life: They’re Both a Bloody Mess

Junot Diaz is badass.  That was mostly my takeaway from this week’s New York Times Magazine edition about inspiration.   As a craftsman and storyteller, his skills are extraordinary.  Awe-inspiring, in fact.  And now, he’s a veritable genius, having just today won a MacArthur grant.

But that makes him a gifted writer, not a badass.  What makes him so incredibly cool—beyond his supposed penchant for swearing which is apparently contagious—is that he is so open about admitting just how hard writing is.  The sheer mess of it.   In the New York Times piece, Diaz describes the creation of his remarkable stories as being as much about what he throws out as what he keeps in.  He describes a wild process, beyond any reasoned control.

This is not true for all writers, of course.  For some, the words simply come out right, the very first go round.  For these lucky few, stories and novels spring forth fully formed from some deep recess of their brains with only a quick dust off and polish up required.  Other writers use careful preparation and detailed outlining to get there without too many needless detours.

I fall into neither group. 

For me the writing process is akin to driving at high speed into a pitch-black tunnel praying that some damn light spills out from the other end before I crash head-on into a wall.  Or my car breaks down in the middle of it.

For many early drafts I hurtle forward—bird-by-ugly-bird (thank you Anne Lamott)—praying that, in the end, I will discover that I’ve known much more about my own story than I ever could have hoped.  That, in fact, I knew everything all along.

But between here and there, the whole thing is pretty much a bloody mess.  And, as a control freak, I’ve had to learn to be okay with that.  To trust myself.  And to know that my process is not better or worse.  That it is simply mine.

In that way writing is like so much of the rest of life—marriage, parenting, friendship.  With all these things there are no known quantities or well-calibrated absolutes.  All you can really do is what your gut says you should.  And then, when all else fails, close your eyes and pray.