Accidental Writing
In front of me is the list of deadlines I have put together for upcoming writing competitions and calls for submissions. A few of them have themes (Social Justice, Room, Culture), and others have suggested topics (Silence, Ancestors, Selling Out). With the exception of “Selling Out,” all competitions and calls are due by the end of November.
The pressure to develop ideas, organize them into structured pieces, and then actually do the writing (sometimes the hardest part), is overwhelming if I let it get to me. That’s a lot of planning, organization, writing, and editing to do for eight pieces, not to mention the rules of the other roles we play as writers — being the marketing and business manager of your own work. Those jobs have their own anxieties and challenges that have little, if anything, to do with the art and craft of writing.
Let’s save that for another post at another time.
Twyla Tharp, in her chapter on Accidents in The Creative Habit, tells us that when we are working on writing projects, there are five traps we need to be aware of. They are:
- relying too much on others
- waiting for the perfect setup
- overthinking structure
- feeling obligated to finish what you’ve started
- working with the wrong materials
Putting too much stock into any one of these five traps will most certainly close off any opportunities for “accidents” to happen in your writing. According to Tharp, we get too glued to the rails and give ourselves little if no room at all to derail, experience something unexpected (an accident), and trust what happens long enough to see where it might take us.
These eight writing opportunities before me, if I am not careful, could fall victim to any or all of these traps, making my writing stale, powerless, and worthy of little more than a glance before it is tossed in the rejection pile.
To keep this from happening, I need to take three steps to allow accidents to enter my writing and turn something stale into an energized, lively, powerful piece.
Step One: Prioritize and Focus. I can only really write one piece at a time. I may work on other pieces at different times, but when it comes time to write, my focus has to be on the piece I have chosen to receive my energy and direction. Two of my “standard” priorities are deadline and length of submission. For example, one of the pieces has to be under 400 words, and it is due in 7 days. Normally, that would be the piece to get my greatest focus.
But here is where the “accidental writing” comes in to play. The piece on Social Justice, not due for another four weeks, is all I can think about. This past weekend, I have pondered the execution of Troy Davis, the grave I dug for our family animal, and the brutality of peaceful protesters participating in Occupy Wall Street. I did not approach any of these three topics with Social Justice in mind, or the fact that a deadline loomed. In other words, I didn’t create the structure to see what I could find to fill it; instead, I turned inward to see what was already working within me. The idea of social justice just seems to resonate with these three things, and so I will pursue this and see where it takes me.
These three things lead me to Step Two, which is to Gather Ideas Early and Let Them Swirl. I cannot deny these ideas the chance to come alive on the page. They have been with me for days, and so I bump the 400-word piece (for now) and focus on the much longer and intense piece on Social Justice.
Step Three, Embrace the Flash Draft, is perhaps the most important in avoiding the traps Tharp lists. Here’s where you need to saturate yourself with a lot of information, and then put structure and organization away on the shelf and just write. Don’t worry about producing a final draft at first attempt. Don’t even worry about coherency or writing for a particular audience. Just write on this topic and see where the synthesis of prior knowledge, new information, and emotion takes you. There is no form, there is no perfect setup, there is no goal line. Just write.
It is here, in this flash draft, that you leave the gates wide open for those glorious accidents to arise and, perhaps, take you and your words to a place that no structured piece could have ever gone.
Once that piece on Social Justice is drafted, I might go back to that 400-word submission that’s right around the corner. Then, in a few days, I’ll come back to the Social Justice piece and work on it with fresh eyes, still keeping the door open for opportunities to present themselves that might not fit nicely in the original or intended box or structure.
It’s good to have direction. Tharp recognizes the need for the structure and deadlines when writing. But keeping yourself open to receive the serendipitous “accidents” the universe provides us will make your writing fresh, engaging, and meaningful.
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