On Writing (And Running)

As soon as I allowed myself time off to read, I ran to my books; the ones that were waiting patiently in my little pile of chosen ones. There are more books in this house waiting for me to read them than I’ll be able to do the next decade. From this huge bulk I had selected some that I was most anxious to read. I love how books don’t sulk when they have to wait for years until you finally pick them up. When you do open them, they are as happy as ever to show themselves.

The first one I picked up was Stephen King’s On Writing. I read books at different paces (very fast or at normal speed), and I had read this one before, but too hastily. The ideas in the book had not properly sunk in. I knew there were some ideas here I liked, and expected they would find more fertile ground this time. And some did.

I greatly enjoyed the realisation that I was able to understand someone else’s ideas not on a purely rational level, but on a deeper one because I had my own experiences to back me up in that field. In this case, my own, sometimes small and unsure steps, had pointed me in the same direction as King was now showing me.

Like King, I happen to believe that working out a plot completely in advance, is not necessarily the way to go. The plot is not sacred, he explained to me from the pages, and this time I understood that this focussing on a plot has kept me from letting my creativity flow freely. In fact, up to now it has been rather counterproductive for me: plotting a story from A-Z has always been hard to do and kept feeling somewhat unnatural.

King suggests that a writer can leave enough room for the story to unfold itself while writing. According to him it’s a lot like slowly uncovering a fossil: you know you are about to find something special and unique, even when you cannot see more than a rough shape under the rock hard earth. It takes time and being able to adjust the next move to what has just been uncovered. Once the setting, characters and starting point of a story are clear in my head, and I have a feeling that there is a good story there, hiding somewhere, I can begin and see what happens along the way. I know I’ll find things that are impossible to think up beforehand in a plot (or cramp in later), and I’m pretty sure these are the parts that make the story come to life. It’s this organic way of writing that suits me personally far better than working from too tight a schedule.

Now, I have gone about it the wrong way, with the plot-thing, but until now I couldn’t see where I went wrong. The sense of restriction has always been there, while thinking things out into details. No more: from now on I’ll happily embrace this notion and recognize it as my own (although King is able to present it in a more articulated and clearer shape than I had in my mind, or am doing it here. Maybe you should read the book too).

In a way it resembles running: I do need a training schedule, but prefer to use it only as an outline. The best runs are the ones where I start with an open mind, not sure what kind of run it will turn out to be (interval training, long slow run, shorter than usual run). This will unfold itself along the way; I might feel strong and eager to go further than planned. Or not enthusiastic at all, and just do the run. Or cut back on the distance. But the same applies here: it has taken me a lot of time and runs before I was able to figure this out (this thinking makes me want to reread Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running). Apparently it takes me a lot of time before I control the matter at hand. That’s ok: I’m willing to do the tedious work, make the hours, to reach some level of craftmanship.

But it’s time I got back to my reading: the Dutch edition of Patrick Roegiers’ biography on photographer Diane Arbus, which is striking in yet another way.