Writing will inevitably be this blog’s most touched-upon topic as I have long been very, um, interested in methods to overcome writer’s block and actually get projects done. So it had better be early on that I introduce the method I have been using to finally succeed at getting some books written and out into the world (11 as of this post).
It’s called “writing into the dark” and I got it from Dean Wesley Smith, an indie author who discusses it extensively on his own blog, in nonfiction books compiled from his blog posts, and in interviews. DWS’s story, if I can remember off the top of my head, is that he did very well in a poetry class for non-English majors in college just by writing whatever came to mind without self-criticism and also placed well in poetry contests, so he moved on to short stories and got two published, again just by cranking them out. Then he got too self-critical thanks to exposure to the revision-heavy methods of writing teachers and didn’t sell anything he wrote for seven years. Then he discovered Robert A. Heinlein’s 5 business rules for fiction writers and that forever oriented him to the path to becoming an extremely prolific writer, whether through traditional publishing or now independent publishing.
“Writing into the dark” is to a lot of authors who do it a more palatable name than “pantsing” which is what everyone else calls it. Older folks seem to think that term is gross because that’s also what it’s called when you pull someone’s pants down as a stupid prank though of course it is just an abbreviation for “writing by the seat of your pants,” which is an aviation analogy, blah blah. Basically you write with no outline. (DWS actually says he does outline, but only after he’s written, so he can remember what happened.) All DWS needs is “a character in a situation” and it’s off to the races. The story is discovered as it is written. He says that way more authors than you think write this way, and that a lot of the ones who say they don’t are lying (including Hemingway who was apparently pranking journalists on purpose about how many times he revises his work). DWS argues that this produces a better story than something that is planned or polished because it is raw and individual, like uncut gems compared to cut ones.
More will have to be discussed about this but I only want my blog posts to be so long because I want to make them frequently, but it’s also important for me to go back to writing.