When It's Time for a Writer to Walk Away

Don't you love it when the advice you've given others coincides with that of a great mind like Albert Einstein? Many times on this blog, I have told writers that, if they reach a trouble spot, leave the area where you've been writing. Go for a walk, or clean the kitchen, or read a book. 

When you're having difficulty with a chapter in a fiction story or making something clear in an article or not being able to bring enough emotion into a personal essay, it's far better to leave it alone than to sit and stew, get angry or dissolve into a muddled mess. 

For some reason, when we leave the scene of our misery and stop thinking about the problem, the answer floats through the atmosphere and drops right into our lap. It can happen at strange times. You might be in the shower when the solution hits. You could be sitting at an outdoor cafe having coffee with a friend when her conversation seems to move to the background as your mind is concentrating on the idea that arrived a moment ago. You could be doing laundry or taking the dog for a walk. It's when you're doing the everyday things that the way to fix your writing problem is apt to come to you.

As Professor Einstein says in today's quote, we should '...stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.' I love the phrase 'swim in silence.' Just forget about it and suddenly the answer comes.

Many years ago, I sewed a lot, and inevitably the directions on the pattern would look like a foreign language to me as I could not figure out what they were telling me to do next. It wasn't a matter of being able to skip over to the next step because they built upon one another. I learned to walk away and come back hours later or even the next day, and suddenly those directions were clear. It's the same with our writing, except there is no step by step directions. It's up to us to figure out the how-to. What I learned in my sewing life, I carried over to my writing journey. 

I find that so many of the quotes we see pertaining to our writing are merely several words, but they contain strong advice. When a quote is particularly good, it's worthwhile to read it multiple times. The more you go over the words, the better the advice becomes. With the one for today, if it's good enough for Einstein, it should be worth something for us, as well.

Making Revisions With A Little Help

Yesterday, I wrote that I'd been procrastinating in a big way. I had a couple stories that needed revsising before I could send them to a state authors contest. One of the reasons I'd been putting this off on one of the stories was that I wasn't sure what to do with it. I'd even sent it through a critique session at writersandcritters so had many suggestiions from those who'd looked at it. Still, the whole thing left me feeling a bit hopeless.

Stubborn Irish determination ruled yesterday, and late in the afternoon I sat down at the computer, flexed my fingers like a concert pianist and began. I started by reading through the story and then checking the suggestions of the people who had critiqued the story weeks ago. Then I started chopping parts out and adding more. Once I started doing that step, the whole thing started coming clear, and I moved on at a rapid pace.

Add more dialgoue had been the suggestion of more than one critiquer. And once I did that, the story came alive. It became more real. It's that old 'showing is better than telling' rule.

Give us more emotion. And again, once I did it in one paragraph, the next one came more easily.

How did your husband react? The story wasn't about him, it involved two others, and he was cast in a minor role. Or so I thought. Upon reading through it again, I could see that his reaction to what was happening proved to be important, and so his role got expanded a little more.

Are you getting the idea that having your work critiqued helps tremendously with revisions? I'm living proof that it does. By the time evening rolled around, I'd made my revisions and felt satsified with the story. Today, the contest entry envelope will be mailed with 8 entries, this one included. Winners won't be announced until October. It's a long wait so it's time to push it to the back of my mind and start writing a new story.

And the second story that needed revisions? It's waiting in the wings. It needs major surgery, and there's not enough time left to do it justice.