Year of Words: April — Fertile Ground

Many greetings once again — here’s four short notes from this past month:

Firstly: numbers. This April, I’ve written 10,717 words, totalling up to 38,939 so far this year. This month also produced both my highest daily word-count, a stunning 1,621 (you can read about that here), and my lowest at 105. I’ve managed to keep up my newly-formed mini-goal of 100 words every single day, and it seems to have become an easily reachable benchmark: one short paragraph, one good description or dialogue exchange or story turn.

Secondly: an update on Pine. I’ve been chipping away at Part II, which is feeling easier to work on than Part I. It’s still far from easy, but the ideas are falling much more naturally into place. I’ve known this second protagonist and setting for a long time, and I have some past attempts at this part of the story to look back on and develop. The later acts, especially Parts III and V, are starting to burn in my brain, fidgeting with increasing noise in the wings.

Thirdly: the big picture. The good news is that, even though the going is tough, I’m definitely seeing improvements in my writing. Not particularly in quality, mind you, but in my approach to what writing is, the process, the routine. It’s starting to feel like a pattern, a practice. Like a trodden trail slowly forming in a wild forest of tangled, senseless foliage. Previously it would take me a good while to get into that hazy zone of inspiration, to finally reach the muse. Now it feels like she’s not some distant figure shrouded in light, with me squinting and blindly fumbling through the blank page to reach her. She feels more like an acquaintance now, someone who sits on my shoulder each evening and sighs reluctantly, but does the work all the same.

Fourthly and finally: a book. I’m currently reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird — a tenderly crafted guide for writers, filled with all the joys and agonies I’m currently experiencing. I’m about half way through it, but here’s two passages that I’ve found really encouraging so far:

“The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. … There may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means.”

“Perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force. … Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground.”

Sometimes I sit back and look at my draft and find true despair between my lazy attempts at fiction. But now, armed with her advice, I’m slowly gaining the confidence to allow my writing to be clumsy and awkward and imperfect. Like Lamott says, we can only find fertile ground by making a bit of a mess.

Until next month, fare well, wherever you fare,

— H