"Ta-Nehisi Coates on Finding Creative Breakthroughs in Writing," Gavin Lamb
Hey everyone! This piece by Gavin Lamb gives us some hopefully helpful advice from various other writers that have also at one point been in our positions as well. The piece of advice that has been brought into the spotlight over and over again for Lamb was how to not give up on writing. One of the authors that he particularly highlights is Ta-Nehisi Coates who says that making a living as a writer is really difficult and that it will be hard to want to continue to write because success doesn't come very quick often times and very few people will even make it to the big league levels where they can make a nice living off of just their writing alone. I know for me it can be especially tough as someone who is better at writing fiction than non-fiction and trying to come up with ideas for stories that not only would I want to read and write but for other people that will hopefully enjoy my writing and story ideas as well. I think another problem that I have is that if I don't have a hard deadline for something to get done then odds are it won't get done or I'll set it aside for a long time until I get motivated enough to do it. He also talks about Coates and how he had this banging his head against the wall moment where he really struggled. Coates also talks about how what he envisioned in his head that he was going to write just didn't end up on the page. Lamb ends his piece with a quote from Susan Sontag, "Writing is a little door. Some fantasies, like big pieces of furniture, won't come through." I think this quote was pretty spot on because I know for me I have all of these singular scenes in my head that I know I want on the page but to connect them all into one well connected product doesn't always work so I have to edit them or cut them out which is tough. I think this essay was able to help me realize that it's not just one author that struggles but that a lot of them seem to struggle with continuing their works and putting words on a page so in my thinking if you can overcome the problem then you'll be putting yourself above the rest of the writers that haven't overcome the perseverance issue yet.
Do you think a deadline would help in your writing?
Has there been a moment in your writing that's made you want to "bang your head against the wall" and/or have you also had a "breakthrough" moment in your writing?
Have you ever had ideas and thoughts on what your writing drafts would look like, then when it's completed it's completely different?
Describe an idea for a story that you've had that when it was completed it was either different or maybe not quite how you initially thought it would be.
Hello! Thank you for your post today!
ReplyDeleteI think some of the best advice to give is how to not give up on writing, because so many people do, especially because of the fact that it is easy to give up. It is so easy to give up because it can be extremely hard, and sometimes it is just better to let things be easy by not doing it at all. It is something I definitely understand. The idea of success within writing sometimes seems like an almost unreachable feat, and a lot of people fear the fact that they may never be successful in that regard, myself included. It is upsetting to think that we may not be able to be successful in the things that we love to do. I also think that is a big reason why people often don't go into the things they love to do, because of that fear. I agree that I am much better at fiction writing, and a large amount of people are trying to go into fiction writing, so it can be very overwhelming. I am also a person who needs harsh deadlines for things. If I don't have them, I wont do things, and it causes issues with projects I take on. I also have an issue of wanting everything done at once, and I am far more fond of the editing process, so I always want to just jump into that instead of taking my time to enjoy the writing itself.
I love the quote that you pointed out for this post. I think it fits very well with that idea that sometimes we take these huge ideas on at once and it is extremely overwhelming, instead of breaking it up into little pieces to tackle it in a much more easy way that may allow writers to get through projects and see them all the way through.
To answer your questions:
1) A deadline would be amazing for my writing. It would allow me to really get things done in a productive manner, unlike the way I utilize my writing now.
2)I think I want to bang my head against the wall every single time that I write. Sometimes I view it as just a part of the process that I have to accept and move past. I think breakthrough moments are more rare for me. I often only have them once in a great while. To get through frustrating moments with my writing, I usually just push through and go back and fix it later.
3) Usually my final drafts look much different than the original idea that I had, but I really like that about writing. It sort of allows me to use ideas a couple times since they all end up so different, and it allows me to get a full idea of what I want to write and where I tend to go within my writing.
4) I have written a lot of short stories in my lifetime. The one I most recently wrote for my fiction workshop, I fully intended it to be a horror story, but halfway through I decided I wanted to try something different, and I am very glad that I did. It allowed me to explore an area of writing I did not often explore, and allowed me to really dive into a new verson of my style that I ended up really liking.
Thanks for the great discussion and question prompts. To answer your first question, do you think deadlines help your writing. For me, it is a double edge sword. I need that hard deadline to put the pressure on me, but I often find myself cutting it close and either rushing it in the end and therefore there are proofreading errors, or transitions that could be more seamless and often I find myself wishing I had just one more day and then my piece would be good enough. On the other hand, if I don't have these hard deadlines, I tend to not have enough pressure to make real progress. When I don't have deadlines, I can take my time and produce, and in the end it often works out, but my unexpected breakthroughs (that often end up being my best bits of writing) comes from the pressure of deadlines. To remedy this situation (no where near flawlessly, however) I try and set myself pre-deadlines to the actual one, and the trick is mimicking the pressure. I do this by making plans to workshop with friends, or sending a rough copy to the person I will be sending the final copy to. This allows me to get a somewhat complete piece out, but still time to not only get feedback, but work on polishing it up before that hard deadline.
ReplyDeleteGoing off of your question about ideas not ending up the way you thought they would, I wrote a speech for commencement, and when I began, I had a lot of different directions I thought I might go so I just started writing. I sort of word barfed on the page and was going to sort through what came out. After a few days of writing and feeling overly cheesy or cliche, I stopped and made myself think about the main thing I felt I learned in college, not what I wanted people to think I learned, or the socially acceptable answer, but what I actually felt I learned. I took that answer, and ran with it, and it ended up being more authentic than any of the other ideas I originally had.
This piece related so much to me because I too feel like "banging my head against a wall". I think the hardest thing when it comes to writing is continuing especially when you receive constant rejections. There are often more rejections than there are success and that can weigh on a person but the best thing to remember is to not give up.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your questions though, yes, I need a harsh deadline, or I will put things off and never come back to them. I have had moments where I want to bang my head on a wall because you end up having this great idea and you promise yourself that you will jot it down and then you forget and when it comes time to write you can't remember. I also have found that writing a little everyday even if it isn't great can help start some good pieces, or at least help with ideas for later. There are times where I write and get this great thought and then when I try to convey it in the words in never comes out right. These are the pieces that usually get tossed because I get so angry at how wrong they turned out that I don't want to try and fix it. One idea that comes to mind was writing a piece that was meant to depict a friend's life after everything they went through but after I finished it seemed to come out more as a "poor me" piece that I tossed it because she definitely isn't that type of person.
Great analysis and questions, Bryson! The focus on perseverance and not giving up reminds me of our “process over product” discussion in class. In prior classes, I’ve read Coates’s Between the World and Me and We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. These two books were definitely more than “acceptable,” to use Coates’s term. I’m glad that he persevered and overcame the setbacks.
ReplyDeleteLike Victoria, Chloe, and Danielle, I find deadlines helpful. I do not enjoy scrambling to write at the last minute, so deadlines prompt me to get an early start and avoid that added stress. Ever since I wrote my first pitch this semester, I have been banging my head against the wall. I really want to write about parenting a biracial teenager. I think there’s an important story to tell here. However, whatever I write sounds as though it should be my son’s story to tell, not mine. And he’s tried to move beyond these issues, so the story will probably never be told – in writing, anyway.
I’ve had English profs who have advised that an introduction should always be written last, and I believe this is good advice. Frequently, our work veers in different directions and strays from what we initially intended to write. However, I find that I still need to write an introduction first, to just get started on the path. Frequently, I will return to my introduction and find that it has to be thoroughly revised or completely scrapped, and that’s okay. I think the greater problem is trying to rigidly adhere to our initial plans.
My thesis (another source of headbanging) focuses on the work of the novelist Jonathan Franzen, and I’ve learned a lot about his writing process. He spent 9 years writing The Corrections and another 9 years on Freedom. At times, he has had to “toss out” over a year’s worth of writing. That’s terrifying! However, the “tossed out” writing frequently appears in revised form in subsequent works. So, one of the many lessons I’ve learned from Franzen is that we should always retain what we write, even if we are not happy with it. Maybe it will be useful in the future and perhaps even appear in a bestseller!
Bryson, some great questions/discussion for our last blog post! I definitely relate to the worry that other people won’t enjoy my work as much as I enjoy writing it, especially since I sometimes REALLY don’t enjoy writing it.
ReplyDeleteThe writing process for me is mainly the “banging my head against the wall” moments, with a few break-through spurts in between. Unlike math, in which I minor, there isn’t really a limit to the approaches you can take to write a story/poem/etc. and this makes it wickedly easy to get stuck. In math, you know your theorems and your techniques and you try one path or the other; in writing, you’re at a 200-way crossroads with every sentence. Writing is its own beast and a formidable one at that, and writer’s block often becomes writer’s paralysis once you get into your head about it.
Usually, my final drafts look different from my expectations/hopes because my hope is that I’ll have a finished piece. Though I’m somewhat better about it now, growing up, I absolutely lacked the conviction to finish a short story, let alone a novel. But becoming a creative writing major, and thus receiving deadlines for my pieces, has helped that a lot. Deadlines seem to help my writing in that they necessitate that it actually makes its way to the page; and something is better than nothing, so I guess in some way they help the quality, too.
As for the final question, I do have a fun story about writing a story that turned out quite unlike my first thought of it. A couple of years ago, I was struck with inspiration at the word “coalesce” and decided to write a story that included it. However, by the time I finished the story (now one of my favorites although only about two pages), I realized I had not fit “coalesce” into it at all. As I reread it, searching for a place to insert the word, I determined that the prose worked as well, if not better, without it. So, I kept it as-is, omitting the word that had caused me to write it in the first place.
Great questions! To answer them in order:
ReplyDelete1. I might be in the minority here, but I actually don't necessarily need a deadline to get something done! Once I start a piece, I'm stubborn enough that I'll keep working on it until it's finished! However, deadlines DO help, because I have a really hard time starting a piece. For me, the deadline sort of jump-starts the writing process!
2. I think that every piece is a series of roadblocks and breakthroughs. Every single time I've sat down to write something, be it a longer prose piece or a short poem, I've hit some sort of roadblock. Sometimes I can't figure out where I need to take the piece, or I can't nail down the wording, or something about it just straight up isn't working and I can't figure out why! When I do hit some sort of stumbling block, I just take a step back and leave the piece alone for a little bit. Typically, I'll have that breakthrough moment once I sit back down to write! And then I just. Rinse and repeat until the piece is done.
3. I tend to plot my pieces out extensively before I sit down to write, and I've definitely had pieces come out looking very different from that original plan! For the essay I wrote this week, I actually sat down and plotted out every single scene I'd need in the piece (which came out to 11 scenes). Once I started writing, I sort of tossed the outline out the window after scene number 4(ish) and only really picked it back up for the last couple of scenes. That said, I do tend to follow the spirit of my plans very closely, even if I don't follow them to the letter. The general themes usually stay consistent from the original plan to the final draft, and most of the scenes on that original list DID end up in the piece, just not in the order I originally planned!
4. I have this terrible tendency to underestimate how many words it'll take to accomplish something in a piece. Which, incidentally, is how I started writing a poem thinking it was going to be two pages max, and ended up with a poem so long it took up six pages on ms word. Which. Thank god that wasn't for a writing workshop.
Awesome questions! First off, I really enjoyed this essay and the message, “just keep writing”. I always try to carry this mantra, “You can do anything, but you just have to do it” with me every day and it’s nice having that reaffirmed here. I’m really big on the idea that writing is a practice and not as in “practice makes perfect”, but like “writing is art and art requires dedication”. I love this. Writing is a discipline, and you have to stick at it if you want to do it.
ReplyDelete1.) I don’t think due dates necessarily help me write more. If anything because of the workload that surrounds due dates, I find them to be detrimental sometimes. I think the biggest thing having these workshop classes has taught me, has been how to keep actively writing when I’m out of school. Diligently working at it and keeping up a habit. One thing that has been really nice in taking these workshop classes is that I’m given this opportunity to write a lot of short stories I wouldn’t normally get to. I spend so much time writing on other stuff that I only ever get the ideas down in my notebook.
2.) Oh yeah. So (like everyone I’m sure) I go through a lot of creative highs and lows. Where for a few days I’m really in a solid groove and pumping out some hot material, then all of a sudden I cool off and each word is like pulling teeth. Yes, sometimes I want to bang my head against the wall (sometimes I throw my notebook) and I’ve really tried to get better at not letting this discourage me. On days where I can’t work on my main project, because it’s just not there, rather than fight it I’ve been trying to accept it and spend more time journaling instead (with little success because I'm stubborn). I think journaling for writers is like flossing your teeth or getting the oil changed in your car; it can be a hateful chore, but the payoff is huge.
3.) Yeah, this happens to me a lot when I try to write poems with a fixed idea in place. I try to be really free flowing with a certain idea of inspiration, but when I start assigning all of this stuff to it, sometimes I can’t get at it anymore. Or sometimes my idea isn’t defined enough, and I end up with weird nothing nonsense and I need to think about it more. I think a big thing for me is relinquishing control. If I’m really open to wherever my writing wants to go, then it comes out knowing itself.
Great post and questions Bryson! I have to say I related really hard to the reading and what you said. I feel like for people who aren’t writers it may seem glamourous on the outside, but in reality, it’s very difficult to come up with something to write in the first place and then actually write it down revise and repeat until it looks somewhat presentable. I have to agree as well that I do prefer writing fiction, partly for the fact that I struggle with finding anything to write about from my own experience without seeming dull or making it matter when so many other people have had so many amazing life experiences to write about. As for success and its seemingly unreachable feat: as my time in college draws closer to the end, I can feel the nagging doubts and worries in my mind about whether or not I’ll be able to find a job or if I can compete with other writers who are better than me. Whether or not I made the right decision in picking my major and whether or not I can become successful in it my field of study is up in the air, but it’s worth a try to be able to make a living doing something a love instead of giving up.
ReplyDeleteDeadlines definitely help my writing, I either lose motivation or forget about them for a while, etc so deadlines really help me to not completely abandon it, even if I do procrastinate.
I don’t know if I’d had any significant breakthroughs, but I do struggle a lot with head-banging writer’s block, whether because I wrote myself into a corner or I just don’t know what to write, the struggle is real.
My drafts always look different, sometimes close to what I envisioned, though sometimes I’d thought it would look one way and I just couldn’t write it out the way it appeared in my head, partly because it may have looked like a good idea in my head, but wasn’t so great written down or had to be reworked a different way entirely.
For a class I had a semester or two ago, I had intended it to be a historical fiction piece but it turned into something completely different with the characters I had and ended being totally not what I wanted it to be. I still plan on going back to it, though I have to let it sit and stew for a while before I attempt to rework it, the frustration was real.
Thanks for the questions, Bryson!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this article. I love reading any writing about writing, as it reminds me that I'm not alone in my frustration and love for the process (mostly love for the outcome and frustration for the process). It's sometimes scary to read about amazing, famous writers struggling because if they can't do it, how come I think I can? I'm squeamish towards discomfort and when you reach that point of "banging your head against the wall," it is definitely uncomfortable. But it is also a reminder that I am not the only one struggling and an encouragement to keep with the process.
1.) Deadlines often help me get a piece done, or hit some kind of acceptable "finished" point, but they usually aren't necessary for the initial idea and to start getting words on the page. I usually have a few ideas swirling in my head, just waiting to be put down on paper, so I just have to give myself the time to sit and let them flow. I do work well under pressure, though, and so the added pressure of a deadline really gets me moving. I can't really set the deadline for myself, because that's easy to push off; I need to find some form of accountability!
2.) I often start my writing with one idea, one scene. Maybe I get that scene from a dream or it's just a picture I have in my head. Basing an entire story or essay off of one scene can be tricky, though. I have one opening scene that I love, but it's just sitting in a folder on my laptop because I can't find an interesting enough way to continue the story. I revisit it about once a month, just to bang my head on the wall for a bit and see if anything new comes. What I'd like to do is take some time and just write without thinking, see what happens, but I usually like to have thought the whole thing through before thinking. I have another piece that stemmed from one scene that's been going well, but I have hit another road block, so we'll see what happens!
3.) I feel like this happens most often with my poetry. I'll begin writing one thing and it will take a different turn. I have one little poem that started as just a meditation on my houseplants and then turned to a poem on jealousy. I think poetry is a great way to explore this change of idea or theme in a piece.
Howdy Bryson!
ReplyDeleteI'll admit, across this entire semester, writing has been suffocating for me. I was at the writer's panel at Geekcon and Dr. Dorothy Chan made a real salient point about stripping the romanticism from the process of writing. It's not about channeling your muse through your pen onto paper, its a job like any other and you must respect it as such. Deadlines reaffirm that. But one massive issue with deadlines is that they can set the pace of your day-by-day writing. When you have consistent weekly deadlines, you'll likely have consistent practices of writing. When you have one big 8,000 word article due, it can be difficult to gauge when you're making satisfactory progress. This has been the case with my writing internship--I've got a big due date coming up during finals week and I've frankly been losing a lot of sleep over it. I really wished I started writing so much earlier, but I've got no choice now but to push through.
Most drafts I've written have looked something like I'd envisioned when I started, but my best ones are the ones that took me for a unexpected ride. This is mostly the case with my fictional pieces. My best writing comes from having nothing but a premise and a couple of interesting characters. I churned out some of my best (and worst) pieces in my Intermediate Prose Workshop last semester. I started one with the idea of a man who's grief over his wife of 40 years is warped by the discovery that she was having an affair, and despite how interesting his character arc was, the most interesting character by FAR was his wife. The traces of her voice I was able to weave into the piece carried the entire story, and what I was expecting to be a slow-burn thriller ended up being a dark comedy. It's the piece I'm proudest of today and the one I learned from the most--it got me excited to blindly dig into a piece to see what comes to the surface.
Hi, great questions. I like how this piece repeated the point of perseverance. It persevered in its message on perseverance and a lot resonated with me, especially the part about not being able to get the idea in your head onto the page.
ReplyDelete1. Yes, deadlines help me. I'm honestly worried about being done with school and no longer having a specific deadline to turn something in, unless of course, I am hired to writing something in which I'd probably have a deadline. As far as writing for fun goes though, I think I'll need to give myself deadlines to meet to help keep me motivated.
2. Writing has made me want to bang my head against the wall all semester. I have a lot of drafts that I stopped pursuing because they weren't working out. For my fiction class it took me a long time to come up with an idea, and that was agonizing as the deadline approached. Then sometimes there are moments when your reading your piece and something feels a little off, but you can't figure out what, which is also frustrating.
3. Yes, I have had a lot of pieces end up being different than what I intended in my head, but if I'm being honest I'm never too disappointed with they ways in which it differs from my original idea because I'm usually able to explore new ideas as I begin to write that I sometimes enjoy more than my original idea, or bolster my original idea and make it better. If I get roughly 70% of my original idea on paper I am satisfied.
4. The non-fiction piece I did on the Sand Hill Cemetery is an example. I truly did not know what I was going to find. I almost didn't find anything which would have changed my piece entirely. I knew roughly what I wanted to say about the disappearance of the past, but a lot of the piece was molded by what I discovered during the research process.
Thanks again for a great prompt!
Nice blog post! I like this question, “Has there been a moment in your writing that's made you want to "bang your head against the wall" and/or have you also had a "breakthrough" moment in your writing?” And to answer that question, yes, of course there have been times in my life where I’ve wanted to bang my head against a wall as a writer and I just didn’t feel like I was going to get out the other side of my writing process. For instance, whenever I write an essay or what not, I usually start off in this groove and I just let my fingers start typing, but then five minutes into my writing my thinking brain takes over and I criticize everything I write and I just feel like the biggest imposter ever. This still happens to this day. I think that is where that perseverance would really help my situation because when I start putting words onto a page all I see are critiques or possible judgements about it in the future and I know that is my anxiety speaking while I’m writing and I’m not letting myself live in the present; but in those moments I truly just want to bang my head against the wall.
ReplyDeleteFor grad school I have to write a personal statement about why I would be a good fit into their program and why I want to become a therapist someday and I know everything I want to say in my head of course, but executing it onto a page is bringing up a lot of fear for me. And I think writing is such a vulnerable, fearless thing to do. You put words onto a page that brings out a piece of yourself that everyone has access to read someday and that is a fearsome act. I’m just afraid that I’ll say the wrong thing or I won’t say enough and I’ll leave the readers unsatisfied, but it's funny because I’ve been living in my fear about writing for so long that those fears have started to manifest themselves and my writing has not been what I’ve wanted it to be lately. But I know if I persevere and continue to push forward in my writing and acknowledge my fears I’ll be able to write something someday that I am greatly proud of.
Hey Bryson!
ReplyDeleteYou brought up excellent points in your blog post about Lamb's piece! When I read his essay, it really resonated with me especially when he talked about the requirements and deadlines, I too have a massive issue with deadlines where I would often find myself doubting all my decisions halfway through an assignment, which is not fun! In the piece, he wrote,
"At best, you might get 70% of that original music onto the page. It’s depressing, Coates says, and that’s why the process is so discouraging for new writers", I agree with this so much. I have to tell myself not to take things personally when it comes to issues like this. I have to think of it as a lesson to further improve myself and hopefully become a better writer in the future. Everyone has to start somewhere, right? Furthermore, “I believe that writing is an act of courage, it’s almost an act of physical courage.” is such a strong line and I will remember this as I move forward as a fellow writer.
Now, let’s get to your questions! For me personally, I find deadlines very useful. It serves as a reminder and guide for me to carefully organize how I decide to craft my piece. I too, like many other writers, have found myself banging my own head against a wall trying to figure out what to write about and how to make my topic matter to readers, which is a struggle sometimes because not everyone has the same interests as I do! I have planned a lot of pieces and found that the finished product looks completely different from what I had in mind, but that’s the beauty of it! We learn to grow as we move forward. My recent example would be the memoir that I wrote about my grandfather’s passing. I intended it to be a heartfelt story with a nice happy ending but to me, it sounded depressing at the end and to readers, it was more of an educational piece, which was not the vibes I was looking for!
Thanks for the detailed post and thought-provoking questions Bryson! I find myself agreeing with a lot of my peers in terms of the message of this piece; both in the "good" and "bad" moments of the writing process.
ReplyDelete1. To answer this question simply, yes, a deadline does impose a sense of urgency and often forces me to produce work. Now the question remains, is this work I am proud of, or is just writing for the sake of getting something out there? I think either way, it's valuable, because even if whatever you hastily wrote is not published or even worthy to be published, you're giving your brain and writing muscles a workout. Of course, striving always to produce work you are proud of is important, but we can't expect a perfect draft every time.
2. I'm certain I've had plenty of these head-meet-wall moments, as well as some breakthroughs in my writing. One example of a frustrating moment in my writing journey was the first few times I was not accepted for NOTA. To me, this was a big deal, and I thought I had the skills to stand out as a writer, but in the end I treated it as a humbling learning experience, instead of simply giving up. A breakthrough I can recall was the first time I wrote what I considered to be a "good" fiction story. I've always kept a healthy distance betwixt myself and narrative stories, as I had convinced myself that I was no good as a story-writer, and my talents laid solely in poetry and oral story-telling, but I was proved wrong, when I wrote a story I was finally accepting of, and in turn, was published in the prose section of NOTA. From that point forward, I looked at my writing differently, and accepted what I saw as "good" or "bad" pieces just as they were; writing that I had taken the time and effort to produce.
3. I have started poems, stories, essays, odes, and practically every form of writing in one manner, and completely veered from my original plan in pursuit of some greater form just waiting to be discovered. I would call myself a veteran of indecision when it comes to writing. I guess I can be overly self-critical. I have to then remind myself that we are our own worst critics.
4. Once, I began a piece about a man who ran an antique store in the 1950's. It turned into a character study, and the man met John Denver, Al Capone, and some other historical figures.