Something we discussed earlier this year at a Words Away Zalon on mindfulness and writing was the idea of gnarliness.

I first encountered this term in the context of writing via Californian novelist Rudy Rucker at a Naropa University summer school. I learned that gnarly was a word used in surfing, and brought away the idea that a gnarly wave is a difficult wave – one that could kill you, but too one that could give you the chance to really prove your worth.

Rudy covers the subject in further detail in his essay What Is Gnarl?, where among other things he states that ‘a gnarly process is complex and unpredictable without being random. If a story hews to some very familiar pattern, it feels stale’.

I’ve perhaps adapted or simplified the idea a bit for my own teaching. I relate it particularly to the idea of seeking out whatever is difficult or challenging or unpredictable in your work, or something you’d prefer not to deal with.

I also relate the word gnarly to the idea of knottiness – a knot in a tree that’s craggy but just unavoidably there and a defining feature of it. Think of a gnarly piece of wood, and the personality contained in its shape and working.

From The Origin And Meaning Of The Word Gnarly on Surfer Today:

The name is often used to describe a person, a situation, or something that is simultaneously exciting or cool, dangerous or challenging, and even bad or gross … Within the surfing community, the adjective is mostly used to highlight a big wave, rough closeouts, or an extreme surf stunt.

Like many slang terms, it can embrace opposites of meaning.

The word “gnarly” can be used with both derogatory and negative connotations. It can be used to describe something or someone awesome, cool, excellent, wonderful, amazing, radical, incredible, tough, great, intense, extreme, or fantastic. On the opposite side of the spectrum, it’s a negative or derogative term to describe something or someone grotesque, gross, difficult, dangerous, treacherous, complicated, challenging, difficult hairy, or rapidly changing.

Which perhaps reminds us that many things in creative practice require us to embrace paradox, or take on board the idea of negative capability, where we grapple with uncertainty instead of taking the easy route.

I also relate this to many of the ideas that come up in the teachings of Natalie Goldberg. How the writing comes alive when we are handling scary material. Going for the jugular. From the chapter ‘Go Further’ in Writing Down The Bones:

Push yourself beyond when you think you are done with what you have to say. Go a little further. Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that’s why we decide we’re done. It’s getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.

In Wild Mind, Natalie quotes Ernest Hemingway: ‘Write hard and clear about what hurts.’ The point of suffering could be something that’s personally painful. Handling pain truthfully is going to make your writing richer and more authentically felt; you might choose to edit or adapt it before sharing the writing, but you probably have to go there first. Tackling the gnarly material will force you to go deeper in ways that will enrich your writing and extend you as a writer.

And sometimes the gnarly issues are more everyday: unresolved technical issues that have solutions waiting to be found. That extraneous character who might need pruning (put them in another book!). Or that scene of dialogue that’s not working but could be rewritten as reported speech in first person. Or that lack of a clear focus that demands a different form, or maybe a more obvious central character. Or that dip in pace that calls out for a total restructuring that really going to make everything stronger.

As a writing experiment: make a list of the gnarly points in a piece of writing – points of difficulty you’ve encountered in the writing, things you’ve avoiding saying, technical problems, unresolved matters, annoying bits of feedback, things that feel complicated or grotesque or extreme or exposing, things that make your heart beat faster.

Then take the gnarliest point, and write through it. Ride it like a gnarly wave! Make it even more complicated or grotesque or extreme, let it make your heart beat even faster. Identify its force – then tame it, and really use it as a powerful strength in your writing.

You don’t have to make a big deal out of this. A timed write of ten minutes might flush out something alive and interesting. But too, think about giving over an hour to gnarliness, or maybe even the revision of a whole draft. You will still have the un-gnarly version to go back to – though maybe you’ll see that in a different light now.

You might also like to refer to my post on Field Work, which offers writing topics that cut to the heart of many of these gnarly matters.

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My monthly blog posts seem to have become quarterly. Maybe they’ll become more frequent again in the near future. What funny times we are living through – what gnarly times.

But while I’m here: a note that on Wednesday 21 July (5pm-6.30pm, London time) I’m leading a workshop on The Four Elements of Editing for The Literary Consultancy’s Being A Writing programme, and a limited number of tickets have just been released for non-members. I’ll be talking about the Four Elements practice I often apply to writing, and specifically talking about ways to use it in revising and self-editing.