I often recommend to writers a notebook practice I call Field Work, tasking them on investing time in a structured sequence of free writes – or guided writes, maybe – using simple but powerful prompts to see what material arises and prioritises for their stories. By spending time in these worlds with pen and paper, writing into and around and out of them, you’ll feel your way into these lives and develop a deeper instinct for what makes them work in the medium for which they are intended. It’s a form of planning, but one that embraces mystery and uncertainty, and invites you to get out of your head and on to the page.
Think about archaeologists digging up treasures, or farmers sowing seeds, cultivating plants and later harvesting crops. They map out a plot of land, and then they set to work, often uncertain of what they will excavate or how things will grow. But by putting in the work, they make valuable discoveries and engage in acts of creation. Stephen King expresses it best of all in his memoir-guide On Writing:
My basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of a writer is to give them a place to grow (and to transcribe them, of course) … Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover is small; a seashell. Sometimes it’s enormous, a Tyrannosaurus Rex with all those gigantic ribs and grinning teeth. Either way, short story or thousand-page whopper of a novel, the techniques of excavation remain basically the same.
Also think of natural history field guides, one of my most beloved subgenres of reference works. Consider this the field work of observing and recording the lives of your stories to create your own field guide.
This sort of writing practice can be useful for tackling gnarly problems encountered in drafting. Sometimes this work involves putting a manuscript to one side for a while, instead of picking away at a draft, or scrolling up and down on a screen. It can also be helpful if you get stuck (e.g., at that common 20,000- to 30,000-word hurdle), or at the end of a significant draft when you need to take stock.
Some pointers:
* Organise a block of time that will be devoted to this work: say, a month. Then perhaps, if you are writing fiction, devote a week to a central character, a week to an antagonist, then a couple of weeks to other important characters.
* Set a time for each write and use a timer. Short sharp hits of writing can be very powerful – ten minutes can be great. But also see if you can go longer: fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, though there might be physical limits to writing without stopping. Work with the pressure of time – I observe that the good stuff often emerges a couple of minutes before a timer rings. But do carry on writing if it’s working for you, of course. These are test conditions we create for ourselves.
* For free writes I recommend the Natalie Goldberg approach to writing practice, especially: keep the hand moving and write without stopping; don’t edit or fix mistakes; don’t censor yourself – go for the jugular. Don’t stop to read until you have finished (and don’t feel obliged to read it then). If your mind drifts, even entirely away from your initial prompt, follow wherever it goes and get that down: drifting can be a powerful trick for accessing the unconscious mind. But, too, if you find yourself halting, repeat the prompt and let other associations arise (in the manner of I Remember by Joe Brainard) – I’ve also blogged about it here: Variations on the Theme of I Remember). Try to free yourself from outcome, and see where you are carried. The beauty of these short ten-minute spurts of writing is that nothing is a risked beyond ten minutes of your time.
* I tend to think of Field Work as a somatic practice of writing by hand in a notebook, hand connected to pen connected to page and the other way via arm and shoulder to something inside you. And writing by hand is usually slower than writing on a computer, and being made to slow down a bit can be a good thing. But, too, there might be occasions for writing faster and for finding a state of flow on a computer. This can be something to explore as well.
* ‘Tell it fast, honey, tell it fast!’ – Bobbie Louise Hawkins used to tell us this, and I think the energy of the practice brings energy to the writing. Yes, of course you can edit and tweak later, but this practice really serves you well in developing a strong VOICE in writing: well paced, uncluttered, authentic. And nothing is more important than voice.
My ideas for writing topics in the list below are simple yet foundational, and go to the heart of what drives a story as well as your own intention. These suggestions are first-person, present tense, but adapt to third-person and past tense if that feels right, especially if you are exploring the lives of different characters.
I assure you: new insights and perspectives will arise.
I Remember
I Don’t Remember
I Am
I Am Not
I Want
I Don’t Want
I Can
I Can’t
I Must
I Mustn’t
I Need
I Don’t Need
I Lost
I Gained
I Never
I Need You To Know
I’ve Become
I’ve Not Become
I Trust
I Don’t Trust
I Belong
I Don’t Belong
When I am mentoring writers, I often suggest more specific prompts for characters or stories; why not create some specific ones of your own? Take a look at the ingredients of your book and pull out some key elements or themes, or just random ones: grandmothers, horse, teaching/learning, motorbike, parties. Then use those as the focus for your writes, exploring and interrogating their meaning for you and your characters. (‘Why do I always write about parties? What all that about?!’)
For focus or to ground the writing, you might also want to try some that add specific ingredients that you can write towards or away from, e.g.:
* an object of desire
* another person
* a specific setting
* a specific action or gesture
Later on, you can go back and read what you’ve written to discover what you’ve surfaced. Sometimes it’s good to leave a gap of a month or so to allow the material to settle, and for you to return to it with fresh eyes. But then: put aside an hour or two to reread the work, and extract what you find. Sift through the words.
It can help to create a list – say a page of findings, or choice images or sentences to bring back to your drafts. Or maybe it’s just that you now have a firmer sense of what you want to do for your characters and how you want to tell their stories. You can return to your draft informed by fresh and deeper perspectives.
This practice applies to nonfiction as much as it does for fiction too. It can help with identifying the focus of the work.
Think also in terms of Field Work as practice that helps in building muscle memory in writing: in understanding your characters, in developing your voice, in building your confidence as a writer.