Sooner or later, all real writers somehow find their own way to create a writer’s life.  Changing circumstances and different priorities will always have to be adapted to.  Still, if writing is your passion and you want it to be more than a mere hobby or subset of your life, it’s useful to reflect on the thoughts of those who have gone before.

In this post and others to come, I’ll share both practical and more philosophical ideas on the subject of making writing your life (though certainly not all of your life).

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“I assemble the dynamite but I am not ready to touch off the fuse.”

That’s a quote from Saul Bellow.  Bellow, a novelist, short story writer, and nonfiction author, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, the National Medal of Arts, and the National Book Award three times (having been nominated for it six times).  I think, then, that what he thought about his own writing might interest any modern-day writer.

According to a 1948 letter by Bellow, published recently in The New Yorker (available online only to subscribers), writing “freely” was his goal. About his second novel, The Victim, he wrote:

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We usually think of obsessions as negative. A lot of obsessing comes with pain, overwhelming frustration, and a sense that there’s nothing you can do about the source of your obsession.  There’s another kind of obsession, though, and those more productive obsessions are what we learn about in Brainstorm: Harnessing the Power of Productive Obsessions by psychotherapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel, Ph.D., and Ann Maisel.

Writers and other artists are often desperate for fresh inspiration and renewed motivation.  By learning concrete ways to tap into the brain’s potential, Maisel’s readers can better move forward in whatever realm they care most passionately about.  What the Maisels are talking about here is another way to look at flow, or focus, or deep engagement, or mindfulness.  Even if they’re not all defined as precisely the same experience, there’s no particular need to pull apart the threads of difference.  They’re all extremely positive states of mind, ones that creative people often crave and benefit from.

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Unlike many of my friends, I’ve never been a Stephen King fan. Having read several of his novels over the past decade or two, I just don’t get it. I love a good story as much as anyone. His simply disappoint me. And yet his readers are the most devoted bunch.

In a post elsewhere, I wrote that his recent novel, Under the Dome, had the word shit on nearly every page. Commenters following that post reacted as though I’d blasphemed a national hero. They clearly hadn’t read my post clearly, which tells me something about the way they read Stephen King.

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Poking around the Internet, I learned of an English novelist, Ruth Saberton, who was despairing of getting her book published.  But then her mother-in-law mentioned that the hosts of a no-longer airing chat show, a program that had featured a book club, maintained a country retreat nearby.

Saberton traveled there and left her full manuscript on Richard and Judy’s step with a note asking them to read it.

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You know how you avoid something so long that it begins to feel overwhelming? Even when you sense that just starting is what you need to do?

I did it. I resumed working on my second novel after a hiatus of too many weeks. If you find yourself procrastinating the same way, here are a few thoughts that might be of use to you:

1. Don’t get stuck on some minor point. When I run out of ideas (or steam) at a particular spot, I write “MORE” and leave it for later.  Those “MOREs” are good to go back to when you have only a short time to write.

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I received a question from a reader, an international grad student who is having a hard time writing in English.  My response equally applies to anyone who tightens up at the thought of having to write well.

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I only read mysteries occasionally, but nearly everyone I know loves them.  When I was researching the creative writing process — how writers enter flow and are their most productive and, typically, most happy — I interviewed Jonathan Kellerman. 

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A friend of mine told her then-husband that she was finally going to start her novel.  He folded his arms, scowled and asked with palpable cynicism and disgust, “Do you have an outline?”

“Geeze, no,” she replied, “but Stephen King says in his book that outlines are completely unnecessary–just start writing.” According to my friend, that temporarily took the wind out of her ex’s know-it-all sails.

What, then, is the truth about outlines?  Do they serve a purpose or are they only dreary reminders of long-ago school days when we had to outline material we didn’t care about?

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If you were to do an efficiency analysis of my movements during a typical at-home writing day, you’d end up with a surprising criss-crossing maze.  Not enough walking to use very many calories, but enough to show my typical style is not to sit and write steadily. 

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