3.17.2024
I decided not to buy the drafting device and put the money I’d saved into other things, including a writing retreat for myself. It’s not that the device wouldn’t be useful, but not useful enough to justify the expense. Perhaps as I refine my drafting process it will make more sense in the future.
I continue to slowly listen to Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act and it’s helping me to see how I am still wrapping my arms around the process of writing. Here are some of the lessons that have emerged:
1. I need to draft by hand from beginning to end.
I think I write better by hand and it keeps me from distraction. There is a physical cost to handwriting that isn’t there (as much) with typing. My thoughts flow better on paper, whereas they can get scattered very easily when typing—even when distraction from other sources isn’t an issue. Writing by hand frees me to focus and forces me to be concise. I find new ideas more often when I’m writing by hand than when I type.
I made the mistake the other day of trying to type out part of a draft. My attention fell apart very quickly. I’m still working on an essay that I don’t completely understand yet. Different threads are crossing that may or may not ultimately belong together.
When I say drafting from beginning to end, I don’t mean the whole thing needs to be drafted in order. How could I even know what the order is? For the first time in a long time I have gotten some looseleaf paper for writing long-form drafts. I like having notebooks for capturing ideas, but it’s hard to draft a multi-part piece in a notebook when you don’t know how the pieces fit together.
2. My main goal is to cultivate greater ease with the creative process itself.
I can only do that by creating, going from start to finish, over and over again. The trick is not only to stick it out through the challenges and discomforts of each stage in the process, but to know which part of the process I’m in and act accordingly.
In Rubin’s book, there are four stages of creative process that I’m hearing:
- Gathering seeds/finding inspiration
- Creating the work
- Completing the work and soliciting feedback
- Sharing the completed work
I think one of my problems is that I tend to jump from Stage 1 to Stage 2 prematurely and then run out of steam because I don’t have a solid foundation under the work. Rubin talks about gathering many seeds instead of taking the first one and trying to make it into a complete work.
I have intuited all of the above for a number of months, which is why I have focused on short, slow-stakes essays. I know I need to get used to the process of starting and finishing something, anything. But I also need to be more deliberate in letting connections form in my mind organically, not forcing something to be ready that isn’t ready. My notebooks are a way-station for those connections, collecting bits of thread and buttons, matching them to see how they look against each other.
3. Creativity is about approaching life with a creative mindset. It’s the way you see, not what happens to you.
My sister used to joke when we were kids that you could put me in a room with a stick and a rag and I could keep myself entertained for hours. And it wasn’t that huge of an exaggeration, really. My imagination was going all the time when I was young and I need to remember that I have the capacity to be creative just by paying attention closely. To remember that humans have the capacity to see anything as meaningful if they pay attention to it or if it’s presented in a compelling way by an artist.
4. I need to see challenges as just that—challenges and not obstacles.
When I see something as a challenge to be overcome or a puzzle to be solved, then it feels inviting. If I see something as an obstacle, then it makes me want to quit. I can’t listen to the parts of my self that say a challenge is too great to be overcome. How can I be a trickster and get around the challenge somehow?