Sometimes a story of any size starts…and then crumbles to dust, or lies down and refuses to move, or otherwise reveals itself as a failure.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m not talking about stories completed that never find a market (that’s another kind of failure, which I’ll talk about another time) but stories that you want to write–at least when you start.\u00a0 Stories that are happy, gurgling, grinning infant stories, that may even get far enough to start crawling on their own–but develop what doctors call “failure to thrive” in spite of your best efforts.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When a story you’re writing fails to thrive,\u00a0 the novice writer is usually terrified.\u00a0 Does this mean the writer is a failure?\u00a0 Can’t write?\u00a0 Should just quit on the whole enterprise?\u00a0\u00a0 Or does it mean the writer should stick to it with that story and push, shove,\u00a0 pull, drag that story along, word by painful word, until (months or years later) it’s all too clear the time was wasted and the story died long ago?\u00a0\u00a0 Neither sounds like anything a writer wants to do–and a born writer cannot quit writing without deliberately poisoning the well of that writer’s talent (something too frequently done with alcohol and other drugs that damage creativity, but that can also be done by deliberately becoming cynical about creative work in general.)<\/p>\n
The writer who has experienced failure to thrive in some works–but successful completion of others–may be able to help…and that’s what I hope to do.\u00a0\u00a0 I have recent experience with failure to thrive.\u00a0 Since I finished Crown of Renewal<\/em>, I have had several (three or four) novel projects die on me, and several short works as well.\u00a0\u00a0 Ideas, characters, situations I thought would be good, interesting stories and wanted to write…turned up their toes a short way into the project (but long enough after to take up weeks of time and energy.)\u00a0\u00a0 To say this was disappointing is wrong.\u00a0 It was depressing the first time it happened.\u00a0 When it happened again…and again…while Agent and Editor were patiently inquiring from time to time how things were going in the new work department, the depression grew.\u00a0 I know from experience that at a certain level depression undermines my ability to write at all.\u00a0\u00a0 I felt stale, empty, and increasingly wondered if simple age had finally gotten to my brain (as well as feet, ankles, knees, hips, waistline, shoulders, elbows, etc.)\u00a0 and maybe I had actually written my last book.\u00a0\u00a0 Twenty-six novels isn’t a bad run for a writer, except when the writer feels inside that more books are there somewhere, if only they can be dragged out into the open and written.<\/p>\n The short fiction I could write helped only a little, because it was only about half the short fiction I tried<\/em> to write.\u00a0 (I was trying to write anything that came into my head!)\u00a0\u00a0 But this is where experience stepped in and helped me through the worst of the crunch.\u00a0\u00a0 And where just maybe my experience can help someone else who is having their work fail to thrive.<\/p>\n As I wrote in my article on the writer and depression<\/a> ,\u00a0 and on writer’s block<\/a>, when more than one project fails, and then the well seems dry down to bedrock,\u00a0 it’s time to quit focusing on the writing and focus on the writer.\u00a0 Something’s wrong, and it’s not with the writer’s talent.\u00a0 (There may be exceptions.\u00a0 I’m not one.\u00a0 Yet.)\u00a0\u00a0 What is the something else?\u00a0\u00a0 Depression’s always a potential drag on talent.\u00a0 Some is caused by suckage in real life, but there’s always suckage in real life.\u00a0 Try fixing the suckage (if it’s fixable–a partner with a terminal illness isn’t.\u00a0 In my life there was political suckage, family health suckage, a dying parent (who died in April),\u00a0 vision suckage, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 There wasn’t a lot I could do about the suckage (other than having eye surgery, not completely successful:\u00a0 the family medical thing isn’t going\u00a0 away and will ultimately cost a life, my father died, etc.)\u00a0\u00a0 Concentrating on writing wouldn’t help with any of that.\u00a0\u00a0 I started working on those things, plus things I knew helped with the endogenous side of depression (exercise, better nutrition, more time with upbeat people and less time with downbeat people.)\u00a0 A couple of months back on the depression med that works for me.\u00a0\u00a0 Giving myself permission to not fret about the writing for a few months, to take off the automatic “kick in the butt” machine that kept kicking when I couldn’t move.<\/p>\n Giving myself, even more, permission to fail<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Accepting that the failure happens, but it’s not permanent.\u00a0 I’ve had books fail to thrive before (two of them that I remember spending months on.)\u00a0\u00a0 I wrote as well or better after that.\u00a0\u00a0 With permission to fail, I came through another book failing to thrive this time…and then started the book that isn’t failing, and is past what is for me the “proof point” that the story-yeast is alive and this dough will keep rising all the way into the oven of its final draft.<\/p>\n The novice writer has a very difficult time knowing when to quit on a failure-to-thrive and when it’s actually just a hard place in that book.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I know now, by feel, when to quit…but it’s hard to describe.\u00a0\u00a0 Here’s a try at that:\u00a0 if you’re stuck in a hard place, you usually have some idea where the story is going beyond the part you’re writing.\u00a0 Try leapfrogging past that hard place and see if the story comes alive again.\u00a0 If it does, then keep going (and come back and fix the hard spot later.)\u00a0\u00a0 But if you leapfrog and the story is still limp, if you have no idea what to do with it next (and maybe have tried the ninjas coming through the roof, or the knock on the front door, and it’s still not going anywhere, chances are it’s failure to thrive.\u00a0 A healthy story pulls you, the writer, along with it most of the time; a failure to thrive has no internal energy.<\/p>\n As soon as you know a story is failing to thrive, quit.\u00a0\u00a0 Walk away from it.\u00a0\u00a0 Put a big heavy lid on the guilt that will try to blame you for that “failure”.\u00a0\u00a0 Don’t even try to write for a day or so…and don’t think about the failure to thrive story, but about the story you most want to read and write.\u00a0 Be open to what’s around you–are your senses functioning?\u00a0 Are you enjoying color, movement, scents, textures, flavors, sounds?\u00a0\u00a0 If not, concentrate on one sense after another.\u00a0 Have you shown your friends you care about them, lately?\u00a0 Are you learning new things?\u00a0 What excites you?\u00a0 Angers you?\u00a0 Intrigues you?\u00a0\u00a0 Go for walks or bike rides, chat with friends about their lives, listen to music that makes you happy (avoid TV news!!!!) ,\u00a0 eat whatever foods you know are good for you (not the same for all),\u00a0 hug a horse or hold a purring cat on your lap, take up a hobby you’ve left alone for a year or so–finish that birdhouse, that scarf, that curtain.\u00a0 Look at where in your life changes would make you happier (a new pot in the kitchen?\u00a0 A different set of towels?)\u00a0 and start making one small change at a time.<\/p>\n When the next story shows up, go into it with the certainty that it might fail…but you<\/em> won’t, because a story’s failure to thrive does not mean you<\/em> are “a failure.”\u00a0\u00a0 It means you’re a perfectly normal writer, for whom many stories will fail.\u00a0 If it doesn’t fail, fine–you got another completion under your belt, and every one increases your “not a failure” inertia.\u00a0\u00a0 If it does, consider it the way you consider (or should consider) rejections–you need to have a certain number of them in a lifetime, might as well get on with building up the inventory.\u00a0\u00a0 Consider ballet dancers–they don’t make those incredible leaps correctly every time in every practice.\u00a0 Even the stars make mistakes, have to go back and re-learn something.\u00a0 Consider sculptors–even the great ones occasionally fail with a piece of rock. \u00a0 Painters paint over some of their failures, throw others away.<\/p>\n I was lucky enough to hear a great organist at Yorkminster, playing one of Bach’s big organ pieces…and in the middle of it he stopped short, muttered a cussword audible to those of us seated near enough in the choir, and sat silent for a very long minute or maybe two.\u00a0 No one dared say a word; we hardly breathed.\u00a0\u00a0 Then he started again where he’d quit, finishing with the entire cathedral full of glorious music.\u00a0\u00a0 He “failed” to play the piece through without any error (Bach had not put a break in there.) But he succeeded in keeping a knowledgeable audience rapt for the entire performance including that space of silence–all of us rooting for him to succeed in the end.\u00a0 He could do that–sit still, doing whatever he was doing in his head before his hands moved again–because he had been there before, because he had the experience to know that momentarily getting lost (mentally or physically) was a temporary problem that would pass, because he knew he did know that piece and could play it, had played it, and all he had to do was empty his mind of the embarrassment, chagrin, anger at himself, and let the music fill him once more.<\/p>\n As writers, we are fortunate that most of the time we can blunder about privately–dumping the stories that fail to thrive, publishing the ones that come out looking good.\u00a0 We don’t have to reveal our moments (days\/weeks\/months) of failure except in those gaps of the publishing schedule.\u00a0\u00a0 Our agents and editors suspect something’s wrong but we may or may not tell them.\u00a0 Our readership is likely to think we’re just goofing off,\u00a0 traveling the world on the vast wealth they assume we have.\u00a0 But we do fail, all of us, and it seemed to me that maybe we should<\/em> reveal the failures and the ways we try to get beyond them.\u00a0\u00a0 Every writer is going to have stories that fail to thrive.\u00a0\u00a0 To keep going, every writer needs a way to handle it when they go pale and listless–a way to recognize the failure to thrive v.\u00a0 the temporary knot, a way to handle the failure-related emotions, a way to restore the energy, courage, and insights that make writing possible.\u00a0 I don’t claim that my ways are the only ways–they’re the ways that work for me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes a story of any size starts…and then crumbles to dust, or lies down and refuses to move, or otherwise reveals itself as a failure.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m not talking about stories completed that never find a market (that’s another kind of failure, which I’ll talk about another time) but stories that you want to write–at least […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,5],"tags":[62,107],"class_list":["post-2365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-the-writing-life","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2366,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2365\/revisions\/2366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}