Category: On Writing

Every once in a while, I’ll read a story of mine on my hard drive that I had forgotten about. When I read it, it brings a feeling of deja vu–like a dream that I had before. What’s surprising is the mindset I was in when I wrote it. The ideas in it are not the ideas that I would write about today. Even the story and the characters seem like they came from a different imagination than mine. Although they bear similarities with stories I had written about before, they have a uniqueness and distinction that is all its own.

Our forgotten stories reflect what our imagination was like when we wrote them. Our imagination has evolved over time, borrowing from our experiences and the ideas we’ve shed, developed, and the new ones we’ve learned about.

Forgotten stories are like timestamps of the past–works that captured who we were at a certain point in time. Although they do not represent who we are as writers today, they reveal why we write the stories we do.

A first draft reads like we’ve forgotten how to spell or how to form coherent sentences. It can be repetitive, awkward, and lack the clarity we’d expect from a good piece of writing. But a first draft is better than no draft at all. A first draft is supposed to be like a sketch without any erase marks, where the lines intersect and things are not proportioned correctly.

The first draft exists for us to refine and improve our initial ideas. Its purpose is to be edited, changed, and modified until it takes a newer and better form: the second draft.

When we write our first draft, we usually don’t want anyone to read it given how badly it reads, how incoherent and confusing everything is put together. But the final draft, the finished manuscript, can’t exist without the first draft. Editing can’t begin without it either.

Starting a new story can be a daunting task. When you’re not sure of what to write about, you must pause for a moment and search for an idea that will be the catalyst for your story. But if you’ve chosen an idea already, then starting a story is all about doing. Once you get a rhythm going, everything else flows from it.

Before I begin a story, I will go through numerous ideas in search of the one that will be the core of the plot. Even if I don’t have all the details worked out, that’s okay, so long as the idea holds my interest and sparks my imagination.

The story usually begins as a scene. If the scene is clear enough, I can build off of it, make something out of it that will progress the story. But if that scene is too vague, or if I don’t know what the characters are supposed to do, I will struggle to start the story–even go back to the drawing board to see what went wrong or why I can’t start it.

Once the story starts, it can feel exhilarating, like you’re starting a new adventure. Things are slowly beginning to take shape–take on a life of its own. The next challenge is to keep writing that story, keep building on it day after day. If you do that long enough, you’ll have a finished work in your hands.

When we take notes for an academic class or for a meeting, it’s usually to help us recall what was discussed and to highlight important facts. It’s not something we hold on to dearly, for after the test or project, we discard the notes–forget about it as a sort of timestamp of the past.

But the notes we jot down for a book or a work of art have more meaning and importance to us. They were the blueprint for the creative work, the outpouring of our thoughts–a timestamp of our creative mind at work. We could look back at them months or years later and see how much we’ve grown, how much time and energy we put into what we created. They can be timeless for us, just as the paintings and books from the past still leave an impression on us today.

Even the though our notes might not be special to an outsider, they were instrumental in developing and fine-tuning the creative and intellectual abilities we have today.

When editing an essay or a story, we’ll rewrite a passage, delete it, add to it, and every time we do, it’s not the same as it was before. That’s the ironic thing about working on a creative work rather than something that’s technical, such as a DIY project or a car. Creative works do not lend themselves to one right answer, whereas technical things usually do.

To get a story right, it requires multiple drafts, proofreading, and each stage does not depend on an equation or a formula, but a “sense” or “feeling” of what is right to us. In other words, we rely on our intuition and experience rather than a systematic procedure that leads to a single solution. We fix a story based on what sounds right to our ears, what makes sense in our mind, even though others might see flaws and imperfections where we see harmony and balance.

Working on a story can last for days, months, even years depending on when we’re ready to call it done. The number of things to fix continue to grow, and it seems that the editing process will never end. Even if readers tell us that the story is great, that everything works, we might not be convinced if it doesn’t meet our expectations and what our vision demands. We could go on forever fixing things even if it’s perfectly fine in everyone else’s eyes. Or we might think it’s fine when others see glaring errors or mistakes.

After we’ve finished the last draft, we have it proofread, and fix all the things that were addressed during the critique. We can be content with the published work even if readers catch minor errors or don’t agree with every aspect of the story. Besides, it can’t be perfect in everyone’s eyes.

Your stomach grumbles, but you’re on a roll. You can’t stop writing. The scene is too good to stop writing. You can feel your mouth dry, feel your stomach empty, tasting food that isn’t even there.

But you don’t want to lose the momentum. Keep it going–just a few more paragraphs–a couple more pages.

You write for another minute, then two, then three, then ten, then thirty.

You feel dizzy, craving food, thinking about it nonstop. You can see chips and burgers and salad flashing before your eyes–beckoning you to stop. The chapter is almost over though. You tell yourself that you can’t stop until you finish this chapter. Just a few more lines–a few more sentences.

And just when you’re about to reach the last sentence, you think of a dozen other things to add–more scenes to write. But your writing is getting sloppy now, even incoherent. This isn’t your best writing–you know that–but you just want to get it all down. All down before your ideas run out, before–

You’re overwhelmed by hunger. You’ve put off food for too long. Just a little snack now. Or maybe a meal. I’ll get back to the story later.

It’s a horrible feeling to not have pen or paper when you have a great idea. It could happen when you’re driving, walking down the street, or doing some yard work–anywhere where a pen and pencil are out of reach.

That great idea clicks in your mind like a missing piece to a jigsaw puzzle. It’s so profound that you slam the break on what you’re doing. And while it’s fresh in your mind, waiting to be noted–waiting to be worked on, you know you have to write it down.

But there is no pen, nor paper. Nothing to write with, nothing to record it on.

You gasp in horror, shaking your head like you should’ve kept the pen behind your ear or in your pocket. I know I should’ve kept the pen on me. And where is that moleskin notebook? Where is that receipt from yesterday?

As you panic in search of a pen and paper, the idea begins to slip away, buried deeper every second beneath the adrenaline that has taken over. It’s like a butterfly that lands on your hand, and you’re looking for your camera to take a picture of it, but at any second, it will fly away and disappear into the sunset.

And then it flies away.

And at that point, you’ve just found your pen in the drawer, the backend of an envelope to write on. But what were you about to write? What was it that put you in panic mood and made you grab that pen and paper in the first place? A great idea, of course. But what was it?

When building a story, it starts off with a bunch of ideas that become the foundation for it. Even though we don’t know yet who all the characters are, what the story arcs are, or even how it will end, it will become clearer as we add more layers and ideas to the story.

Since we’ve had the story in our mind for awhile, we know what kind of story it will be (i.e. what genre), where it will take place (i.e. the setting), and what events should occur (the basic plot). But what’s unclear to us is how all these parts integrate, such as the chapters, and how they connect and lead up to the resolution.

Some ideas won’t be in the story at all. It could be chapters, dialogue, or characters. It would be similar to looking at a palette of colors to paint a house with, reducing them to a handful, then deciding on a couple to use throughout the house. The rest of the colors are discarded.

Building a story is a similar process. Fortunately, if we don’t like something, we can just edit it in the drafts. And even then, we might have to add more into the story as it takes shape and evolves into something that is real to us.

Writing can be daunting and or exhilarating. It can feel like we’re staring at a blank page for hours on end, or it can come easily as we type everything that comes to mind. When we’re typing at a measly 1 word per minute, or deleting everything on the page, it’s because we aren’t sure of where to start. But if the goal and the topic is as clear as day, we can hardly contain ourselves as we pour our thoughts and ideas onto the page.

But whatever the case may be, one thing that I’ve learned about writing is that it’s a discipline. It’s something that must be practiced in the same way a sport requires practice, or learning the piano or math requires practices. When we don’t practice, it’s hard to keep up with where we left off. It’s as if the muscle memory in our fingers haven’t been trained in awhile. It needs practice to maintain the same level of word count and speed that was cultivated from previous writing sessions.

Some days will be hard, and some days will be easy regardless of how long we’ve been writing. Some days we won’t want to write. We’d rather take the day off, make an excuse not to write. But that doesn’t help us to reach our goal, which is to become better writers, and to finish short stories, novels, essays, whatever it may be.

I like to set short, easy goals in the beginning. 500 or 600 words to start with. Then build up the word count from there. Overtime, it’ll get easier to reach the goal, and then we’ll have to increase it to a 1,000 or 1,200 words. And if we keep writing, even that will get easy.

At some point, we’ll reach our limit: a feasible but challenging amount of words to write each day. We’ll know we got there because of the hard work and discipline we put into writing. After that, writing a lengthy book or a series won’t seem impossible as it once did.

Science Fiction. Literature. Short Stories. History. Non-Fiction, etc. The list goes on and on.

When I don’t know what to write about, I look at what story ideas appeal to me. Which ones I haven’t written about before. Which ones I’m dealing with personally, or that I’ve thought about deeply. Even though there are a few, I know I can only work on one.

I might write them down, or just think about a handful at a time. I ponder about which one I can put the most creativity and time into. And when I filter out the ones that are great on the surface, but not in substance, and narrow it down to the one that keeps resurfacing in my mind, I will know which one I need to write.