May 10, 2012 / The Craft of Writing

Abandoning the Frankenstory

Photo from 777thAngel on flickr

I’ve been going through something of a creative dry spell lately, writing instead in a more critical mode about things I’ve been reading. I’ve been dutifully attending meetings of my local writer’s group to offer commentary but have had nothing new of my own to submit.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally declared myself in a position to write something new. For a couple of years now, I’ve been sitting on an idea that I haven’t quite been able to pull together into a coherent story. Occasionally I’ve taken a few notes while thinking about where to go with it, but I’ve always false-started when trying to write the story itself. Finally, when I recently tried to take the pen up again, I thought I had the glue that would bind all the notes and ideas together, and I spent hours and hours trying to write the story. Some of what I wrote was… ok. Some was really bad. None of it hung together in the way I had imagined, and the thing began to feel like a Frankenstein’s monster assembled from various parts of varying quality. But I wanted so badly for this story to work that I kept trying to stitch the pieces together.

At last, I gave up. The next day, I took up another idea I had taken some notes on but not put too much thought into. I spent three or four hours over the course of two days writing a story. It’s seldom effortless, but this one was just about as effortless as these things ever are for me. And I thought it was ok, maybe even showed promise. It was certainly better than the story I had finally put aside. I shipped the thing off to my writing group for critique, and the response turned out to be by and large positive.

It occurred to me, after getting the response to this story, that the ones that come more easily to me tend to be the ones that my peers have a better response to in the end.

Well, this is something of a dangerous conclusion, because it invites laziness and lowered expectations. I also have this notion that making art ought to require some effort in order to be worthwhile, to be worth the attention of whoever’ll consume the art. (I know this is flawed in any number of ways, but I have trouble shaking it.) And you frequently hear from authors that writing is hard work. So then if authors I admire have a hard time assembling their stories, then it’s hard to trust that a thing I put together pretty easily is going to be any good. Still, the limited data I have suggests that when the writing comes more easily to me, it tends to be better writing (it’s all relative, of course).

My experiment for the next little while will be to put aside the stories that are giving me a really hard time. If it’s just not coming together properly, maybe I haven’t thought it through quite enough yet, or maybe I’m just not in the right mindset, or maybe it’s just not a story that’ll ever work.

How do you handle grappling with ideas that you’re having trouble turning into prose that satisfies you? Do you keep struggling, put them aside for a short time, or just give up?

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  2. It’s hard not to think that the “easy” ones are meant to be.
    I was told by my creative writing teacher in high school and a photography teacher in college that you have to just work and work and you’ll have some successes. It is kind of the law of averages.
    That being said, I know that the things I work hardest at intellectually come out stilted and stiff, but sometimes there are pieces of the work that I can use later for something else. The poetry I just let flow out is the best and only needs minor editing.
    The work is never wasted…you will pull something out of that at some point when everything aligns.
    Don’t feel guilty about the easy stuff…thank your “muse” for the gift.

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    1. What an insightful comment, sued51. 🙂 I agree that it is a balance and sometimes the work will flow more easily, while other times it will not. Not only does this post point to the difficulty of writing, it also suggests a popular notion held about the arts that there is a certain expectation of quality for a work to be considered worthwhile or values. I reflected on these ideas on my blog: http://wp.me/p2kyhh-6N

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  3. I actually tend not to plan out my stories a great deal, I just start writing. That does produce a lot of crap sometimes, but then sometimes I end up writing about something that I never would have thought of before.
    I do have one story idea that I came up with a few years ago, but never started writing. I am considering going back to actually write it. Sometimes you just need to take a break from one thing, then go back to it.

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  4. Oh yeah! Writing is painful for me most of the time. I definitely have a love/hate relationship with it. It’s hard on my family too because when I get into that writing zone I lose sight of everything around me (good or bad writing). I slip into a time warp, almost as if time didn’t exist. Those are the days my husband is coming through the door after work, I’m still in my PJ’s and first response, is “Oh God … did you get fired!?” It’s very difficult climbing back out from that writing space;it is a transition period of various lengths, where the tone of the piece I worked at clings to me, affecting my mood until I re-enter the ‘real’ world again. It helps that a few months ago I gave myself permission to write badly!

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  7. Great post. Good to know my struggles are normal! On my desktop I have a folder labeled “Scraps”, which contains fragments of what may be future essays, short stories, or poems. I rarely throw these scribblings out because I believe they’ll drift into some future work and somehow fit. That said, I constantly wonder whenever I hit “publish” whether the post is the best writing I can do for the day. But I try to follow the advice all writers seem to hear at one point or another – write everyday, and allow yourself to write badly sometimes 🙂

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  8. The seed of an idea surfaces for a reason, so jot it down. If it refuses to sprout, file it for later writing, after it’s had time to adjust to the soil of rumination. Never throw it away.

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    1. I completely agree. Sometimes ideas just have to stew around for awhile before they’re ripe for the writing. (Hmm. I think I mixed some metaphors up on that one. 🙂 )

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  10. It is usually best to put it to one side if it is not working. I usually get a “Eureka” moment with my fiction when it all suddenly just drops into place.

    Never give up though, because you never know when it might just work out.

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  11. Ah…the creative dry spell…I too feel guilty about the stories that flow seamlessly and read better than others I toil over. But there are times that first rush of inspiration seems to vanish and I’m left with a promising beginning that is going nowhere. All the same taking up material after a passage of time gives you a better perspective, and mostly I’ve been able to complete the story or poem I set aside satisfactorily. It also enables you to recognise that some pieces are pure trash.

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  12. It make take some time to finish a story but I don’t give up. It is an interesting thought though that ‘easy’ written stories should be written and then when it takes time to make it good, it isn’t meant to be. Sometimes to write a story is hard work, where does it go, how does it lead you, maybe these stores have and need more layers.

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  13. For me, the writing that comes more easily does seem to be the better work, but that might just be my perspective and not actual fact–I think it’s better ’cause I enjoyed it more.

    And yes, there have been many stories that I’ve had to abandon for a time. Some I work on sporadically, and some are probably forever left in the dust. Other stories–well, there’s still hope for some, especially the stories that aren’t shy in demanding to be written.

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  14. I usually put whatever it is away for a while, and work on something else. Eventually (and it could be MONTHS later) I’ll think of a way to connect it that I would not have thought of if I had kept plugging away at it before.

    This is why I have some grave doubts about ever becoming a regularly published fiction author. It takes me a while to assemble things the way I want them…so long that it’s become a life-long endeavor. But, that’s okay; in a weird way, working on my novels has become more of a fun hobby than an uber-serious side project. 🙂

    (I really would love to see my stories ‘make it big’, but if they don’t, they don’t. lol )

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