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Literary Lights

Priscilla Fagan

The Writing Process

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Jack London
 
Jack London’s ‘writing process’ unfortunately doesn’t seem to be mine. I find myself too often waiting for the inspiration. However, I must admit I did have to do some searching, maybe with a club, to come up with this month’s column. Ah, the deadline, how I love it. Perhaps I need to take heed from Jack; he might have stumbled onto something.
 
Then again, Rudyard Kipling warns us, When your Daemon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait and obey. Our inner demons hate it when we don’t listen to them. They thrive on our conscious mind which stills our creative child.
 
So, what is the writing process? We start out with two viewpoints from opposite ends. London goes after the inspiration, Kipling drifts and waits.
 
Doris Lessing says, In the writing process, the more a thing cooks, the better. I totally agree, however, I think she’s well into the process by this time. Either that or she’s using cooking as an excuse while she waits for inspiration.
 
All in all I believe the writing process is whatever works for you. William Gass tells us, The real writing process is simply sitting there and typing the same old lines over and over and over and over and sheet after sheet after sheet gets filled with the same sh**. I think this man needs to take a break.

The more I research this writing process, it appears more writers sit and wait.  You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. Franz Kafka
 
My writing style changes like the weather, at least the weather in New England. I don’t find myself sitting and waiting very often, however, I do tend to wait for ecstatic inspiration. Saul Bellow confides, You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write. I find this to be true, as long as I can get myself up and not wait until the morning when the idea has faded like the memory of warm weather.

Peter Elbow suggests the easiest way to get words on paper is freewriting, however, he does end by saying. . .The goal of freewriting is in the process, not the product.
 
I don’t know if I’ve found the process, but I have found a great ending to this column in the process. Pay special attention to the last six words for in them might just lie the real secret to the writing process. Jack Kerouac, —Let the writer open his mouth & yap it like Shakespeare and get said what is only irrecoverably said once in time the way it comes, for time is of the essence—
 
Remaining optimistic,   Priscilla