Playtime

One of the hardest things about story creation is that the biggest problems are hardly every solved face-on. 

What I mean is that when writers run aground, the thought that eventually sets them going again hardly ever arrives when they’re hard at work. Even though thinking about structure seems the least dreamy part of the process - usually involving multi-coloured Post-its stuck to a wall – in actuality the strongest Eureka plot ideas almost always materialise when we are engaged in some completely unrelated activity: washing the dishes, taking a walk, cooking, staring out a window, drifting to sleep. 

Story can’t be forced. Like a baby late for a due date, it comes when it feels like coming.

And this leads me to something I’ve been thinking about this week in my own work: the art of unclenching. 

Unclenching to me means giving up on working. 

Sometimes it means giving up entirely. 

Giving in. 

And accepting that my current method of endlessly hammering away at whatever bit of the story I have encountered and found to be unconvincing and crap, is not having any effect, has become instead a fruitless waste of time. This is usually accompanied by phrases such as: I’m not a good enough writer, this book is boring and stupid and irredeemable, I am wasting my time. 

And what gets me out of this hole?

A day or two off from the story, often, but more useful to you than that: what really helps is to unclench.

Trust. Listen. Un-focus my mind. Start to treat writing like a game. 

I glance at the story sideways, instead of straight on. I’m just playing. 

Recently I wrote a short story, and because I was hard at work at something else, I wasn’t even sure I would get further than a few paragraphs in the story, or ever finish it. I wasn’t worried either way, it was just something I was playing with on the side. Every day or so I’d see the document on my screen, open it up and write a few lines, one more paragraph - no agenda or length in mind - and then leave it again. And after a few weeks the story was finished and when I sent it out to the people with whom I usually share my writing, somehow their responses seemed as relaxed and receptive as my writing had been. There was something unforced about the story, and unforced about their pleasure in it. 

Which led me to devise two experiments I want to share with you, and which I would recommend whenever you are feeling stuck or ‘clenched’ in your work. For those moments when your nose is to the grindstone, but all that is happening as a result is your nose becoming skinned and sore.

Experiment 1:  Play Time

Choose a day when you are planning to write. It doesn’t matter how many hours you have set aside - one, five, or forty-five minutes. In this experiment, what you are going to do is break that time up into lots of separate moments. You’re going to do your writing on the side. Like a little distraction from the main, more important matter of your day. So, for instance, if you’d set aside four hours - from 10 until 2 - instead of making yourself sit down and concentrate and bloody well get your chapter into shape within that slot of time - you’re going to spread that four hours into 16 fifteen-minute ‘playing around’ slots during the day.

16 pleasurable little sessions. Absolutely honour the amount of time you wanted to spend – you can set an alarm for each little session, so you don’t forget. But the mind-set will be different. 

You’re just playing. You’re having a writing divertissement. This is your time to have a little fool around with the next bit of the story, but just for a little while, until you drift off again.

Experiment 2: Hide your work. 

This one’s more to do with editing. Because one of the problems of getting clenched when on Draft No. 165 of your novel is that the Work is already there, the forced-myself-to-write-all-these pages-and-they’re-still-awful Work, and it’s very difficult to get out of the MUST DO BETTER mindset as you stare at them, making little or big changes.

Try this: if you are editing work, from wherever you start use your return bar to banish the next sentence or paragraph all the way down to the bottom of the page until you can no longer see it.

Don’t know what is coming next.

Read the sentence you can see and write the next sentence.

WITHOUT referring to what you already wrote (which is hidden).

Be playful! Be open to new material. New sights, sounds, dialogues, actions. It’s just a game. When you’re ready, scroll down to the next pre-existing paragraph, and see how it fits in with the new sentence(s) you’ve added. Sometimes you will find, even if you had no memory of what came next, you have written those same thoughts, observations again - maybe in a slightly different way. So these are things your playful, open mind came up with twice and definitely wants in - great! 

But the most important aspect to both these experiments is not to work too hard. 

Have fun. Make up stuff. Tell stories. You’re just playing. 

Un-clench.