Blogger: Etta Wilson
Location: Books & Such Nashville Office
Weather: 60 and rainy
I’ve been writing this week about ways writers can suggest to their readers how to communicate in untried ways, how to slow the frenetic pace of their lives and how to enjoy the gifts of life they have. I mentioned music as a personal favorite as well as retreats for contemplation. Sometimes communicate the call to a less frantic life through a character and sometimes through our style of writing, or the setting we use for our stories.
I found that writing about these calm approaches and their benefits when the national scene was so explosive an instructive experience. You could hardly avoid the turmoil. It was enough to give you serious health problems! Without getting into that issue, I’d be interested to know if you think your best writing emerges from times when you are upset and jangled or when you are “confidently happy.”
Can you identify any particular set of circumstances or inspiration that serve to quiet inner turmoil?
What about the opposite? If you are writing a fast-paced mystery, is it better to be in inner upheaval?
Or does being absorbed by the creative process sedate you from personal difficulties?
Maybe the lives of your characters become more real than your own. I’d like to know what works for you and if that has changed at certain points. Thanks.
We’ve had some
As a teenager, I wrote prolifically when I was upset. It was a way of sorting out all those raging emotions. Now I find that I draw a great deal of my raw material from the inner conflicts we all wrestle with, but I write about them more effectively after a period of calm reflection where the Lord can give me a bit of perspective.
In one recent story, my heroine had just come through a political upheaval (Civil War) that took a great personal toll. She wanted nothing more than to escape her grief and live in quiet seclusion, but the Lord kept throwing her back into the fray, forcing her to confront her own prejudices and fears, and showing her that she still had purpose.
The creative process works for me. It takes me out of the present and places me in another “present”. Characters do become maybe not “more real” but just “as” real than life itself. It soothes even in their conflict because with their lives there is a solution waiting. Not necessarily a perfect or lasting solution but by virtue of telling the story, there is a conclusion.
The nature of the conflict and resolution in the stories reminds me that God works wonders in this life even when all looks bleak. Capturing the good and evil, the mundane, the hilarious–it all serves its purpose in our lives and within a story we can be removed from our own chaos if it exists while still resting in the Lord’s care.
My experience has been that ideas tumble out best in turmoil, and finished product comes best when the first draft has set a spell before the rewrite. I have several novels that I began working on in the last couple of years while I wavered between agnosticism and belief (almost 40 years ago). After I made my decision for Christ, I realized they were all good stories, but needed to be written by a mature believer. I put them away for three decades. I am blessed now to have the raw originals, and blessed also to have the distance to look at them more objectively.
My own turmoils are too distracting when they are happening, but looking back on them later can give significant insights into my characters and their emotions even when the crisis is completely different from my own.
I write WELL when I am calm. I write what people WANT to read when I am going through a personal crisis. My first two books of poetry were recently accepted. They are about times of turmoil. I hope my poetry can help others get through difficult times.
My picture book characters are upbeat and always seeking new ways around life’s difficulties. I strive to emulate them! During times of struggle I have found writing to be a prop and a pillow. Prop: Pages of journaling helped me sort out complicated issues and vent emotions so I could think clearly. Pillow: like that final sigh before drifting off, I really focus on a writing project to muffle the outside turmoil.
It’s so good to see all these valuable insights and so good of everyone to share them. They point up the value of perspective and of time’s healing and energizing qualities. Brian, I’m glad you still had your earlier mss. I’ve just heard from an author lamenting that she had destroyed her work from several years past.