Trusting the process

One of the hard necessary lessons a beginning writer must learn is to trust the process of creation. In particular, to accept "being bad" as part of this process.

I'll never forget the first time I realized this. When I returned to college after the army, I no longer was a math major and future scientist but a lost soul. I had no idea what my major would be -- philosophy and history were the leading candidates at first -- but I was exploring all the courses I could, including literature.

In a creative writing class our text was a collection of short stories (now long out of print) with a brilliant premise: along with the usual stories by the major English and American writers, the first drafts of those stories also were published. Revelation! The early drafts were so bad compared to the finished stories. Being bad began the process! (Faulkner couldn't spell -- but even this could be fixed later.)

Suddenly all these "great writers" came down to earth, and I began to realize that writing was really RE-writing, that a process was involved, not some magical and sudden inspiration leading to genius. It was all about perspiration, not inspiration. (Later I would learn the true and important use of the latter.)

Without this lesson, I'd be lost today. I'm working on the ending of the book, which involves a very tricky transition, and my goal now is not to get it right but to get it close enough to go on. There is much to fix in this draft but I do want an entire draft before I go back and start a rewrite. I want to print it out and also put it in my Kindle and live with it, preferably through winter term. Then in the spring I want to do a rewrite for the first presentable draft, make a few print-on-demand copies and get feedback from a few colleagues. Then see where I am. Hopefully I can finish it all up in the summer.

More than ever, I believe in the concept of this book and at this point that's the important thing. Onward.