An Alphabet of Better Writing # V

V is for...Voltaire

Well, I could have done verisimilitude, or villain, or any number of other words beginning with V, but I've chosen Voltaire.

A few weeks ago when I was on holiday in France, I went to visit the chateau at Cirey en Blaise. Voltaire took refuge here when a warrant for his arrest was issued in 1734, following the publication of his inflammatory Philosophical Letters. He stayed for fifteen years, striking up a relationship with the beautiful and intellectually gifted chatelaine, Gabrielle Emilie de Breteuil.

During his stay at Cirey, Voltaire renovated the chateau and built a new wing, for which he designed the beautiful doorway that he dedicated to the Arts and Sciences.

He continued writing and carried out research into metaphysics while Emilie worked on her translation of the complete works of Isaac Newton.  They also built a little theatre, for which he wrote plays that were performed two or three times a week.

The reason I'm telling you all this is that Voltaire provides the perfect example of how to max out your creativity.  True, it helps to have money and a doting Marquise on hand, but I was struck by the breadth of his engagement with the world: writing in a way which flouted censorship, pushing the boundaries of intellectual thought, agitating for social change, while turning his hand to architecture and amateur theatricals.

I'm sure there is a lesson to be learned here: that you can feed your creativity by expressing it in a number of different ways, cross fertilising, stimulating.  If you're tired of writing, read; if you're tired of reading, walk, or think, or bake, or make something.  Find your own way to fan the flame, don't let the fire go out.

An Alphabet of Better Writing # H

H is for...Heartfelt

William Wordsworth once said, "Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart," and I think he was on to something.  The best writing comes fresh and unmediated from the core of you, from your heart, if you like.  Sometimes it can feel as if you are writing without thinking, the process is so intense and immediate; the crafting, which involves editing, revising and honing, comes later in a different phase of creativity.

So, in order to write well, trust your first instinct -- that touchstone moment -- and try not to let anything (phone calls, emails or any other kind of displacement activity) get in the way. However, heartfelt writing does not just consist of this first rush of pure thought.  It has elements of emotional intensity -- it comes from your heart, after all, and sincerity -- it must be felt and meant. If you can put yourself in a frame of mind where the words, imbued with emotion and sincerity, flow, then your work will attain that holy grail of writing: authenticity, and in doing all this you will have found - ta da! - your voice.

To achieve all this -- and I'm not saying it's easy -- you need private space: the kitchen table will do, if there is no one else around.  You need peace and quiet.  You need to concentrate intently.  Most important of all you need lots and lots of practice -- try writing one page a day, it doesn't matter what it is, just sit and write and see what comes out. Don't think too much about it, it's a mystical process, and at times a magical one as well.

In the meantime here's another door and a different kind of writing from the heart...

Writing as therapy? Only lie on the couch if you want to read a good book, not write one

There's a blurry old line between writing and therapy.  I've taught classes where people were unable to finish reading their work because they were crying and in many ways both reading and writing highly-charged literature can be cathartic.

If it's catharsis you are after -- that purging release of emotion, then using your work as a kind of therapy may be a good idea.  If your aim is to write to the very best of your ability, it might be better to do your therapy elsewhere.

I suspect I'm on potentially controversial ground here.  Many feel that their inner demons drive their creativity and provide the passion to write in the first place. I know from my own work that my experience informs the subjects I choose and how I tackle them.  However, my hunch is that unless you confront major personal issues and come to terms with what they have to tell you in some forum other than your story or novel, you will be the servant of them in your writing, rather than the master.  You also risk writing and rewriting the same stuff, because unless you lay your ghosts they keep coming back to haunt you.

Perhaps an added bonus of doing therapy before you write, rather than as part of the process, is that you will have already visited dark places, fascinating, uncomfortable places, but will be (hopefully) be healed enough to write about them, a kind of reporting from the interior, without coming to further harm.

Working with Resistance

I'm feeling grim today: sore throat, headache, cold coming.  It would be the easiest thing in the world to crawl back under the duvet (and I wouldn't rule that out), but I'm going to stay sitting at my desk trying to write.  Not just because I've got a deadline, in fact that hardly figures at all in my thinking, but because I know from past experience that for some weird reason I write better when I'm run down and tired.

Perhaps it's because when your resistance is low you have quicker and more direct access to that vulnerable space where your creativity lies: the unprotected part that still aches with old hurts,  where your neuroses flourish unchecked; the twilight place where emotional memory meets imagination and becomes something close to inspiration.

Because of this, I'm going to wrap up warm, and grab a box of tissues, and sit tight, typing away in the hope that something a little more raw and unprocessed might slip out from under the wire...