Just Do It!

A recent post at one of my online writers' groups asked how we fiction writers actually get a story on paper. I answered and so I thought I'd share my answer here.

How do I do it? I've learned, through a lot of work, that you just have to let yourself go. As the Nike ad says, "Just do it!" I know that's horribly cliche, but that's also very simple.

I don't know the plot going into the story. I often just have a line or a character in a setting, so really it is about giving myself license to discover what this character and his or her scenario is all about. The things I keep in mind as I'm going are:

1. The first draft is a draft. It's not going to be the final product and it will change. I just focus on getting a full narrative out, even if it sounds rough and it most often does.

2. I allow myself room to discover. I give the characters room to sort of develop as they will and then, for me, the plot comes out of that.

3. Finally, I just show up at the page every day regardless of what gets written. Sometimes it's a line. Sometimes it's several pages. I just write it out until it is done, not in one sitting, but in several or more hour-long sittings. An hour is about as long as I can focus on a single project.

I remember seeing House of Sand and Fog author, Andre Dubus, III, on the Oprah Winfrey Show way back when Oprah was doing those wonderful book club shows. At the end of the show, Andre talked about how after his father's death, he found and read his father's writing journals. His father was well-known author Andre Dubus. Andre (the junior) noted how after each passage, not matter how long the passage was--a line, a word, or pages long--that Andre Dubus (the senior) always wrote "Thank You." Andre (the junior) said he was profoundly moved by the fact that his father was truly thankful for whatever amount of writing he did. I found it so moving and continue to think about it to this day, some eight or ten years later, as I put my words out there.

In essence, we just have to show up at the page and be thankful.

C