As an artist (technically, non-practicing) I found this to be extremely relatable, even across fields. In my journey to try and create more, at one point, I crossed a barrier where I needed to allow myself to make "ugly, bad, art" and within that space, I discovered the fun again. How much have we lost by becoming so serious, so hard on ourselve..? Thank you for sharing the wisdom that your journey brought.
I've mentioned this to a couple people in the comments but one of the major "pivot' points in my own journey is when I called up my brother and asked him to tell me, plainly and honestly, what my biggest character fault was--i.e. the thing that was holding me back.
He thought about it for a moment and then said, matter of factly, "You're too hard on yourself."
Normally I would have dismissed that advice, but that time around, I listened. It took a couple years for it to change things properly but in retrospect It was profoundly useful.
I found so much gold here James, thank you. I teaching writing as part of a class on qualitative analysis and will be sharing your post with students. Personally, I was most prolific when I decided to amuse my Facebook friends with my posts. It grew into a blog. I was always thinking about this ‘silly’ writing, jotting ideas and one liners on my phone. My relationship to writing became playful. When I came to do my serious work writing, it was so less intimidating. Thank you for reminding me about this
In my first year of graduate school I hit this deep funk where I felt severely broken, both as a scholar and as a person. I called up my brother because I knew he was kind but also honest, so I trusted him to be able to give me hard feedback gracefully. And I asked him if he could tell me, from his own perspective, what was wrong with me.
His response was "You're too hard on yourself."
Normally I would have dismissed him but I had made a commitment up front to taking whatever he said seriously, so I forced myself to ask the question "What if being hard on myself is the cause of my problems and not the solution?"
It took about three years for that insight to change my life but it did, completely, making me a much happier, much more productive person. Glad to see you've found the secret too.
This piece is an amazing service to a writing community like Substack. I particularly found the metaphor of “dirt” helpful, not just for its meaning (dirt isn’t trash; it’s important and necessary for growth); but also for its practical implications. It’s a great way to visualize multi-pass writing.
Thanks, Brenden. Please let me know if you get anything tangible in terms of new practices from the article; my rule is that the final measure of an article isn't whether it creates a buzz of excitement in readers -- it's whether it positions them to make a sustainable change. I'd love to hear from readers if this helps them smooth out their process in any way.
Being the mildly obsessed notebooks and stationery enthusiast that I am, I noticed that you spoke of "pen and paper" and "notebooks" several times throughout that article.
I can't help but wonder if you ever went into detail about your analog writing tools. If not, I hereby declare my heightened curiosity about that 😁
Easy. Fountain pens and Japanese paper. Too many notebooks to count, unfortunately, but I’ll say that I have a fondness for Rhodia (not Japanese, but spectacular), Moleskine (also not Japanese, but also spectacular), and Midori, Mnemosyne, Kyokuko, and Apica (all Japanese and all superior. The Midori notebooks are the best paper I have ever used).
Pen-wise, the Pilot Cavalier is superior to everything else. But I’m a fan of Lamy, and China has been getting better at their shameless knockoffs. :-D
Pilot’s Iroshizuku inks are probably the best I have. But I’ve got several bottles of Noodler’s ink that I’ve been working on for years and will probably never finish. Noodlers’ Walnut was the first one I bought, back in 2010, and I think I’m just now finishing the bottle.
Do you still carry a notebook with you to take notes on the go? If so: Do you use fountain pens with ink from a bottle in these cases, too?
Forgive me for suggesting another brand (in the unlikely case you never tried it): If you like Moleskine, I promise you'll love Leuchtturm1917 - especially as a fountain pen user.
I admire Leuchtturm but by the time I learned of it the notebook pile had grown so large that I had no desire to buy notebooks for the sake of buying them anymore. Ironically becoming a serious writer dampened my enthusiasm for paper, because it was no longer all joy and no work. These days when I buy notebooks it’s almost entirely because I’ve failed my impulse control for one reason or another.
I will, however, see if I can gently nudge the next impulse failure in the direction of a Leuchtturm notebook. It will likely be at least three or four months from now. :-D
Haha, I know the problem. There should be a version of "Tsundoku" that alludes to collecting much more notebooks than one is ever going to use. ^^
Thankfully, I currently experience the opposite tendency: The more serious I get about writing, the more stages of my writing workflow happen on paper - and I love it. 😊 It's joyfully inefficient - but very effective. And so much more pleasurable than any keyboard (although I really like my Logitech MX Keys).
Joyfully inefficient is a good phrase for it. Another idea, which doesn’t have an easy word—it’s less efficient in terms of how fast I can produce words, but it seems to be more efficient in terms of how fast I can produce work.
That is, if you track it at the level of a single session, typing is much more efficient. But if you track it at the level of the amount done per day, writing gets more—presumably because I don’t get pulled away from my work by the entire internet.
I’m late to the party here but just want to echo how powerful your reframes and tools are. Thank you!
One tool I’d like to share is to help with the belief “writing should be done right”
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with IFS, but the idea is that we have different parts within us that can dominate our experience and clash with each other.
My internal editor is very strong and it really oppresses my internal creative or inner child. It takes the joy away. But it also plays such a helpful role at the end of the process.
So I just say to myself when I notice it: “thank you for showing up. You’re so important and I value what you want to say, but right now I’d like you to step aside and let the creative have its say. And when we’re finished at the end, come along and have your turn”
Surprisingly, it works (for me at least 😛). It separates that anxiety from the clashing goals.
Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you found something in the article that resonated with you. Keep me posted to let me know how it works for you in practice.
Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you found something helpful here, and hope that it works for you in practice as well--keep at it, and keep me posted!
Thanks for the kind words. RPG, in the sense I'm using it, means "Role Playing Game," where participants each assume the role of a character and participate in an interactive story.
The Bronte siblings *Glass Town* isn't exactly that, but it has the same sense of shared world building.
If you find out it's not doing the trick for you, just drop me a line. I have like ten other ideas which didn't make the final cut in the article, and I'm always happy to talk shop with fellow writers.
This is very helpful. I used to imagine that novel writers wrote their work from beginning to end. Probably because the best writers make it look so easy. This naturally leads to the writing friction when you attempt to do it, and run up against limited bandwith.
Y'know, one of the single most eminent academics I ever worked with had a unique superpower: he could sit down with a pen and write an article, or even an entire book, from start to finish. We all envied the hell out of him. He's gone now, but he was a legend and I remember him fondly.
That being said, you mentioned this idea of "bandwidth" and I think that's an incredibly powerful concept. Back when I was in college I remember hearing about an idea called "extended cognition." Basically, it means that when we do something like write a to-do list, we're essentially "outsourcing" a part of our cognition to our environment. When the list is in front of your eyes, it doesn't have to be inside of your brain.
So, you can view most of my advice as "solve the bandwidth problem by moving things outside of your head."
You might even find that if your goal is to write a story, getting the ideas outside of your head and on a desk in front of you will enable you to sit down and write the story in the linear way that you imagine doing. I've had that happen before; sometimes I'm wrestling with an article and the first few drafts aren't even drafts--they're just me, outsourcing ideas to paper in no particular order. Then, after a few days of wrestling with it fruitlessly, I sit down at a computer and it all comes out in one coherent burst of writing, from beginning to end.
I guess the only takeaway here is, don't let your expectations become so rigid that they convince you that there's only one right way to do things. Whenever you fall into a "this way or nothing" pattern, you're more likely to wind up with nothing.
So right! The number one enemy of writing well is TRYING to write well, and you nail all the whys and ways in which that happens, for example, "When you write you plan, research, compose and edit all at once." What happens? Your anxious, judging, ambitious mind battles against your imaginative, creative, don't-care mind, and wins. Twice a week we host a Prompt of the Week zoom which encourages "throwaway writing" - maybe you'll do something with it, maybe not, and as it's written in 10 minutes the idea that it's supposed to be "good" is absurd. Result: not trying to write well! Result of that: really interesting material that consistently surprises you. Result of that: fun and enjoyment in writing, which carries over to other writing too. The zooms are open to anyone who wants to join us - link at ImaginativeStorm.
Thank you for the valuable knowledge on writing. As a non native, I found it quite hard to write in English. At least that was my obstacle few years ago. Then I decided to commit to write through Substack, whether someone will read it or not. Reading some articles in Substack enrich my vocabulary and develop my writing style. I will keep writing and learning a lot!
Thank you for this, I really like the sentiment. I often find myself struck by a sort of perfectionism when it comes to my writing. But I like the idea that ‘dirt’ writing is as equally valuable as the polished final product. Sometimes, I’ll come back to old ideas that I’ve noted down and long since forgotten, and inspiration strikes unexpectedly. Recently, I’ve also been leaning into experimental writing, and I’ll kind of just go with the flow and see what ends up on the page. A very thought-provoking piece! :)
As an artist (technically, non-practicing) I found this to be extremely relatable, even across fields. In my journey to try and create more, at one point, I crossed a barrier where I needed to allow myself to make "ugly, bad, art" and within that space, I discovered the fun again. How much have we lost by becoming so serious, so hard on ourselve..? Thank you for sharing the wisdom that your journey brought.
Xenia,
I've mentioned this to a couple people in the comments but one of the major "pivot' points in my own journey is when I called up my brother and asked him to tell me, plainly and honestly, what my biggest character fault was--i.e. the thing that was holding me back.
He thought about it for a moment and then said, matter of factly, "You're too hard on yourself."
Normally I would have dismissed that advice, but that time around, I listened. It took a couple years for it to change things properly but in retrospect It was profoundly useful.
James
I found so much gold here James, thank you. I teaching writing as part of a class on qualitative analysis and will be sharing your post with students. Personally, I was most prolific when I decided to amuse my Facebook friends with my posts. It grew into a blog. I was always thinking about this ‘silly’ writing, jotting ideas and one liners on my phone. My relationship to writing became playful. When I came to do my serious work writing, it was so less intimidating. Thank you for reminding me about this
Julie,
In my first year of graduate school I hit this deep funk where I felt severely broken, both as a scholar and as a person. I called up my brother because I knew he was kind but also honest, so I trusted him to be able to give me hard feedback gracefully. And I asked him if he could tell me, from his own perspective, what was wrong with me.
His response was "You're too hard on yourself."
Normally I would have dismissed him but I had made a commitment up front to taking whatever he said seriously, so I forced myself to ask the question "What if being hard on myself is the cause of my problems and not the solution?"
It took about three years for that insight to change my life but it did, completely, making me a much happier, much more productive person. Glad to see you've found the secret too.
James
I totally relate to your comment James and it has been such a struggle — my sister said the same thing to me too!
Same. Facebook but no blog.
This piece is an amazing service to a writing community like Substack. I particularly found the metaphor of “dirt” helpful, not just for its meaning (dirt isn’t trash; it’s important and necessary for growth); but also for its practical implications. It’s a great way to visualize multi-pass writing.
Thanks, Brenden. Please let me know if you get anything tangible in terms of new practices from the article; my rule is that the final measure of an article isn't whether it creates a buzz of excitement in readers -- it's whether it positions them to make a sustainable change. I'd love to hear from readers if this helps them smooth out their process in any way.
Holy crap this is one of the best things I've come across. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Isaiah!
Glad to hear that you found this helpful. Keep me posted on how the writing goes!
James
Being the mildly obsessed notebooks and stationery enthusiast that I am, I noticed that you spoke of "pen and paper" and "notebooks" several times throughout that article.
I can't help but wonder if you ever went into detail about your analog writing tools. If not, I hereby declare my heightened curiosity about that 😁
Easy. Fountain pens and Japanese paper. Too many notebooks to count, unfortunately, but I’ll say that I have a fondness for Rhodia (not Japanese, but spectacular), Moleskine (also not Japanese, but also spectacular), and Midori, Mnemosyne, Kyokuko, and Apica (all Japanese and all superior. The Midori notebooks are the best paper I have ever used).
Pen-wise, the Pilot Cavalier is superior to everything else. But I’m a fan of Lamy, and China has been getting better at their shameless knockoffs. :-D
Pilot’s Iroshizuku inks are probably the best I have. But I’ve got several bottles of Noodler’s ink that I’ve been working on for years and will probably never finish. Noodlers’ Walnut was the first one I bought, back in 2010, and I think I’m just now finishing the bottle.
Thanks for the instant reply!
Do you still carry a notebook with you to take notes on the go? If so: Do you use fountain pens with ink from a bottle in these cases, too?
Forgive me for suggesting another brand (in the unlikely case you never tried it): If you like Moleskine, I promise you'll love Leuchtturm1917 - especially as a fountain pen user.
I admire Leuchtturm but by the time I learned of it the notebook pile had grown so large that I had no desire to buy notebooks for the sake of buying them anymore. Ironically becoming a serious writer dampened my enthusiasm for paper, because it was no longer all joy and no work. These days when I buy notebooks it’s almost entirely because I’ve failed my impulse control for one reason or another.
I will, however, see if I can gently nudge the next impulse failure in the direction of a Leuchtturm notebook. It will likely be at least three or four months from now. :-D
Haha, I know the problem. There should be a version of "Tsundoku" that alludes to collecting much more notebooks than one is ever going to use. ^^
Thankfully, I currently experience the opposite tendency: The more serious I get about writing, the more stages of my writing workflow happen on paper - and I love it. 😊 It's joyfully inefficient - but very effective. And so much more pleasurable than any keyboard (although I really like my Logitech MX Keys).
Joyfully inefficient is a good phrase for it. Another idea, which doesn’t have an easy word—it’s less efficient in terms of how fast I can produce words, but it seems to be more efficient in terms of how fast I can produce work.
That is, if you track it at the level of a single session, typing is much more efficient. But if you track it at the level of the amount done per day, writing gets more—presumably because I don’t get pulled away from my work by the entire internet.
I’m late to the party here but just want to echo how powerful your reframes and tools are. Thank you!
One tool I’d like to share is to help with the belief “writing should be done right”
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with IFS, but the idea is that we have different parts within us that can dominate our experience and clash with each other.
My internal editor is very strong and it really oppresses my internal creative or inner child. It takes the joy away. But it also plays such a helpful role at the end of the process.
So I just say to myself when I notice it: “thank you for showing up. You’re so important and I value what you want to say, but right now I’d like you to step aside and let the creative have its say. And when we’re finished at the end, come along and have your turn”
Surprisingly, it works (for me at least 😛). It separates that anxiety from the clashing goals.
I love the metaphor of the “dirt” needed to grow
plants! I’ll think of that whenever I sit down to write something.
Joy,
Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you found something in the article that resonated with you. Keep me posted to let me know how it works for you in practice.
James
Thank you for going further than the common “just write” advice and breaking it down for those of us still struggling with a daily writing practice.
Hearing that I’m already a prolific writer is immensely helpful and validating. Thank you!
Ally,
Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you found something helpful here, and hope that it works for you in practice as well--keep at it, and keep me posted!
James
Helpful, thanks. I’m reading Wuthering Heights just now. I don’t know the acronym RPG. Google gave me the first hit - rocket propelled grenades!
Thanks for the kind words. RPG, in the sense I'm using it, means "Role Playing Game," where participants each assume the role of a character and participate in an interactive story.
The Bronte siblings *Glass Town* isn't exactly that, but it has the same sense of shared world building.
Phew! To be fair that was Google’s second hit and I figured the more likely.
Love the “persona” idea. I tend to get stuck most on precondition #3 so I’ll give that a try!
If you find out it's not doing the trick for you, just drop me a line. I have like ten other ideas which didn't make the final cut in the article, and I'm always happy to talk shop with fellow writers.
This is very helpful. I used to imagine that novel writers wrote their work from beginning to end. Probably because the best writers make it look so easy. This naturally leads to the writing friction when you attempt to do it, and run up against limited bandwith.
Y'know, one of the single most eminent academics I ever worked with had a unique superpower: he could sit down with a pen and write an article, or even an entire book, from start to finish. We all envied the hell out of him. He's gone now, but he was a legend and I remember him fondly.
That being said, you mentioned this idea of "bandwidth" and I think that's an incredibly powerful concept. Back when I was in college I remember hearing about an idea called "extended cognition." Basically, it means that when we do something like write a to-do list, we're essentially "outsourcing" a part of our cognition to our environment. When the list is in front of your eyes, it doesn't have to be inside of your brain.
So, you can view most of my advice as "solve the bandwidth problem by moving things outside of your head."
You might even find that if your goal is to write a story, getting the ideas outside of your head and on a desk in front of you will enable you to sit down and write the story in the linear way that you imagine doing. I've had that happen before; sometimes I'm wrestling with an article and the first few drafts aren't even drafts--they're just me, outsourcing ideas to paper in no particular order. Then, after a few days of wrestling with it fruitlessly, I sit down at a computer and it all comes out in one coherent burst of writing, from beginning to end.
I guess the only takeaway here is, don't let your expectations become so rigid that they convince you that there's only one right way to do things. Whenever you fall into a "this way or nothing" pattern, you're more likely to wind up with nothing.
So right! The number one enemy of writing well is TRYING to write well, and you nail all the whys and ways in which that happens, for example, "When you write you plan, research, compose and edit all at once." What happens? Your anxious, judging, ambitious mind battles against your imaginative, creative, don't-care mind, and wins. Twice a week we host a Prompt of the Week zoom which encourages "throwaway writing" - maybe you'll do something with it, maybe not, and as it's written in 10 minutes the idea that it's supposed to be "good" is absurd. Result: not trying to write well! Result of that: really interesting material that consistently surprises you. Result of that: fun and enjoyment in writing, which carries over to other writing too. The zooms are open to anyone who wants to join us - link at ImaginativeStorm.
This is a must read!
Thank you for the valuable knowledge on writing. As a non native, I found it quite hard to write in English. At least that was my obstacle few years ago. Then I decided to commit to write through Substack, whether someone will read it or not. Reading some articles in Substack enrich my vocabulary and develop my writing style. I will keep writing and learning a lot!
I love the dirt metaphor. Dirt is essential and full of nutrients for growth!
Thank you for this, I really like the sentiment. I often find myself struck by a sort of perfectionism when it comes to my writing. But I like the idea that ‘dirt’ writing is as equally valuable as the polished final product. Sometimes, I’ll come back to old ideas that I’ve noted down and long since forgotten, and inspiration strikes unexpectedly. Recently, I’ve also been leaning into experimental writing, and I’ll kind of just go with the flow and see what ends up on the page. A very thought-provoking piece! :)