At a Loss…

This week I’m rather at a loss for something to wander on about. It’s not because nothing is going on. Rather it’s because too many small things are going on. This leaves me distracted and disoriented which, in turn, makes it difficult to come up with something to write about.

Writers! Don’t Overburden Your Camel!

I’ve certainly never been one of those writers who needs “a room of one’s own” to work. I’ve written in classrooms, in faculty meetings, in my office (back when I still taught), on airplanes, and at boring banquets. However, a certain amount of what might be called clear “head room” is a good thing to have, especially when, as with these wanderings, I need to come up with a new topic every week.

As anyone knows who has ever stared at the wall in desperation trying to figure out what to write for some college essay assignment, formulating the idea is half or even three-quarters of the battle. Back then, I’d spend a considerable amount of time rendering all my various thoughts down to a simple, one sentence thesis statement. After that, the rest of the paper would flow easily.

The same can be true with fiction writing. Getting the idea, whether for the overall project or for the particular section one is working on, is the biggest challenge. Once you slip into your characters’ heads, then the story toddles along quite nicely. Getting in there is the hard part.

By purest coincidence, over the last couple of months, I spoke with two professional writer friends who admitted that they were behind because they had assumed they could take on more work by scheduling themselves to write on Project One in the morning and Project Two in the afternoon. Both of these gentlemen – many times published, quite experienced authors – discovered that this was impossible. Once they were securely into one universe, their imaginations did not want to shift into the other.

Even worse, they discovered that the Morning/ Afternoon division of labor did not work, because even prolific writers seem to have only so much writing in them. When that writing has been expended, the Muse acts like a camel that has had the proverbial “last straw” loaded into her panniers. She folds her legs under herself, sits down, and refuses to get up until the unreasonable burden is removed.

So, how does a writer cope with this? One way is to do what I’m doing right now – start writing and see what comes out. In other of these wanderings, I believe I’ve mentioned that when I can’t seem to write anything, I make myself write at least twelve sentences.

This number evolved from a time when Roger Zelazny mentioned to me that he managed to sit down three or four times a day and write three to four sentences each time and that somehow this managed to turn into a considerable amount of finished prose – especially since when he had a really good day and wrote pages and pages, he didn’t take the next day off, but went right back to that sitting down three to four times a day and writing three to four sentences.

Anyhow, I was teaching college then and was lucky if I could find time to work on fiction once a day, so I multiplied three to four times by three to four sentences and arrived at twelve. It worked. I wrote four novels and quite a number of short stories while teaching college full time, by dedicating time to getting those twelve sentences on paper. (And I was teaching English, so I was also spending a huge amount of time reading and grading essays. This is not an inspirational activity, I assure you.)

Nonetheless, even with the best will and finest discipline in the universe, it seems that the Muse is only willing to let a writer come up with so much prose in a day. How much varies from writer to writer. However, I firmly believe that with a strict exercise regime, the Muse can be convinced to give a little bit more, just as a runner or swimmer can go from doing one or two laps to three or four, on and on, until a whole mile is reached.

But the training takes patience and quite a bit of understanding of one’s own temperament. This is one reason I only write one Wandering a week. Often on the day that I write it, my creative well is dry for the day. My Muse turns camel. Even if I remind her that we weren’t writing fiction, just a nice, bouncy little essay, she says, “Hah! You can’t fool me.” Sometimes she’s kinder and will accept a division between fiction and non-fiction.

Tempting the Muse works best for me if the fiction piece is already underway, particularly if I stopped in the middle of a particularly juicy scene, so that the Muse is eager to show off how we’re going to get our characters out of whatever predicament they’re in at that moment.
Sometimes even that isn’t enough.

So, my advice if you’re stuck? Write. Even when you don’t think you have anything to write about, write. You just might (as I have myself today) surprise yourself!