Guest post: On Worms and Butterflies by D Gilman Wakeli

Today I'm ecstatic to welcome my friend and fellow author D Gilman Wakeli to the blog to talk about one of the barriers to creative work that she explores in her first book, the forthcoming How to NOT Write a Book, in which she explores the deep-seated reasons we don't begin - and don't finish - writing.

On Worms and Butterflies 

by D Gilman Wakeli

Why do we refuse to finish our work? Why do we refuse transformation?

During the many times I left work unfinished, I thought of many logical, rational sounding reasons, many things to blame. But I could never find that one right reason that, if I could fix, would solve the problem. I never found a logical reason because I don’t believe the answer is logical or reasonable.

Writing uphill

I had a deadline, but the stories wouldn't come.

Getting to butt-in-chair in itself was a challenge because I had so many other things going on. And every time I sat down to work on the stories it was like trying to squeeze water out of a rock. On a good day, I could write several paragraphs *about* the story - who the characters were, what I wanted to the story to do, what I thought the narrative arc should look like - but very little of the story itself. Writing these stories was taking a ton of effort, and to show for all that effort I had maybe a few sentences. It made getting to butt-in-chair even harder.

Being an indie author has its perks: I moved the deadline. But they still wouldn't come. Feeling discouraged, feeling like a failure, I moved the deadline again. And again. Still next to nothing. A flash of dialogue or scene here and there; I'd get excited, sit down to write more, but nothing more would come.

Writers' tools: Character interviews

What?
A character interview is pretty much what you might imagine: a creative exercise in which you ask your character questions and "listen" for and record their answers. It's an exercise in letting go of what you *think* you know about your characters and story and letting your subconscious mind (which, at least in my case, is WAY more creative and awesome than my conscious mind) do the talking.

Why?
There are SO MANY REASONS you'd want to do character interviews, dear fiction writers. By which I mean there are at least seven.

1. Create conflict. You can use character interviews while you're brainstorming/plotting to help you get to know them and the conflicts they have - both within themselves and with each other. This can lead to clearer thinking around: (a) what your characters want and how they need to develop over the course of your story in order to get it, (b) how they might react in certain situations because of their triggers, and (c) what kinds of challenges will create productive conflict in the book that helps them grow as well as moves the plot along.

Starting where you are

The other day I was watching the season 1 finale of of Project Runway: All Stars (a fashion design reality show and one of my many guilty pleasures), in which Mondo has the fashion designer equivalent of writer's block at the absolute worst possible moment: he has only four days to design and make a collection for the runway show that will end the competition and decide the winner.

But there he sits (or rather paces) in his studio, hating all the fabrics he's bought and repeating to the cameras, "I'm just not feeling it." He spends the entire first day that way, at some point finally giving into his apathy and fatigue and deciding he's not going to agonize over it anymore. He's not feeling it, and he's going to give himself a day off, despite the fact that he's under a serious time crunch already.

The next day he comes back into the workroom with the realization that the pressure from the competition has made him feel a little crazy. That's where he is at that moment - feeling a little bit insane - and that's what he decides to use as inspiration for his collection. Bam. He knocks out a cohesive and interesting collection over the next three days that [SPOILER ALERT] wins him the grand prize. And you know why? Because he didn't try to fight himself. He met himself where he was and used it.

As a writer, I find myself constantly struggling to *not* fight myself because I have so many ideas and so little available time and energy comparatively. 

Writers' tools: notebooks & pens

I have a confession to make: I love, love, love paper products and pens. I've hoarded them for years. One of my favorite pastimes is going into a bookstore or quirky gift shop and browsing their selection of notebooks and journals. I currently have 15 blank journals and 6 blank notebooks waiting on the shelf for their turn. And I have a big Ziploc bag full of pens that will probably - if I'm being really honest with myself - dry out before I have a chance to use them. But I can't help myself. Some people collect stamps or rocks or their roommates' hair from the bathroom sink; I collect pens and notebooks.

Another confession? This blog post is really an excuse for me to show-and-tell some pretty things, aka some tools I use in my writing process that you might want to check out if you're also a fan of the instruments of writing by hand.

Wait. Writing by hand?
"Don't we all use computers now?" I imagine you thinking. "And didn't you write a whole post on Scrivener as the new word processing tool for writers?"

Yes, yes. But you know what? Sometimes I like to write by hand. I keep a journal in actual physical form, for example. I tried journaling on my computer for a while but it just wasn't the same; it wasn't as satisfying or motivating. I also find it helpful to brainstorm by hand, freewrite by hand, do story and character development by hand, and pretty much tackle anything I'm unsure about via writing by hand. So there. Can we get to the pretty things now?

A long, loud scream (& ROW80 Round 4 Goals)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!

Photo by Rick Campbell

My feet-dragging turned into a full-blown crisis of confidence when I sat down to apply to a couple of writing residencies yesterday. While I still found my artist's statement inspiring, as I read through my completed stories, rolling my eyes at any perceived imperfection, all I could think was, "This isn't good enough. I'm not good enough."

Good enough for what? For someone to pick me, to think I'm worth investing in as a writer. Good enough to have someone give me free room and board and possibly to pay me a stipend as well. Good enough for someone else to think it's any good.

My writing doesn't fit the contemporary trend. It doesn't fit what I was taught was "good writing" in my college creative writing courses. It doesn't look or sound like the writing I admire. There is an element of my writing not yet being equal to my taste level, but more than that it's an issue of my writing being different.

Quit judging

Earlier today, a friend asked me how the writing was going.

Not well. Truth is, I've been stalled. Lately it's been torture even to compose a blog post.

When I step back (figuratively speaking) and look at what has been making writing so torturous, I can see that I'm judging.

As my brain forms the sentences, I'm telling myself that no one's going to be interested or that there's a better word than the one I just thought of or that what I'm writing isn't clear and concise enough.

I'm editing as I'm writing, and this always kills the creative mood for me.

So how do I stop judging? How do I turn off the editor?

Excuses, excuses

I just got back from two and a half months in Europe.
I've been worried about/dealing with my lost luggage. 
I was driving all over the state and then getting settled into my friends' house in Portland. 
I have a cold. 
After having scaled back on work this summer, I'm trying to reestablish a work schedule.

These are the excuses I've been using over the last two weeks to avoid writing. I realize it might sound like I'm being hard on myself, considering all of the above excuses are 100% true. Certainly I want to be kind to myself and acknowledge when there are extenuating circumstances. But if I'm honest, I have had at least one hour to write most days. I just haven't been doing it. I haven't been prioritizing it. Why not?

Vanquished writer's block & a ROW80 update

On Saturday morning I woke up and spent the next hour+ writing down all the dreams I remembered from that night's sleep. It was as if, after a long dry spell, all the dreams came flooding in at once and clamored to be remembered.

But it wasn't until I wrote this post yesterday that it hit me: I finally have some mental space again. Space to imagine, to dream, to create.

For the past 3+ weeks, it's felt like my creative brain has been frozen in a block of carbonite. I'd sit down to write a blog post about what I was experiencing, trying to use my current struggle as inspiration, as I have in the past, but I couldn't get beyond the words "There's too much in my head."

But suddenly the carbonite is gone; my creative brain can move once again, and although it certainly isn't done thawing out, it's so good to know it's still there and functional.

Which begs the question: What changed? How did I unfreeze it? What have I been doing differently that helped me get my creativity back? The truth is that I'm not sure. It could be a number of things, but here are a few ideas: 

Writer's block, part 3 - Repressing thoughts & feelings

Yesterday morning I was thinking about my friend, who's in school and having a rough time trying to finish his thesis. He's chosen a great topic that he has personal stake in, but for some reason he's lost the motivation to write it. At first I suggested that maybe he has an univiting anticipated audience (more on that in a future post on writer's block), but now I'm wondering whether it's even deeper than that - whether at least part of the reason he's having such a hard time writing his paper is because he's struggling to write authentically about something that has a lot of personal meaning to him in a traditional, academic style.

When I was an undergrad, I was taught that in academic writing, one doesn't use the pronoun I, one doesn't refer to personal experience, one doesn't admit to not knowing or not having an opinion. One's job, in an academic essay, is to come across as confident, informed, and impartial as one guides the reader through a logical and thorough argument. In other words, the goal is to write as if I am a robot. This made it much harder to write because, as you may guess, I am not a robot. In grad school, however, I decided that being authentic and honest was more important to me than abiding by the conventions, and luckily, most of my grad school professors were into alternative rhetorics and let me get away with some pretty unorthodox shit.

But if those are still the conventions of academic writing, then it makes sense to me that my friend would have a really hard time connecting with his motivation for writing this paper. It makes sense to me that he might be experiencing writer's block as a result of feeling like he can't be honest, like he has to repress the very parts of himself that made him want to pursue his line of research in the first place.

Writer's block, part 2 - Too many ideas

As I went to start writing this post, I hesitated. Should I write about what I've been experiencing today, this general sense of writing as an obligation, as a "have-to" which rates the same on the Annoyance-O-Meter as a fly buzzing around my sushi? (F--- off, fly! *SWAT!*)

Or maybe I should tackle one of the ideas I'd already jotted down - the need for control or self-judgement or repressing thoughts & feelings or etc., etc.

If I chose to work on the first idea because it was most up for me, and I continued to do that every week, when would I get to these other ideas? But if I tried to work on one of these other ideas when I wasn't really feeling it in the moment, would the post be as good as it can be?

I hesitated. I dithered. I became paralyzed by indecision.

Writer's block, part 1 - High expectations

Early last week I started a post about the conditions necessary for creation, which I soon realized was a post about writer's block and all the different ways in which I psych myself out of writing. Soon it became clear that I had so much to say on this subject that it would make more sense as a series of posts. (I'm always excited about series of posts because I don't have to think as hard about what I'm going to write; I can just pick a topic off a list and go.) I felt I had so much to say about writer's block, in fact, that I started joking that writing about not writing might be my calling.

Friday rolled around and I returned to the blog post to chop it up and finalize the first one in the series. Can you guess what happened? I got blocked.

Artwork by Cara Christine Hubbell

"YOU MUST BE BRILLIANT!" screamed a not-so-little voice inside me. "AND EVERY SINGLE WORD OF THIS POST MUST BE 100% PERFECT!!!"