Dealing with a blank page.
Discovering the soul of a story. Write without structure and control the chaos.
Photo credit: I drew this frog.From my years of working with new writers, I’ve found that getting started on a piece can often be the most challenging part of the process. The blank page is scary, but it is also the safest place to be. If the words exist, people can judge them. If a story has been started, the pressure of finishing it becomes real. Spend a few years learning the “correct” way to write in American schools or businesses, and those doubts are more than enough to stall people at the start line. But writing is an art. And art needs chaos.
Understanding the soul of a story
Chaos in this context means a mass of written odd phrases, disparate thoughts, and vaguely related ideas. To create chaos is to remove filters from your early process. We might have ideas in our heads on how a good piece of writing is supposed to look. We learn that we must structure a paper in a particular manner for a grade, or that we shouldn’t put too many exclamation marks in an email, lest we convey the presence of joy in our lives.
Consideration for the final look of something is an essential part of writing, but it has limited business in the first step of a story. When I am faced with a blank page, I write everything that comes to mind: jokes to myself, anime quotes, and my frustrations about the piece at hand. Everything I’m doing in the early stages of a story is to hone in on what I actually care to write about. I’m looking for the soul of a story.
Everything I’m doing in the early stages of a story is to hone in on what I actually care to write about. I’m looking for the soul of a story.
The sculptor Michelangelo has a quote: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”
In writing, I consider the soul of a story to be that statue in the stone. It is the form a story is always trying to take from the moment whatever inspired you crossed your mind. A blank page, however, is not a block of stone. And you can’t chisel away at something that doesn’t yet exist.
Writing without structure
Julia Cameron introduced the idea of “the morning pages” in her book The Artist’s Way. It is a creative exercise and a journaling tool, where you write three pages of stream of consciousness writing every morning. One of the core ideas at play is to write in the mornings before you are hit by outside influences.
She says: “A lot of times people think [their pages] should be artful, and I say no. They should be whiny, petty, grumpy — whatever you happen to be. What you do is you write down just what is crossing your consciousness.”
Now we can’t all slot out time in our mornings for writing. Control of your schedule is often a luxury. But what is great about the idea of morning writing is that it helps you write with fewer outside influences. As we go through our day, we may unconsciously put on various personas depending on who we interact with. To create chaos on the page is to replicate that feeling of the less-inhibited self.
A lot of us writers struggle with self-criticism. It’s a tough part of the craft. It is far easier to say to push those thoughts aside than it is to actually do it. However, there can be an odd comfort in knowing those doubts will have plenty of time to dance around your page later on.
Set a ten-minute timer and see if you can use that time to create some chaos. Think generally about the topic you want to write about. As soon as a single thought thread passes your mind, follow it as though it were a shooting star. Write every thought you have as you trail behind it. Try not to delete anything and when your mind wanders, write those thoughts too. Remember, no one will ever have to see this but you.
Controlling the chaos.
You can repeat this method as often as you need. And you don’t have to read the words from the last session right away. After you have a sizeable heap of mostly nonsense, ask yourself: What ideas keep reappearing? What interests me most as I look back at this chunk of text? Again, we are still not asking what will look good to readers. The idea is to find what genuinely matters to you about whatever topic you are addressing.
Are there any connecting threads between the weird random thoughts? Highlight them. Take a break, come back, and search for some more. These recurring ideas will eventually guide you to the soul.
As you advance in the draft, you can start this process over and try to find the soul of a specific paragraph.
Now it’s still a long away from stone to statue, and we’ll cover rewriting more in-depth in later updates. But as journalist Anne Hull puts it: “Finding the story’s center is crucial; we usually write our way there. It takes many drafts, and there are no shortcuts.”
If at one point you thought you wanted to write solely about the movie Parasite, you may later learn that writing a full story on the topic doesn’t interest you. Instead, you may realize that you wanted to write big essays about the film techniques used or your own experiences with poverty.
For this reason, I usually write with at least two documents open: one main draft and one overflow document. When I begin the rewriting process, I cut and paste ideas and sections that no longer feed the emerging soul of the story. I feel better about siphoning ideas away when I don’t think of them as being erased. If the soul is mighty, it may spawn new life — other stories for another day.
If the soul is mighty, it may spawn new life — other stories for another day.
Not every story can be about everything. Not every scene needs to convey every emotion. And not every text needs to deal with every issue between you and the recipient.
Chaos in action
As a micro example of this chaos method, let’s look at the evolution of a single idea in this newsletter. Take the sentence from earlier up:
When I begin the rewriting process, I cut and paste ideas and sections that no longer feed the emerging soul of the story.
Before I got there, I was looking at a relatively blank document. At that stage, all I knew was that I would be attaching an image of a frog to this piece and that I generally wanted to talk about an aspect of writer’s block.
The sentence you just read started out as this paragraph. If it weren’t for this specific example, no one would ever see this but me:
“Look at this frog. It saved my life. I don’t know what to say. I drew it because it felt right. I forgot I could. It’s hardly high art. But I think it’s a nice frog. He’s worried about starting a story. I like to work with no less than two documents open. I consider myself a rewriter more so than I do a writer. I never introduce myself as a rewriter because that is exceedingly not catchy. But the idea is that you want to remove some of the filters you are subconsciously placing on yourself before you type out a word. “
This newsletter is approximately 1300 words. I estimate I wrote six times as much throughout the process. If I had a longer turnaround time, that number would be larger still. Sitting in my overflow documents are ideas, phrases, and tiny soul fragments that may become their own essays one day. If I’m honest, though, most of my writing is still in those overflow docs. Who knows if those soul fragments will ever get the chance to take on their final form. But even if they don’t, their chaos helped me bring my ideas into the world. And I just think that’s neat.
I found this at the perfect time. Thank you for your advice!