The Writing Process

Writing about writing

In this part of my website I want to share what I have learned about writing. It will, of course, be a very personal take on this subject but I hope it will be useful to anyone wanting to write something and feeling there are obstacles in their way. I will try to use examples of my writing to show how I have edited pieces of work and why I have made certain decisions. Making a piece of art is a process and nothing needs to come out perfectly - this much I know.

The art of Free Writing

If you're going to advocate something then you need to be practiced in it yourself. To be honest, I was sceptical when I first heard about free writing (for an explanation of free writing please click on the Writing Workshops tab). The idea of just pouring out words with no control seemed like the opposite of what I wanted to do with them but it works. 
    Perhaps the greatest enemy a writer has is the horrible little perfectionist that wants everything to come out perfectly first time and is willing to pounce on anything that doesn't come up to its high standards. Well, free writing is the perfectionists nightmare; what comes out may seem ludicrous, childish, insane, monotonous, useless but actually lots of these elements can make great writing. By getting away from order and meaning for a moment we can dig up something else.
    Below is an example of a poem that came out of free writing and I have included the free writing itself. I gave myself five words and one minute to free write on each of them. Then I picked out what attracted my attention and began to build verses up out of the images and phrases.
    The first draft of the poem is followed by the second draft where I deleted words and made changes to try and tighten it all up. These were to make the first verse less dense and to remove the final phrases (despite really liking them, they just didn't fit in with this poem so maybe they'll go in a different one). It's not a poem that I feel is one of my best but in terms of language and imagery I think I can see my unconscious mind wrestling with ideas.

Free writing is an exercise where a person writes, often for a set short period of time (5 minutes maximum), without letting the pen leave the page. If a person feels 'stuck' they must write something such as the word 'stuck' until the thoughts flow again. No effort is made to punctuate, write grammatically or even in complete sentences. Nothing can be 'wrong'.
    The idea is to generate raw material for writing with: words. Some or most of it may be discarded; in fact, you may be left with just a single word that attracts your attention. Other writers I know actually use it to clear some words out and never use what's on the page, claiming they need to do it a sort of psychic clearing out, but I can usually find something on the page that I want to work with.
    In writing workshops it is a way of quickly generating some words that can be used to make a piece of writing. It is also a means of conquering writer's block. I don't usually sit down to write unless I have an idea but free writing allows one to conjure something out of nothing.

Free writing: string, road, blood, missing, ruin

String

The string that binds the world together that has no beginning nor end and which theseus dragged behind him into the depths of the maze and the string that ties the present and the string of the universe bellowing out of the belly button of the great mother like an umbilical cord string string string string of the trees hanging invisibly to the birds and recalling them from the air

Road

Out of here in the first car and never coming back but always coming back for years until one day the road kept opening out before me and throwing dice in the back of the car to choose right or left do you remember that and finally arriving at some dead end in a country lane in the dark of winter at a place called Temple Temple with iron gates and we all stopped and looked through the gates and said let’s get the hell out of here and backing the car along in high revved panic panic panic but the road goes both ways

Blood

The most famous blood is your own and the scars that are there on you like sweet reminders of pain you can’t remember but mark you into space and time like a butterfly pinned to a board – proof that you were there and something happened and the claret she cried, grabbing hold of her boyfriend the claret she cried in that voice that hurt the walls and let you know she’d really seen something she had no other word for but claret which suggested all would never be well again

Missing

Absence, space, black holes where things go and then what a charge that would be arriving in some supersonic something and turning it all off just to feel the force of the black centre of the thing a feeling in the gut that says this is it, this is really it and no one knows but you what this is like right now and all the time the light and the noise and every little atom feeling the pull at the empty god of space calling it all in in a voice so clear and loud and low that you hear it only in your gut and understand it a deep level that this is it time to let go of the physical world and let the soul be sucked out by the great vacuum cleaner god of space black behemoth

Ruin

A hand on the stones to try and feel the history of the place but it’s just dry stone falling to the ground and they’ve all gone and won’t be coming back so try and leave something of yourself here for future hands to feel and summon up some feeling that might leave a mark like anger or lust or bitter jealousy and stain the stones with psychic disharmony so some little kid wandering around in years to come gets a kick in the pants when his fingers brush where yours have been kapow cartoon kid take that as an invitation to the adult world

Free Writing poem: first draft

string of the universe
bellowing out of the belly button
umbilical cord of the trees
tied to the crows
recalling them from the air
throw dice in the dark of winter
where the road goes both ways

the most famous blood is your own
scars the sweet reminders
of pain you don’t remember
(the claret she cried
 in that voice that hurt the walls)
every little atom feeling
the pull of empty space reeling it all in

let the soul be sucked
out by the great black behemoth
leave something of yourself here
for future hands to feel
stain the stones with psychic disharmony

kapow cartoon kid
take that
as an invitation to the adult world

Free writing poem: second draft

O string of the universe
bellowing out of the belly button
a crow cord to the trees
recalling them from the air
in the dark of winter where
the road goes both ways

the most famous blood is your own
scars the sweet reminders
of pain you don’t remember   
(the claret she cried
in that voice that hurt the walls)  
every atom feeling the pull
of empty space reeling it all in

so let the soul be sucked
out by the great black behemoth
but leave something of yourself here
and stain the stones with psychic disharmony
for future hands to feel