Samina Ali on Writing Through the Fear

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Every year, I teach a writing workshop in the Stanford Continuing Studies Program. Called “No Critics, No Fear,” the class coincides with NaNoWriMo in November and provides everything an aspiring author needs to stay motivated: daily writing prompts; live craft lectures; a discussion board to share wisdom from celebrated authors (Brandon Sorensen’s lectures on world building are ever popular); a second discussion board for students to be publicly accountable to weekly writing goals; etc. On the first day over 100 aspiring writers show up, eager to write. I purposely design my class to be both an incubator of creativity and a necessary safe harbor. Having taught for years, I know what happens. Once the writing starts, the enthusiasm of the first week will slowly be replaced by fears. One after another, students will stop posting, stop engaging, and eventually stop writing altogether. Despite my best efforts, by the end of our six weeks together, only about 35 students will remain. 

Every year, I hear the same fears from writers: I’m wasting my time. I’m too old to write a book. I’m too young to write a book. No one is going to read this. I’m not trained as a writer. I’m not talented.

Being a professor in this class is like being a therapist. I have to coax people through their fears so they can do the work that the majority say they’ve been wanting to do for most of their lives. I often have students who took the practical road and became doctors or lawyers and are now, in middle age, looking back regretfully, wishing they’d risked following their hearts to write. 

Most successful writers will tell you that the real reward is not money or fame or even publication. It’s having wrestled a sentence to the page or discovering a fresh image or witnessing characters come alive in unexpected ways. Hari Kunzru said, “Writing a novel is largely an exercise in psychological discipline – trying to balance your project on your chin while negotiating a minefield of depression and freak-out … But when you’re in the zone, spinning words like plates, there’s a deep sense of satisfaction and, yes, enjoyment…”

Published writers frequently speak to the grueling and even torturous process of writing a book. Flannery O’Connor’s may have said, “I write because I’m good at it.” But neither she nor any other writer that I know ever said, “I write because it comes easily to me.” Edward P. Jones spent ten years thinking through the story of his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Known World before typing a word.

So why are aspiring writers convinced that “real” writers don’t struggle? This fallacy is what allows fears to stop aspiring in their tracks: I’m struggling because I’m not meant to be a writer. I’m wasting my time.

“If your Nerve, deny you –,” Emily Dickinson once wrote, “go above your Nerve.” 

But how do you do that, in practical terms?

1. Be a Professional: Writing a book might be your dream, but it’s also a job. You can’t show up whenever it suits you. Not clocking in regularly leads to roadblocks. Can’t figure out where to take the plot or what your characters want? Of course, not – you don’t spend enough time with your book! Day after grueling day, professional writers battle through difficulties. They lose sleep over how best to tell the story. Struggling isn’t a sign to abandon your book, but to write more!

2. Be Envious: Did your best friend’s debut just hit the bestseller’s list? Did the fellow writer in your workshop group, the one with notalent, just land a top agent? An emotion more powerful than fear is envy. Called a writer’s “disease” in one New York Times article, it even tormented Shakespeare. Martin Amis savagely destroyed a character in The Information just to capture what writers feel. Don’t be ashamed of being jealous. Let it fuel you.

3. There Are No Do-Overs: Should you have started your novel five years ago? Should you be much further along? Should you have written more this morning? If thoughts like these are nagging at you: listen. That voice isn’t the inner critic, condemning you. It’s the author in you, goading you to write. Follow it to the page.

4. Embrace the Mess: All writers begin at the same starting point: an empty page. Some plot their way to the end, others prance. Either way, the first draft is always a mess. Writing a book isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. No matter how talented you are, your first attempts will frustrate and disappoint you. The story on the page won’t live up to the story in your imagination. This is normal. The only reason you think you should be writing polished prose is because you’re unfairly comparing your rough draft to your favorite author’s published work. Remember, that too began as a mess – and maybe even a bigger mess than yours.

5. Embrace Revision: By the time a book is released, it’s gone through countless revisions. First, after suggestions from informal readers: friends, family members, writing groups. Then, a literary agent will require rewrites before submitting to editors. After all that, an editor will make massive demands. Think revision is a sign that you don’t know how to write? Tell that to Donald Hall whose essays “took more than eighty drafts, some as few as thirty.”

 “There are three rules to writing,” W. Somerset Maugham famously said, “unfortunately no one knows what they are.” What a great reminder to trust your instincts, knowing it’s possible to wade through your fears, but only if you do so word by word.

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Pieces You’ll Never Get Back by Samina Ali is available for pre-order via Catapult.