Okay, so here is a little revelation for today. Are you ready for it? It will blow your socks off. Or it might even blow your mind, it's so illuminating. You're ready, you think. Well, all right then. Here it is: in order to have a writing process, you must write.
Did you get that?
In order to have a writing PROCESS...
You must WRITE.
And even more than that... you must complete every stage of the process MANY, MANY times before you know what you are doing. Forget about transcending, or being good even... you must do that to be READABLE.
I am a writer who loves first drafts. I have boxes and boxes of snippets and paragraphs and pages of opening lines dripping with promise. I've written first drafts all of my life, and up until my time in college and at Nickelodeon I didn't think I needed to do much more than that.
Oh, how wrong I was.
At Nickelodeon I learned about a lovely little thing called notes. Taking notes sounds like a simple endeavor. You sit. You listen. You write down what the executive says. You change your script. Simple, right?
No.
For starters, no one ever has the answer for you. They tend to do the most frustrating thing: ask questions. What is the inciting incident? Where is the act break? Can you punch it up? And you are lucky if you get specific questions like that. Often, it's a question disguised as criticism: This doesn't work; this falls flat; dialogue too on-the-nose. Then as a writer it's your job to figure out what the hidden question is. All while keeping your cool and not taking anything personally.
And it's easy to take the notes personally. Unless you see them as what they are: part of the PROCESS.
That is why I say I love notes. I don't love the criticism or the confusion of trying to figure out exactly what question is hiding behind the criticism... But I'm grateful for notes because they propel me toward the finish line.
I've written about my process before, but I am finding that the more I write, the more process I have. So I'm adding to it. Here it is:
Discovery
Lump of Clay
Shaping
New Lump of Clay
Transcending
???
The question marks are for Publishing. I haven't gotten there yet. I don't even know if I've touched the finish line of New Lump of Clay... and Transcending is my ultimate goal.
So, you see I still have a ways to go in this marathon. But I'm here, putting one foot in front of the other, writing one word at a time. Don't give up on me, you mysterious readers. I haven't.
Happy writing,
Rachel
