So I made my roughly annual visit to my psychotherapist, bringing what seemed to me an intractable writing problem.
THE PROBLEM: I didn't have a reliable sense of how many times I have to say things in a story to make them clear to most people. I'd write something that I felt hammered the reader over the head with the point. Yet not everybody got it. And I'm talking about people with good sense.
In no time, Nick Stratas (my doc) offered a plain and simple and effective solution. So simple it seemed like a no-brainer. And yet I, and later my writing group, were stunned by the power of it, and the fact that none of us had thought of it after 23 years of meeting, a stack of published books, several movie deals, a couple of stage adaptations, and decades of writing struggles.
EVOLUTION OF THE SOLUTION:
Nick: How long does it take you to figure out the point of one of your novels?
Peggy: One full draft.
Nick: And then you write that down and keep it in front of you while you write?
Peggy: No.
Nick: Why not?
Peggy: Because I know the point by then.
Nick: It takes you a full draft to discover it!!! This is preconscious material. It can slip away. That's why people keep a notebook beside their bed. I wake up with some wonderful idea and by the time I go to the bathroom, it's gone.
Peggy: (flooded with memories of times of re-remembering the point of a story, after not thinking of it for months) Oh. (pause) Yeah. (pause) You're right. (in wonderment) Jeez.
THE PUNCHLINE: Write down the embarrassingly simple idea that underlies the story. Keep it visible during writing times.
Turns out the problem hadn't been that I didn't know how to be clear; it was that I periodically forgot what I was talking about.
THE CHEEKINESS OF IT ALL: It takes confidence on the part of an advisor to make such a simple suggestion. A few years back I visited a notably astute psychic on my January birthday, a tradition I maintained for while. My annual question was: how do I make the most of what's going on for me in the next year? On one visit her answer was: eat more vegetables.
What a letdown. And how true. It would be easy to think that it's necessary to look good by saying something more complicated. It takes boldness to say the simple effective thing.
MY WRITING BREAKTHROUGH: Putting the idea in front of me is working. That's what it took to get fully clear.
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4 comments:
Wow! I love the evolution of this solution. :)
Funny, too, since my way of remembering the point of what I'm writing came from you! I keep asking myself the question: what's at stake?
Often, in the early drafts, that changes, or becomes clear, but you're right, it's far too easy to drift off that golden thread and forget what we're writing about, in its simple essence.
I still need all those layers of drafts though, b/c I almost always write the sweet and easy superficial version first - and then have to dig and be coaxed and reassured by various and sundry readers that it is not too dark/won't be too depressing/will not be held against me personally if I dive down to the hard stuff.
So this is my process: courtesy of Peggy and Laurel: What's at stake? Dive deep.
Simple but powerful and effective.
You mean I already knew this? And forgot it?
There we have a demonstration of how easily an important basic idea can slip away.
This weekend, I may make a different colorful sign for reminding myself of the focus of each of my work activities.
I have long known that having a visual in front of me of what I intend is very powerful. Once, in a pre-SISTER-INDIA period, I made what I called a career-success voodoo doll. I'll go into the details of all that another day, maybe even dig up a picture. What I can say now is that what I made an image of largely came true. I need to remember that.
I thought the answer was six times.
Great story, and don't we all do that!
Cheers,
Mike
Thanks, Mike. And I see you're a change management expert--probably on a larger-than-individual scale, I'll bet.
Maybe the answer is 6 or 7, depending on the audience. I don't really know.
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