Always Another Story

When I was new to writing stories seriously, rather than merely playing with notions on a page, I rarely finished a story.  Instead, I would get halfway, perhaps a little further, and then switch to writing something else.  In part, this was because I didn’t yet know how to write endings (which I still struggle to get right, but I have improved significantly with practice), but another part was that I wasn’t sure what came next.  At that time, each story I conceived was the story, one upon which I was bound to belabor into a masterpiece or never write again.  I took my stories too seriously.

This is also the reason I agonized for so long over submitting anything, but the cure for all of these ails proved to be simple: finishing stories.  Not one, or two, but many stories, on a consistent basis, because doing so establishes, in a visceral way, a new way of thinking about stories.  They become, instead of unique, irreplicable works of art, something more like commodities, and that’s a good thing.  It helps you remove yourself from the story, it lets you revise, cut, and edit with abandon, unconcerned with worrying about ruining some precious piece you could never recreate, with something approaching objectivity.  You can submit to rejection and feedback without these being critiques of yourself, rather than just your story, because there will always be another story.

Many other new writers express similar sentiments.  That first story or first novel you finish feels like a huge deal.  An enormous amount of work seems to go into each piece, and the idea of doing it again is intimidating.  But after doing it again, and again, and again, something starts to change, because you know how it goes, now.  You know you can do it again.  It was this realization, more than my perception of my own stories, that finally pushed me to begin submitting stories.  Thirty-six Blood Magic episodes told me that I could always write another story, and that means I have a lot less riding on any one submission.  The Elegant Literature monthly prompts/contests have further emphasized this truth, because I can always keep submitting to the next month’s contest.

Remember, writing, like anything else, requires consistent and deliberate practice in order to do well.  No one expects a violinist to play a perfect piece the first time they pick up an instrument, or a mathematician to solve the Navier-Stokes equation before they’ve practiced basic differential equations, or an Olympic marathoner to break the two-hour barrier without a lot of training leading up to that race.  There is no reason we should think writing, painting, or any other artform is an exception.  Yes, some people have greater intrinsic talents or inclinations than others, but they still must practice to expose and hone that potential.

From the outside of any undertaking, it is difficult to perceive all that leads up to the final product.  Innumerable failed tests and experiments lead to the successful rocket launch or breakthrough paper.  A dozen drafts may precede a masterpiece painting, and so too writing.  We look at finished works, like The Lord of the Rings, or Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, and we don’t see the drafts, the edits, the critiques, the time that went into forming them from whatever nascent, primitive, uncouth state they began as into their final forms.  If we did, maybe we wouldn’t start writing with the expectation of perfect novels flowing flawless and whole from our pens.  Getting over that assumption, recognizing the practice and revision that must go into your magnum opus, is a huge step in making your writing process more productive and less frustrating.

The ten thousand hour rule gets thrown around a lot, and while I don’t know that the specific number is important, the sentiment holds true.  We can improve our writing with deliberate practice, and that means more stories.  Maybe you’re the rare individual who writers a masterpiece on the first try, but that probably means that you’ve had a lot of practice storytelling in some other form before, and/or did a lot of revision.  Before you can get to practicing, you have to have stories to write.  That means recognizing that there’s always another story.