What do you need in order to write?
Let’s say it better, make it more precise and accurate, make it a Real Question: What do you tell yourself you need in order to write?
Silence? Time? A contract? Two course reductions? An assistant? A grant from the NEA?
An idea?
Because, folks—let’s not kid ourselves—all you really need in order to write is a scrap of paper and a pencil nub. You don’t need 500 pounds sterling or a room of one’s one (pace Virgina Woolf); you don’t need passionate kisses (pace Mary Chapin Carpenter); and you certainly don’t need an M.F.A. (pace expensive programs around the country).
You don’t need to drink, although you might need to get sober; you don’t need to torture yourself, although you might need to stop long enough to put a few words together that can withstand your inner critic and remain on the page; you don’t need to have friends in the right places, because if your work gets out there (onto the page, into the air, into the heads of readers) your company will become the right place.
If you want to write, at the most you need 15 minutes, a spiral notebook, and a pen you got for free at the AWP conference from one of the many vendors selling a complete set of DVD’s titled How To Write Your Novel (which makes the process of writing a novel sound as if it’s the same thing as hammering in a nail, creating a scrapbook, or cleaning a cat box) or Express The Author Within (which makes the author seem like a squeezebox).
What stops most of us from writing is the thought that what we’re writing won’t be good enough; the threat of not being good enough can stop you before you write the first word. You think of the many ways in which your work will be slammed, obliterated, and torn apart by critics. You imagine the many ways in which it could be ridiculed by The Onion (“Academic Believes She Can Do Something Other Than Grade Papers”). You compare it to the admirable work being done by writers you love and become wistful and sad; you compare it to wildly successful work by writers you despise and become frustrated and nasty.
You’ve taken yourself way too seriously before you’ve even started and prevented yourself from having any fun. It’s got to be fun, this business of writing, because most of the time there’s precious little else to recommend it. Sure, you have to write in order to be hired in higher education, and you have to publish something useful in order to be awarded tenure and promotion. There’s pressure and it isn’t always pretty. But that doesn’t mean your work should be featured on the Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs show, right up there with “Custom Meat Processor” and “Mealworm Farmer.”
Okay, it’s time for full disclosure, although you already know what I’m about to say: When I say “you,” I’m also talking to “me,” because I need to sit down and write like hell this weekend, and I want to prevent myself from grabbing onto any excuse. I cannot permit myself to listen to an inner voice saying “If only I had a Macbook Air” or “If only I didn’t have so many students this semester” or (most insidious) “If only I had more time….” I waste a lot of time wishing I had more time.
So, dear readers, what do you think you need in order to write—and what do you really need in order to write? Has anything changed during your writing life? Do you find yourself needing more, wanting less, or longing for something altogether different?
28 Responses to What Do You Need in Order to Write?
trendisnotdestiny - January 21, 2011 at 10:04 am
A reminder like this to normalize the stagnant and work through it!
bookgirl - January 21, 2011 at 10:12 am
Gina, I think I need a big block of uninterrupted time. I only really need one quick moment to remember that I promised myself I would write EVERY SINGLE DAY and if I fall behind my writing is inauthentic and worst of all, I lied to myself and then what is the point? And so, I forge ahead every day and find words and wisdom in the most unexpected moments.
deanette - January 21, 2011 at 10:25 am
I need to slap myself upside my head and tell myself to snap out of it, which was my dad’s favorite phrse. I agree with trendisnotdestiny however that a reminder helps. Thanks!
downes - January 21, 2011 at 10:39 am
What Do You Need in Order to Write?
Literacy. The whole writing thing doesn’t work without it.
csgirl - January 21, 2011 at 11:30 am
Well, since I am not in the humanities, I have a different perspective. Before I can write, I have to do some work – otherwise I have nothing to write about. Finding time and resources to do the work is the problem, not writing it up afterwards.
wbgleason - January 21, 2011 at 11:34 am
Thank you for writing this.
Your wisdom shows through in your posts.
You have to be willing to put your thoughts on paper and send them out. And be ready for the criticism that will inevitably follow no matter what you say.
But if you aren’t willing to do this, perhaps what you have to say really isn’t important?
And yes, I envy Mark Bauerlein, and you, and many others on this blog for being willing to speak out and write well. Even when I don’t agree with them. After all, that is what academia is all about.
jeconnery - January 21, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Sometimes I need another writer to let me know that it’s OK to have doubts, that everyone has an awful first draft, and that you simply need to start…
Thanks.
literarytype - January 21, 2011 at 1:12 pm
I need to read. No reading, no writing.
rbannist - January 21, 2011 at 3:12 pm
One needs a pad and pen, a laptop computer, a place to sit and very little more. (Ancient technologies like a slate tablet or typewriter are acceptable too.) It all comes down to that old Nike slogan.
JUST DO IT!
nonnus - January 21, 2011 at 4:05 pm
It depends on the writer, but I found the experiences of veteran writers to be of immense value in helping maintain momentum. I’ve listened to the Writing Excuses (www.writingexcuses.com) podcast for the past two years. There is a lot of good experience shared through the podcast, but the most valuable for me was when they would discuss how an issue I perceived as a mountain was really a molehill.
Honestly, how many of us can consider “professional writer” as a career? Going down that road, there are a lot of doubts that can become major hurdles. Lots of reasons to put down the pen and go do something “meaningful” with your time. Hearing stories from published authors of how they went through the same hangups you are going through, and had success, really bolsters one’s enthusiasm.
trendisnotdestiny - January 21, 2011 at 4:06 pm
On second thought, what I need are less corporate slogans and simple-minded platitudes that reduce the writing process down to individual battles of will that need to be overcome in order to finish. If I want my writing to feel like a marathon, I’d go back to graduate school and get another doctorate.
However, the metaphor of running is interesting one since we all have a bit of a different pace, style, stamina, and distance.
thomaslawrencelong - January 21, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Researcher Robert Boice identifies two maladaptive behaviors that inhibit faculty productivity (publishing research and scholarship), what he calls “bingeing” and “busyness.” Bingeing is grounded in the belief that one must have long periods of uninterrupted time in order to accomplish writing (a behavior that I suspect is learned in grad school). Busyness is grounded in the belief that I am too busy even to get started, much less to continue, writing. Boice and colleagues have studied the problem (in both qualitative and quantitative studies) and tested interventions. His popular book “Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing” is accessible and summarizes his research.
sherbygirl - January 21, 2011 at 4:19 pm
My blog.
There, I said it. Since I started blogging, I write all the time, even if it is short pieces. I work through problems, I ask questions, I make observations. When it comes time to do “serious” writing, I’ve been practicing and it is much, much easier. It’s easier because I’ve been working through the problems, I’ve been receiving feedback, and I have been exercising my writing muscle. And, I also know that I don’t need a long period of time in order to produce something.
v8573254 - January 21, 2011 at 4:24 pm
Sometimes I need an “assignment.” Like – would you do an article . .?
Dream on.
Sometimes I need to have something I want to tell.
Both work.
sadkins - January 21, 2011 at 4:52 pm
Please give Lucinda Williams credit for passionate kisses. She wrote the song, and performs it amazingly well.
velvis - January 21, 2011 at 5:21 pm
Assuming my research is done…
I have to be “awake” – my brain has to be awake. Sometimes that requires a caffeine source or several sometimes that requires a trip to the gym.
I need to be able to talk to myself out loud, music and to shut off my stupid chat programs.
infovoyeur - January 22, 2011 at 12:04 am
Having achieved stale-out on a many-years project on “teaching of true-r general-generic thinking” (beyond “Critical Thinking”…), I now only can cautiously craftily tiptoe around the obstacle of my resistance (caused, behaviorism-like, by attempting too many times yet another draft which also collapsed so far…)–I can only try to retreat to right-brain, “flow,” Zen, “not really trying let’s just see and…” type of approach. (There is a principle in what I just wrote, but heck…)
zeewest - January 22, 2011 at 12:33 am
Gina,
You remind me of a favorite quotation of mine from Aldous Huxley:
“I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. ‘The first thing,’ I said, ‘is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.’”
What often stops me from writing before I even start is exactly what you described: that snide inner critic who finds fault with every line as I put it down on the page. I’m trying to get in the habit of kicking that inner critic’s ass out the door and not inviting him back in until it’s time for the rewrite.
crankycat - January 22, 2011 at 7:59 am
Necessities: Chocolate. And the cat.
After that – mental earplugs to guard me against the internal editor who looks over my shoulder and says “THE? You put “THE” at the start of that sentence?! Why bother with the rest?!”
goxewu - January 23, 2011 at 1:22 pm
I think it was Eudora Welty who said, when asked if university writing programs didn’t actually discourage young writers, “Yes, but not enough of them.”
So, here’s to the abnormalization of the stagnant and not working through it, blocks of time interrupted into smaller blocks, illiteracy, being unready for criticism, not starting, not reading, no place to sit, not hearing stories of perserverance from successful authors, more corporate slogans and simple-minded platitudes, more bingeing and busyness, no blogging, no assignments, no gym, no caffeine, no cat, and the snide inner critic.
22228715 - January 24, 2011 at 7:36 am
Typo: a room of one’s “own”.
raghuvansh1 - January 24, 2011 at 10:57 am
I want to write only because I want to understand the problem which tortured me long time.My experience is in writing I can make clear that problem. Long time ago I wrote book on anxiety intention my writing this book why anxiety torturing me Writing on this subject many new thing I understand I Can bring many hidden thing from my unconscious mind. I think writing is a therapy to cure himself
dank48 - January 24, 2011 at 11:20 am
Great article, and very true. As Emerson put it, we are afraid of failure; we are afraid of each other; we are afraid of success; we are afraid of ourselves.
P. D. James, J. K. Rowling, and Mickey Spillane have all remarked that there’s no perfect time for writing and never will be. The time to write is now. As Spillane (twenty or twenty-five years ago, when he was the fifth most-translated nonbiblical author on the face of the earth), said (paraphrased from memory), “All this stuff about the agony of writing is a lot of crap. All you need to write is a table, a typewriter, and a stack of paper. You don’t even need a phone. In fact, you’re better off without a phone.”
Mickey’s not my idea of a stylist, but he did know something about production. And Peter De Vries, a better writer imo, said, “I can’t write except when I’m inspired. Therefore I make it my business to get inspired every morning at nine o’clock.”
rshawver - January 24, 2011 at 11:35 am
Heck, all I need is a deadline looming on the horizon, a pad of paper, and a pen. It also helps if I’m committed to it through a binding contract.
I write on airplanes and at home. I write at lunch and on weekends. I write anywhere that I have a few minutes. I even send myself notes via email if I don’t have my flashdrive with me at the time.
Maybe I’m missing something in the other posts. After all, I’m not writing a novel and I don’t have an M.F.A. Rather, I have an M.P.A. and my topics are boring to most (unless you are seeking that illusive grant funding that most faculty members dream about). My articles and books focus on fund development strategies and techniques. But one thing I know for certain is that if I don’t take the time available to me (whenever and wherever it is) I wouldn’t be published!
So as rbannist reminded us all, “Just do it!”
soojournal - January 24, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Emotional intelligence is at the helm. Self-awareness. I hope visitors to our online literacy quarterly read this.
trendisnotdestiny - January 24, 2011 at 12:25 pm
The key to avoid the perfectionism involved in merging abstract concepts into actual physical writing output. Most of the talented writers I know of usually see it as a process of discovery (like seeing an old friend and not knowing what is going to happen).
For some, not knowing is paralyzing. For others, there is a trust that the pad of paper, pen and the imagination will work together to create something that did not exist before. Also, it is very important to separate the editing process (the harsh self-critic that Dr. Barreca talks about) from the writing process which tend to be more fluid.
The best way that I have seen this put that we write to know something. By writing everyday, we know a little more.
greymolly - January 25, 2011 at 1:32 am
I am feeling really drawn to the comments about writing before editing, avoiding perfectionism — the kinds of advice I give my students, in fact. And also to the idea of blogging to free up the process. My fear? I read so much rubbish in blogs and on internet forums, mindless rants and raves (no, I don’t mean here) and I am afraid that untrammeled quantity will equal low quality.
asongbird - January 25, 2011 at 10:32 am
“What Do You Need in Order to Write?”
Hmm.
Oh.
Bye-bye.