You Know More than You Think, So Trust the Process

Just before I gave up on my master’s thesis – a sprawling social novel called Florida Pure – I sat in front of my laptop in a panic, turning to the bookshelf behind me and pulling down beloved novels, reading their first paragraphs and comparing them to mine. It was an exercise in self-sabotage. I was trying to confirm for myself what I thought I already knew: that I didn’t have it, whatever it was; that the novel would never be good enough.

A month later, I was diagnosed with cancer.

When you’re sick, you have to hand over control to someone else, whether that be a higher power, a surgeon, a Reiki master, or your mother-in-law, who flies in after your surgery, and cleans your house with bleach, and picks up your prescriptions, and boils collard greens all day on the stove because you lost a lot of blood.

When I returned to my desk nine months later, I was a different writer. I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t worry. I started something new and let the words pour onto the page. Often, it seemed as though the words were running through me, as if they weren’t coming from me at all, but entering through the top of my head and pouring out through my fingertips. As if the story existed outside of me and I was simply the conduit.

I wish I could say that it lasted. That it was all easy all of the time. That I didn’t have days, weeks and months of struggle and uncertainty. That it didn’t take six years of weekends, and lunch breaks, and 4 a.m. alarm clocks. That the story didn’t need outside guidance from talented readers, and six whole drafts. But somewhere in there, I learned the most important lesson of my writing life, and that is to trust the process.

When I was in school, I had a brilliant thesis advisor. I often thought that if I could just sit in front of her long enough, all of the secrets of the universe would spill out of her. But in those six years, in those days of lonely writing, and ecstatic writing and tortured writing, I learned that I hold those secrets too. All I need to do to access them is to sit down and let them arrive.

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I tend to be wary of writing advice. It can be hard to know which voices to listen to and which to ignore. And it’s impossible to write with an imagined critic or genius on your shoulder, evaluating your words, your ideas, you. And imagining one is a diversion from the real and scary truth that even the best of us must sit alone in a room and show up for work that is not, and never will be, clearly defined. That’s why the best writing advice is given so often it’s become cliché: Put your butt in a chair and write.

Which means:

Put some space around you. Turn on some music, or don’t. Drink a cup of tea, or don’t. Practice sun salutations, or don’t. Wake up at 5 a.m., or don’t. Ignore the laundry, or don’t. Put off having kids, or don’t.

Put some space around you. Sit alone in a room, or don’t. Go to conferences, or don’t. Get an MFA, or don’t. Read all the New York Times bestsellers, or don’t. Join a critique group, or don’t.

Put some space around you. Pick up your pen or put your fingers on home row. Wait. Let the words come. And they will come. And they will find their shape. This is not to say that it will happen serendipitously, or without a hell of a lot of work. But if you show up, if you hone your voice, if you put in the days, weeks, months and years required, the work will happen to you and for you. The story will build like a cocoon around you.

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I don’t know what I’m doing now. I’m writing something that could go four vastly different ways. But I’m going to it every day, and letting the words pile up. I’m certain that the story will become what it was mean to be. Like the story before it. And, I hope, the one after it too.

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Lauren Doyle Owens writes novels and stories and the occasional essay in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Her first novel, The Other Side of Everything, will be published in 2018 by Touchstone Books

Find out more about her on her website http://www.laurendoyleowens.com/

Follow her on Twitter @ldoyleowens

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips