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Such a simple poster has recruited ten people to my class in only a few days. There would seem to be a hunger out there for writing. That’s something I understand. For 20 years I’ve happily made my living from freelance writing, so I feel I have some advice to offer, beginning with…
If you think writers know what they’re writing about…guess again.
Writing rules and regulations – I’ll get around to them eventually. But the first draft should be a wild ride through the outback, not a trolley bus ride through the gentrified streets of the city. The story should not run on time. Keeping to the schedule should not be your story’s meaning.
A first draft should head off wildly and blindly in chase of meaning. I say ‘blindly’ because a story’s plot – never mind “meaning” – is seldom known in advance. A writer concocts characters and setting, but these are only symptoms of an underlying meaning.
Yes, your fictional hero is only a symptom of a hidden meaning.
Characters and the problems they create for themselves – these are but symptoms of what your story is really all about. It’s true, most writers are clueless when they begin. And this is the way it should be, because…We write – not to explain – but to discover.
Of course, a writer needs a great deal of trust to continually confront the desert of the blank page. The muse demands our trust. Trusting first impulses, getting it written and not necessarily right…well, after some time something magical happens. The story takes on a verisimilitude much more profound than the sum of descriptions and scenes. You’ve created a weave of elements in which a design, unbeknownst to you, has appeared from the depths. In that design you might be lucky enough to discern your meaning.Or it might not dawn on you until your 16th draft.
There’s no better feeling than when we finally discover what it is we’ve been trying to say.
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