The Whale Belly

I almost abandoned another story because I reached a point where I didn’t know what happened next. Luckily, after sea of false starts with past projects, guilt got the better of me and I wrote blindly into a scene that left me more or less satisfied. There were two lessons here. The first was that an author doesn’t need to know everything about what they’re writing; the second is that it’s a good idea for apprenticing writers to practice venturing into the unknown. It’s a lot like letting go of the side of the pool and learning to tread in deeper waters.

Often I sit down to write because I’m stirred by a powerful idea. It could be a story idea from an overheard anecdote or an essay idea from a news article about injustice. However, after about a paragraph I realize that I don’t have much to communicate beyond a vague setup or a sloppy thesis statement. This is where the panic and dread set in. I have nothing to say; I’m an idiot; I can’t write; I’m forever trapped on the surface of things. Then I turn to distractions like Youtube or cleaning the kitchen to soothe myself, and I repress the idea.

Yesterday I started reading Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, and they made an interesting point about freedom and the creative process. They said that a blank canvas contains all the possibility of an idea, the first brush stroke severely narrows that possibility, the second all but vanquishes it. Art can never be perfect, and the more that we demand it to be, the more cramped our style and the worse our not only our outcome will be, but our experience of the process. Better to paint or write freely in the spirit of adventure and err, than to worry one’s self into paralysis.

They also mentioned an experiment conducted by an art teacher who told one class that they would be graded on the quantity of their work, and the other class that they would be judged on the quality. Predictably, the class graded on quantity produced many more pieces, and though many were not stellar quality, some of them were. The quality class produced next to nothing, and none of it very good. The point is that we have a better chance of producing good works if we focus more on making them than of worrying about how good they will be. Practice makes perfect.

And so I wrote a scene that is serviceable to the story at hand. It’s not great, but I’m proud of it anyway. I know that it was necessary to write so that I can eventually write a great scene in the future, in some great, future story. But today I have to write this one, and I have to love it for everything it teaches me on the journey to becoming a better writer.