Malachi O'Doherty's Blog
May 18, 2020
Knowing what you are doing.
A writer says that when he is working on a book he plans it out fully in advance. And we all have to do something like that to get a commission from a proposal. But actually, writing a book that already exists in full in your head feels just like transcription. Not entirely, of course, because some creative fun begins to happen, if only in the actual language that starts to flow.
Another writer tells me that she doesn't plan at all. She just picks at the thread of an idea and follows it through. The unconscious has assured her that the endeavour is worthwhile and the book reveals itself on its own terms.
And somewhere in between is a third way, a mix of the two approaches.
A fourth way is when you are doing your thinking in the writing. You don't know what you really want to say or even have much confidence that the puzzle will work itself out. That is hard labour but it can be a way of breaking new ground. I think it is more a way of using writing to sharpen your thinking or to break through into a space where ideas will start to flow.
In religious traditions there is the ideas of writing as revelation. In literary tradition there is the similar idea of inspiration. I suspect they refer to the same thing, the momentum of ideas gathering pace so that it feels almost autonomous.
And yet there is another kind of writing I would distinguish that from, and that's automatic writing, where the writer has a flow of words without any sense of understanding them.
Yet even in enthusiastic almost autonomous writing there are occasions when you surprise yourself with the elegance and appositeness of a thought and that is because a lot of the work of writing is done below the conscious, reasoning level, perhaps in the same mental space from which dreams are generated.
Another writer tells me that she doesn't plan at all. She just picks at the thread of an idea and follows it through. The unconscious has assured her that the endeavour is worthwhile and the book reveals itself on its own terms.
And somewhere in between is a third way, a mix of the two approaches.
A fourth way is when you are doing your thinking in the writing. You don't know what you really want to say or even have much confidence that the puzzle will work itself out. That is hard labour but it can be a way of breaking new ground. I think it is more a way of using writing to sharpen your thinking or to break through into a space where ideas will start to flow.
In religious traditions there is the ideas of writing as revelation. In literary tradition there is the similar idea of inspiration. I suspect they refer to the same thing, the momentum of ideas gathering pace so that it feels almost autonomous.
And yet there is another kind of writing I would distinguish that from, and that's automatic writing, where the writer has a flow of words without any sense of understanding them.
Yet even in enthusiastic almost autonomous writing there are occasions when you surprise yourself with the elegance and appositeness of a thought and that is because a lot of the work of writing is done below the conscious, reasoning level, perhaps in the same mental space from which dreams are generated.
May 4, 2020
Advice to a friend..
A writer friend asked me how I keep going and I write this as a reply to her but think it makes a good blog post touching on a few problems writers have:
I have the same problem of the wandering mind, so I take it in stabs. The modern computer with it's distractions is a problem but still I don't think that is a wholly negative thing, it is a feature of the creative imagination that has you writing in the first place.One of the things that brings me back to writing every day is a sense of guilt, or perhaps an engrained habit that frustrates me if I don't feed it. It think sometimes when people talk about writer's block it is not that they can't think of something to write - why should they? - it's that they have a habit they can't satisfy. Some writers are addicted to writing.
I also clutter myself up with ideas, start one thing and then get a hunger to work on something else. The best way to deal with that is to speed up your workload so that you can get projects out of the way. I am in this position because I did a huge amount of work for a book on India and it is just sitting waiting for me to finish this current one. But no book is ever harmed by being kept waiting. Trust that it will mature in the drawer, that your thinking will be better when you get back to the piece that you have deferred, because most of our work is done in the unconscious. This sometimes entails controlling the rush of enthusiasm. That will sometimes get a piece finished but usually it just gets it started. I used to wake up in the night and rush to write down an idea in case it was lost. Now I trust it to come back and prefer to get a good night's sleep.
I don't have a problem with dyslexia but the gene is in my family - if that is what it is. At least people don't see it as stupidity now, which is how they used to view it. On the laptop problem - nothing wrong with pen and paper. You are going to have to do successive drafts on an important piece so why not write the first draft by hand? I also used speak recognition software. Not sure why I gave it up. I wrote by pen, which seemed to me more natural because that is how I had learnt to write at school. The other bonus with speech recognition is that it would deal with your dyslexia. No spelling mistakes, just sometimes the wrong word, so you have to edit very carefully.
I know the history of writers is full of stories of angst and madness, but really you can enjoy being a writer, take pleasure in it and not let it be too much of a burden. Orwell coughing his guts up on Jura to write 1984 was a bit pathetic. It would have been just as good if he had done it in the comfort of a cottage in Sussex by an warm fire.
I have the same problem of the wandering mind, so I take it in stabs. The modern computer with it's distractions is a problem but still I don't think that is a wholly negative thing, it is a feature of the creative imagination that has you writing in the first place.One of the things that brings me back to writing every day is a sense of guilt, or perhaps an engrained habit that frustrates me if I don't feed it. It think sometimes when people talk about writer's block it is not that they can't think of something to write - why should they? - it's that they have a habit they can't satisfy. Some writers are addicted to writing.
I also clutter myself up with ideas, start one thing and then get a hunger to work on something else. The best way to deal with that is to speed up your workload so that you can get projects out of the way. I am in this position because I did a huge amount of work for a book on India and it is just sitting waiting for me to finish this current one. But no book is ever harmed by being kept waiting. Trust that it will mature in the drawer, that your thinking will be better when you get back to the piece that you have deferred, because most of our work is done in the unconscious. This sometimes entails controlling the rush of enthusiasm. That will sometimes get a piece finished but usually it just gets it started. I used to wake up in the night and rush to write down an idea in case it was lost. Now I trust it to come back and prefer to get a good night's sleep.
I don't have a problem with dyslexia but the gene is in my family - if that is what it is. At least people don't see it as stupidity now, which is how they used to view it. On the laptop problem - nothing wrong with pen and paper. You are going to have to do successive drafts on an important piece so why not write the first draft by hand? I also used speak recognition software. Not sure why I gave it up. I wrote by pen, which seemed to me more natural because that is how I had learnt to write at school. The other bonus with speech recognition is that it would deal with your dyslexia. No spelling mistakes, just sometimes the wrong word, so you have to edit very carefully.
I know the history of writers is full of stories of angst and madness, but really you can enjoy being a writer, take pleasure in it and not let it be too much of a burden. Orwell coughing his guts up on Jura to write 1984 was a bit pathetic. It would have been just as good if he had done it in the comfort of a cottage in Sussex by an warm fire.
May 1, 2020
Writing in Lockdown
I am currently writing another book about the early 1970s in Northern Ireland. I questioned myself about whether this was really worth doing when the whole context in which we live when the book was conceived has been overwhelmed by the pandemic and the 'new normal'.
I also, like most people, feel the stress and disorientation of lockdown and this sometimes makes it harder to get to work.
Two lessons have emerged from this.
One is that the effort to work is hugely rewarding in that it reduces the stress produced by isolation. Like going out for a run, for some people, the temptation is not to go, but the high afterwards makes it worthwhile.
The other lesson is that my imagination as coloured by the new circumstances also feeds into my reflections on the period I am writing about. It is not so much that I have had my attention turned away from the subject as that I have been given a new standpoint from which to examine it. Does that make sense?
Stay well everybody.
I also, like most people, feel the stress and disorientation of lockdown and this sometimes makes it harder to get to work.
Two lessons have emerged from this.
One is that the effort to work is hugely rewarding in that it reduces the stress produced by isolation. Like going out for a run, for some people, the temptation is not to go, but the high afterwards makes it worthwhile.
The other lesson is that my imagination as coloured by the new circumstances also feeds into my reflections on the period I am writing about. It is not so much that I have had my attention turned away from the subject as that I have been given a new standpoint from which to examine it. Does that make sense?
Stay well everybody.
