Writing into the Dark Read online

  I let my critical voice combine with pure fear to stop me cold.

  The best way many people see this concept clearly is in the bad horror movies when a woman in high heels goes into an old mansion where there is a killer. The woman in the high heels needs a better-developed critical voice.

  No doubt about that.

  (Or the writers need a new plot.)

  But unlike going into an old mansion, or jumping off a cliff on skis, there is no danger in writing.

  The fearless writers contain their critical voices and write what they love, what moves them.

  As I said in the lecture on Writing into the Dark, my critical voice with writing is a tiny little thing whimpering off in a corner of my mind. When it tries to stand up, I throw bricks at it until it goes back to its corner and leaves me the hell alone.

  WORK VERSUS PLAY

  Writing from the critical voice is work. Plain and simple.

  It’s why so many beginning writers describe writing a book in metaphors that make them sound like they have just won a major world war all by themselves.

  If I hadn’t defeated my critical voice, I would have long ago moved on to doing something far more fun than writing from critical voice.

  Writing without critical voice turned on, just writing to tell myself a story, is like reading. The process is wonderful and I enjoy the journey.

  So what happens when a writer says out loud, “I’m going to write this next novel into the dark. No outline.”

  That is like giving your critical voice an energy drink or two. That critical voice will find a thousand ways to come at you.

  I bet some of you while reading this have already had the critical voice yammering at you about how dangerous this would be.

  Remember, the goal of the critical voice is to stop you.

  Just remember my friend having his picture in Ski Magazine and me carefully and fearfully skiing around that cliff and you get the idea.

  Throughout this book, I’m going to detail numbers of ways critical voice and fear will work to stop you, and how to get around them. But at this point I want to deal with one of the major ways that critical voice will come at you almost instantly when you even think of writing into the dark.

  WASTED MY TIME

  This is a huge killer, and I constantly hear this from new writers. Not only about writing into the dark, but about so many other aspects of writing.

  Truth: When you are writing new words, you are never wasting your time.

  Never.

  Here comes a dirty word. Better cover your ears.

  Practice.

  There, I said it.

  Imagine walking up to some poor kid who is practicing a musical instrument and telling that kid he is wasting his time by practicing. He needs to only play concerts or nothing at all.

  Can’t imagine that?

  Yet when your critical voice tells you that you might be wasting your time, that’s exactly what you are saying to yourself.

  You are saying your writing must always be special, that it can’t be done to practice.

  Yeah, believing every word you write is always special will freeze you down into making writing work and then fairly quickly stop you completely.

  And again, that’s what the critical voice wants.

  Critical voice does not want you writing or taking any chances. Period.

  And writing into the dark? Wow, what a chance that would be. Far too much of a chance to take because your writing is “special.” Your writing must always be perfect and maybe you had better add in just one more rewrite to be sure.

  And maybe one more rewrite after that, because rewriting isn’t wasting time.

  That italics part, folks, was a sarcastic attempt to show you just how stupid those thoughts are. If you believe all of that was advice, you are beyond my help.

  Truth: The biggest waste of time in writing is rewriting. Period.

  But that’s the topic of another book down the road.

  Again, we’re dealing with the sneaky critical voice always looking for ways to stop you. And rewriting is a great way.

  AFRAID TO TRY

  If you are afraid to try a new genre, afraid to try a new method of writing, afraid to try to get your work out to markets or show it to your friends, critical voice is in control and winning.

  Period.

  Heinlein’s Business Rules from 1947 are really interesting when looked at from a defeating-critical-voice viewpoint.

  Rule #1: You must write.

  To do that, just that simple thing, you must overcome critical voice in many aspects.

  Rule #2: You must finish what you write.

  Critical voice will keep you from finishing with a thousand tricks. If a story or novel isn’t done, it can’t be shown and thus can’t cause you any (imaginary) harm.

  Rule #3: You must refrain from rewriting unless to editorial demand.

  Critical voice uses the myth of rewriting to make sure nothing will ever be “good enough” and ready to show anyone.

  Rule #4: You must put your work on the market.

  Critical voice can think of a thousand ways to make you afraid of the repercussions of mailing or indie publishing your work.

  Rule #5: You must keep your work on the market until it sells.

  Critical voice does wonders when you get rejections from an editor, and can stop you from putting the work back out. And if publishing indie, some imaginary expected sales figure not hit, or some bad review, will cause beginning writers to pull down work.

  Heinlein’s Rules of Business were to help writers get past critical voice. The rules really are that simple.

  And because of critical voice, those five simple rules are almost impossible to follow.

  Of course, your critical voice will instantly start coming up with ways how those rules don’t apply to you.

  Of course they don’t.

  Your critical voice knows best.

  It knows how to stop you cold, keep you from writing.

  That’s its job, after all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE JOY OF UNCERTAINTY

  I am trying in these first few chapters to establish some basics that I hope will help you drive forward while writing into the dark.

  The biggest factor once you get past the critical voice is uncertainty.

  Uncertainty, when not controlled and used to push forward, causes problems.

  Lots of problems.

  When a writer lets uncertainty be a bad thing, it’s like tossing open a window and inviting into your writing office all the fears and critical voice you can find. And once in, those fears and critical voice will slow you down and stop you.

  Remember, that’s their job.

  Uncertainty, if looked at correctly and embraced, is a positive aspect of writing into the dark.

  So let me battle in this chapter to help you keep that window closed to critical voice and fear. What I want to do is help you understand that uncertainty is a welcome feeling when writing into the dark.

  THE BOREDOM FACTOR

  From a reader’s perspective, when I get to a spot in a book I know exactly how the book will end, I put the book down.

  If Kris asks me what went wrong in the book, I say: “The book was on rails.”

  She’ll nod because she understands.

  The writer had placed the plot of the book firmly on a set of rails and the ending was as clear as knowing that the next stop on a train ride was the city ahead. No uncertainty in the plot at all, and as a reader, I could see the ending of the book ahead.

  So I got bored and put the book down.

  Most readers are like me. Not all, but most.

  When a reader realizes that they know how the book will end, they stop. It might not be a conscious thought. It might be just putting the book down to go get a cup of tea and never returning to the book.

  The dreaded critique from a reader: “I knew what was going to happen.”

  How do you guarantee that statem
ent will never, ever be made about one of your books?

  Simple. Write into the dark.

  Duh.

  If you do not have one idea of where the book is going that you are writing, there is no chance in hell your reader will ever know.

  Books on rails are books that were outlined. The writer knew exactly where the book was going, what the end was, so the writer’s subconscious put in all the clues to tell the reader where the book was going, and everything in the book, every detail points to the ending like signs with arrows.

  Books on rails are seldom original, either. Books outlined by the critical voice just can’t be. The critical voice isn’t your creative voice. Your critical voice can only dig up old ideas and old plots and parrot them back to readers already familiar with the plot.

  So you are writing into the dark to stay original and you don’t know where the plot is going.

  How does that make you feel as a writer?

  Uncertain, of course.

  But if you want your book to be original and fresh and have no reader really know where it is going, you need to embrace that uncertainty feeling.

  WHERE DO I GO NEXT?

  I can hear the doubts, the questions.

  If you don’t know where the book is going, how do you know what to write next?

  In the next numbers of chapters, that’s going to be a major topic. I’m going to give you a bunch of ways of figuring that out.

  But right here, early in the book, let me tell you the simple answer.

  Write the next sentence.

  And then write the next sentence.

  I am not kidding.

  It really is that simple.

  What rule anywhere tells you that you need to know what is happening fifty pages away? No rule.

  English teacher training or some such nonsense, more than likely.

  Just write the next sentence that follows logically through the character from the previous sentence.

  And repeat until you find the end of the story.

  With every step of that path, with every sentence, uncertainty will be dogging you.

  That’s a good thing.

  But at the same time, don’t let the uncertainty be a fear-excuse to stop you writing.

  Just write one more sentence. You can do it.

  Then write one more sentence.

  Repeat.

  You know the drill.

  It really does work.

  UNCERTAINTY AS A SPORTING EVENT

  For those of you who know me, know some of my past, you know I have been, and sometimes still am, an adrenaline junkie.

  Professional hotdog skiing, professional golf, professional poker, jumping out of airplanes, rafting rivers, starting businesses, three wives, and so on and so on. Never a dull moment in my life, and I lived it that way purposely.

  I sort of wonder at people with bucket lists. If there’s been something I wanted to do, I just went and did it. I got nothing to put in some stupid bucket.

  So here I sit getting adrenaline out of writing. I have fired into my own monthly magazine, I am building a new writing career at the age of sixty-four, and a new business as well.

  So is it any wonder that the uncertainty of writing into the dark makes writing fun for me?

  Adrenaline is everywhere, with everything I do, including all the learning I get from talking with writers on my blog.

  I find the fear of not being able to come up with something to write great fun.

  And you know, it’s not often that sitting alone in a room and making stuff up can give you an adrenaline rush. (Queue all the porn jokes right here…)

  I JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT IS NEXT

  What happens when you can’t even think of the next word to write, let alone the next sentence?

  Your subconscious just won’t let a word be written and you won’t let your critical voice into the picture.

  What do you do?

  Again, in later chapters, I’m going to talk a lot more about all this sort of thing, how to get going again, and so on, but here, early in the book, I want to give you a basic writer trick you can use when that happens.

  Sleep on it.

  But before you call it a night, start off by taking a short break. Sometimes just five minutes will get you back to the next sentence.

  And do not focus on how you need to end the chapter, or some plot thing. Just focus on trying to figure out what the character would do next.

  What is the next sentence?

  If you get back to the computer, do some methods I will outline later in the book, and the next sentence still doesn’t come, then go take a nap.

  Or go to bed.

  The key to this is that as you stand up from the computer, tell yourself you’ll have it figured out in the morning, or when you wake up.

  Sometimes a five- or ten-minute nap will be enough for me to fire onward after being stuck.

  However, the real problem with getting stuck like this is the uncertainty. Getting stuck, which will happen numbers of times in any novel or story, allows in all the doubts, the questioning of the very idea of writing into the dark.

  It is getting stuck that causes so many writers to say, “I can’t write into the dark. I always get stuck and then I have to outline.”

  Letting in your critical voice at that point is the worst thing a writer can do.

  A writer must learn to trust the creative voice.

  Sometimes that creative voice needs a little time, a short nap, a night’s sleep, to get untangled, but it will get untangled if you keep the fear and critical voice away.

  It is at that stuck point that you need to really embrace and enjoy the uncertainty.

  Getting stuck is part of writing into the dark. It is part of the process, a natural part of the process of a creative voice building a story.

  Embrace the uncertainty of being stuck, trust your creative voice, give it a few moments’ rest, and then come back and write the next sentence.

  What almost always happens for me after these rest points is that the book will power forward faster than I can type.

  My creative voice has got it figured out and is off and running.

  When a book does that, it’s great fun.

  Enjoy the adrenaline rush.

  Remember that being stuck is normal.

  And that this writing into the dark process is uncertain.

  But one great side of writing into the dark: Your readers will never know the ending of one of your books.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHAT DO YOU NEED TO GET STARTED?

  For this chapter, I’m going to go over a list of what you need to get started writing into the dark on a novel.

  Some of these points are pretty basic, and some are more difficult.

  But a simple list and explanation seemed to be the best way to get you at least mentally ready. All of these points will come up at different points throughout this book.

  Be warned: Your critical voice will not like any of these. And if you find yourself disagreeing completely, you might not be ready yet to write off into the dark successfully.

  You might be. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

  FIRST…YOU NEED A LOVE OF STORY

  If you are still in that silly early stage of beginning writing where you think you need to read everything critically, you might not be ready yet to tackle a book into the dark.

  By reading critically, you are feeding that critical voice with every sentence you read. And, of course, most stuff you read isn’t good enough. That’s the nature of the critical voice.

  A writer like Cussler or Patterson or Nora Roberts or Grisham can entertain millions of readers with every book, and you and your overhyped critical voice will think they can’t write at all. That’s critical voice turned on far too high and your ego far, far out of control.

  You must get back to reading for enjoyment, for the sheer love of a good story told well.

  You won’t like all books, but your dislike will be for taste, not cr
itical voice. And that’s fine.

  So if you haven’t read a book lately and gotten so lost in the story that you haven’t seen a word of the book, then writing into the dark might not be such a good idea until you can get back to really loving to read for the sheer pleasure.

  When you can read a book and not see a word of type, then you are ready.

  And if you automatically copyedit everything you read, go get help. And I mean real help, professional help, because you have lost all ability to see a story and are trapped by the little black marks on the paper. You can’t even begin to be a writer from that mindset, let alone a creative writer, let alone write into the dark.

  But if you enjoy story, love to read, and can’t see the words when reading because you are lost in the story the writer is telling, you will be fine moving forward and into the dark with your writing.

  SECOND…EARLY PRECONCEPTIONS CLEARED

  All those preconceptions of the need to consciously put in foreshadowing or plot arcs or character threads or rising and falling tension. You know, all that English class crap you were taught by people good at deconstruction but shitty at creative work.

  You must have most of that cleared out, or at least under control in your mind. It is why I talked about it early on in this book.

  Studying books, studying plot threads, studying rising and falling tension is one thing for writers to do after they read a book and like it.

  But you can’t come at a book, ready to write a book, with the idea you are going to put that all in.

  You have to know that the desire to consciously put in all the literary crap is your critical voice, the thing that is out to stop you cold.

  For writing into the dark, the critical voice needs to be ushered into a closet and the door slammed until the book is done.

  Your creative voice will put all the stuff that needs to be there in the book, and make you look really, really smart to English classes later. And as I discovered, you won’t even know you put that stuff in there for those deconstructionists to find.