Thoughts Are Fingers: When You Stop Thinking and Start Writing

One of the things I have found out about writing is that the process works best when we don’t consciously write. That’s not to say consciousness plays no role in the process. Quite the contrary. Conscious decision making and analytic skills are of indispensable importance when editing and proof-reading a piece and without it a work can’t be improved on or made better. But when it comes to making something to actually proof-read, conscious effort may be the biggest stumbling block a writer faces. Why is that and how do you avoid just creating a mish-mosh of unrelated images and words with only a tenuous string of thought tying them together?

One thing I found is that conscious thought contravenes open creativity in two ways. The most hurtful and familiar way conscious thought gets in the way of being creative is doubt and self-consciousness. We are all familiar with that I believe. It’s not a little voice telling you this as much as it is a commanding voice intoning that you can’t write, you’re not good enough. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you how loud this voice can get and how difficult it is to ignore it. And after a while, you believe it. This leads to anxiety and anxiety leads to constantly questioning every choice you make. And if you are constantly second guessing yourself, writing becomes a miserable chore. In the end, the doubt takes over, crippling your ability to create. Creativity can’t flourish under such conditions which leads to a vicious cycle. The more you listen to that voice, the more you won’t create, the more you fail to create, the more power that voice gains and can influence you. Related to this, is being overly critical.

When you are writing, you aren’t writing anything more than a first draft so if you are critical of everything you put down, if you need to find the perfect word from the get the get-go, you may be cutting yourself off at the knees. Going for perfection is the fastest way to ensure you end up with nothing. Every time you stop to wonder about the right word, or just the right turn of phrase, you break your momentum and have to build it back up again. Writing is kind of like playing music: you have to feel it and if you think too much about it, you will remove the element of vitality from it. And without that, the writing falls flat and you’ll have to drag every word out of yourself instead of letting it progress naturally. If you wanted to put in a page with nothing but the word, “cupcake,” that’s fine because you have to do a second draft and a third draft and as many drafts as it takes to make it into the best possible  story it can be. But that is a gradual process. The first draft is just throwing everything you can at the page and not thinking about it. But how are you supposed to make sure your plot isn’t full of holes if you just write without thought?

This is where outlining comes in. Outlining gives you the opportunity to understand where your story is going and how things are going to fit together before you get to the actual writing part. You can over-do your self-criticism here as well as feel the push and pull of self doubt but at this most preliminary stage, you should feel relaxed enough to just play with the ideas you have. Things will fall into place if you don’t rush things and enjoy exploring what your story could ultimately look like. Of course, this outline isn’t something you have to stick to or even that you should stick to. Surprising things happen on the way to a completed story so you may end up in places you could never have anticipated. Don’t be afraid of that. Look for the common threads and how it can all fit together. Chances are there is one there that you can use as a through-line so don’t worry. Once you have a picture of what your story will be, you can move on to the writing portion with an idea of what leads to what and you can keep that in the back of your mind the same way you’d keep a map in your glove box. It’s there if you need it. But in the meantime, you have to enjoy the ride.

Now you are at the most fun and exciting part in my opinion. Here’s the moment when you can write. And write is exactly what you need to do. Not think. Not analyze and look for the right word. You need to write. You have to move aside and let the words come of their own accord. If you can’t think of what to write, just sit there with your fingers at the ready. In time, the ideas will happen and they will move straight to your fingers. In a way, writing is as much a physical thing as it is a cerebral undertaking. You feel your fingers hitting the keys, you hear the keys click. You can watch the words propagate the screen like ice crystals over a window. And your thoughts? They’re there but as long as you continue to write, they won’t be truly, “visible,” to you. What happens is that every keystroke is the manifestation, the direct manifestation, of a thought, of a word, or an image, or emotion. There is no break between the thought and the finger hitting the key because once you move your conscious, doubting, judging ego out of the way, the thoughts become your fingers. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Perhaps, your fingers become your thoughts and you begin to think with your fingers, judging by way of tempo, intensity, and tactile feedback. More likely, you simply close yourself out of your writing, cast yourself aside which is where you belong. You can’t create from inside a locked box of your own identity since the story is the thing that is coming into being. If you’re there, the story isn’t. But when you get out of the way, stop second-guessing everything you do, and let yourself be carried away by the rhythm and the internal logic that the story uses to weave itself together, you’ll end up writing truly and convincingly and you’ll find that you’ve said everything you needed to say.

Thanks for reading and leave a comment with your ideas about writing and how you get into the “writing zone.”

Writing About Emotions

A brief note before getting into the meat of this post. After seeing my traffic plummet to the single digits for entire weeks, I’m been trying to get this site optimized for search engines and generally trying to make this site more visible. It’s incredible just how much there is to learn and I am considering creating a new page on this site with a guide for newbie bloggers so they don’t make some of the mistakes I did while setting up their blog. But that won’t come to pass till I get through the backlog of posts I have planned for the main topic of this blog which is speculative fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, New Weird, and all things fantastic and mind expandingly imaginative. Speaking of which, it’s time to get to the real focus of this post and talk about writing about emotions.

Nothing quite embodies emotions like good blues music. Pictured here: Otis Taylor (http://hereandnow.wbur.org)

As I’ve said before, part of the aim of writing is generating emotional response in readers. Two important sources of emotion are theme and writing convincing characters who are going through difficult and trying situations. The former is a bit more pervasive and under the radar and has more to do with what your story is saying about a subject. Is your story saying that victory is fleeting and that disappointment is inevitable? Then you can imagine the kind of emotional response you’ll generate in readers. But theme is a slow release mechanism that builds over time. It’s cumulative and results from the events of the story as it progresses. As such, it can be a powerful tool for leaving the reader with a particular feeling. However, to even build a theme you need actions and these should never be neutral.

Before getting into some of the technical aspects about writing, I’d propose that writing about emotion requires writing with emotion. In a way, writing and acting are very similar. When acting, you inhabit the character. Method acting takes this idea to the extreme. You become the character so completely that it almost becomes your identity. You think as the character thinks and see the world as the character sees it. Daniel Day-Lewis is famous (or infamous) for taking his roles to the extreme. But I think we as writers can learn a lot from this style. And we don’t even need to break any ribs to do it. When writing an emotionally charged scene, I would suggest trying to actually feel what you are writing. There are two reasons for this. First of all, with the charge of the emotion will be reflected in the words you choose. Let’s say your character is livid. Maybe he’d found his job has been given away to the snooty upstart or she has been beaten to a major discovery. If you really feel the emotion of anger, you might notice all kinds of words coming into your head associated with what your feeling, how you are directing your aggression, the kinds of angry thoughts you’re feeling. The second thing that getting into character does for your writing is a result of the first reason for going all in: sincerity and authenticity. When you write what you feel, readers will feel the intensity, they will pick up on the genuineness of what you have said and they will feel it as well. They may not even realize what has happened on a conscious level. Sincere writing has a tendency to pick up a reader and carry them along like a leaf on a strong wind. This plays in heavily with helping the reader with his/her willing suspension of disbelief. If you can help them truly believe your characters’ actions, they will be drawn in to the story and likely stick with it till the end. How does one convey emotion effectively though?

Like so much else in writing, there probably isn’t just one way of doing something so I can only tell you the way I do it and hope that it may be helpful to you as well. Part of it is letting go. I know that isn’t exactly helpful to hear but it certainly helps me. When I stop thinking about form and technique and just let the emotion tell me what to say next, I can manage to bang out a scene much more quickly and effectively. So for the first bit advice, I would suggest not thinking too much about it. But that’s not all that satisfying is it? I suppose not so here’s something that might be a bit more concrete.

We can think of emotions in four ways when it comes to writing and in general. There is the physiological, the affective, behavioral, and the cognitive. The physiological aspect deals with the visceral, bodily manifestations of an emotion. In sadness, you might feel ponderous and slow. You might feel aches and pains that have no biological origin (i.e. no wounds). Or in ecstasy, you will feel your heart racing, light headed, and great energy crackling though you. The affective dimension deals with the feeling of the emotion. This is difficult to relate without directly referencing the emotion itself. In other words, if a character is relieved, an affective description might be, “Relief ran over him like cool cloth.” Affective really is just what you feel. The behavioral aspect is just as it sounds. What does your character do when in the grips of an emotion? Does she take it out on others, host a party, play darts, shake, hug? This dimension also incorporates the extremely important act of speaking. How does she express in her own words what she feels? Or maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she keeps it all inside. Maybe instead of shouting from the rooftops, she stands back with a slight smile on her face. The cognitive aspect deals with the thoughts that arise from the emotion. For instance, let’s say a character is in love. You could describe how he sees the world. He might see the world as benign and wonderful. He may feel like nothing in the world could bring him down. This aspect is more indirectly conveyed through what you choose to describe. Since first and limited third person allow for more in-depth examination of the character’s internal states, you as the writer need to choose which details will essentially represent your character’s mental state and thus convey the character’s emotional state by extension. Ideally you should try to incorporate all three facets to create a believable, gripping description. A lot of people say show but don’t tell which I agree with. You should say, “Elaine was sad,” and leave it at that. But naming the emotion isn’t a black mark on your record as long as you incorporate at least one other dimension into the description. And never forget the importance of dialogue in conveying what a character feels.

As always, comments are welcome and I’d love to hear about your thoughts on emotion and how to convey it in writing.