Juiced On Writing

Part 1 of a Series “Writers Write, Right?”

There’s a standard answer around almost everywhere regarding what defines a writer -

To Be a Writer, Write.

This seems plausible on first consideration. Afterall, a writer who doesn’t pick up pen or keyboard to write something isn’t actually writing, right? But then, the definition of what writing is – and isn’t, becomes more than a little muddy in some parts.

If I was to ask my five year old daughter what writing is, she would give some kind of answer related to picking up a pen – or pencil, and making some marks on the paper. She’s actually quite good at it – the marks are generally well-rounded and legible – and her school teacher can more often than not, read them – without the need for further tools like an explanatory story or some pictures. Words are spelt and taught phonetically, and my five year old is reading – and writing – well.

If I was to ask others what writing is, as in – what does a writer do that is writing? – then we get into a whole different world.

The following is an extract from an excerpt of a book, Writing Alone, Writing Together by Judy Reeves, published in 2002 by New World Library. Here is what Judy Reeves has to say about the subject of “Write”: -

Finally, the third leg in the triangle of being a writer who writes is, of course, doing the thing. Talking about writing isn’t writing. Thinking about writing isn’t writing. Dreaming or fantasizing isn’t writing. Neither are outlining, researching, or making notes. All these may be a part of the whole milieu of the writing life and necessary to getting a project completed, but only writing is writing.

“You can’t sit around thinking,” said fiction writer David Long. “You must sit around writing.”

So every day, at the appointed time (or at some spontaneous gift of time), you sit at your desk (or your table in the café or on the grass in the park), you open your notebook or you boot up your computer, and you write.

Now, I’m new at this, but some of this doesn’t sit that well with my own “what is writing” definition. Because I consider outlining and taking notes in a writer’s notebook, and journaling as writing,  maybe even dreaming up some creative ideas, just as much as spending twenty minutes or whatever time appointed towards writing some free-flow streams of conciousness work, a shortstory, a newspaper article, a poem or some fiction.

Just to emphasise the point, here’s a quote from the Productive Flourishing blog, in a post entitled, “Why Productivity is Bunk” -

Because productivity has been measured with the production of key deliverables, creatives feel that hours spent braintornadoing and playing with ideas is not being productive. Chasing ideas is what enables creatives to do what they love doing – sometimes it pans out to a deliverable product, sometimes it’s just playing with ideas. It’s the process, folks, that separates talented creatives from, well, everybody else.

So, the whole productivity thing seems impressed upon writers also – the key deliverable is actual writing, and possibly published at that (see my points below) and not about the actual writing process in itself.

Also, the whole journalistic, freelance, online writing thing isn’t dealt with within the impassioned dictum – “To be a writer, write!”. Writing for a blog is possibly the hardest area to have acceptance as a writer – unless perhaps you’re a professional blogger (and making money from all the promotions and info-products you are endorsing or creating to sell). But given there are even courses out there on how to write for a scrapbook page (called journaling) – provided for by professional writing organisations, and which willing students pay a fee for, well…  I would suggest that the definition of what writing is can now be seen as a whole heap bigger than sitting down and writing – actually “writing” (in the fiction sense).

Of course, I’ve moved now into the whole debate of what is a publication or not? If this were simple, then you would have an easier route towards a writer being someone who writes something which can be published (whether it is published is another matter). Publication, though, is the hardest debate of all. Whilst most people would nod their head at newspapers, magazines, books, even self-published books nowadays, the same people might question whether some online publications are indeed, publications. Perhaps eBooks are published, and maybe even ezines, but what of blogs? Some people define it with the amount of work they think is applicable towards the mode of online publication. Afterall, every man and his dog (and quite often his cat, too) can simply press a submit button and publish a blog article like this one. But it takes a bit more work to publish an ezine or eBook, doesn’t it? Well, maybe, but publishing newsletters and ebooks nowadays is getting easier and easier, depending how you go about it. And the growing mass of self-published books are now producing another rung of people who write and are published.

Back to topic, I still maintain that the preparation side of things – the outlining, researching, world-building, planning, redrafting even, journaling, note-taking, character and setting profiling, all of that is considered part of the writing process – and therefore is writing.

One last question – Recently Stephen King has published a graphic novel serially over the web. The novel, N, has been published as a series of short videos, complete with graphic images, and a haunting soundtrack. You can see the whole series broadcast via various websites, and I happen to have it on my own writing Tumblelog, fed through here on the Juiced on Writing website also.

Now, we probably know that Stephen King wrote this novel – sat down and actually planned out and possibly wrote out line for line, N? I’m not so sure on the last one, as the whole graphic novel thing comes across more as a screenplay than anything – particularly as it wasn’t Stephen King who drew it, and in some ways that artist would have had some interpretation of the drawings he made for the performance. In the case of this median however, we get into even more interesting ground. Can you write – and therefore read – a graphic novel? Or do you draw it (and it just happens to have some words in it)? I think the answer is both, and schematics be darned.

I’ll summarise my own thinking here. Writers Write, Right! But writing, for me, involves more than just sitting down at the page and writing. It involves research – often written down, outlining, planning, character profiles, redrafting, musing, themes, questions, notes – yes, all of those are normally written also. It involves reading, blogging, newspaper articles, fiction, non-fiction, personal letters and online articles or blogs, scribbles and typing, mindmapping story ideas, and drawing graphic stories. As long as I can read it, I consider I’m writing.

To Follow : Part 2 – Writers Write , Daily?

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