Becoming A Writer, Chapter Fourteen: The Practice Story

As BurnzPost will be taking the months of November and December off, I thought I’d skip over the next two chapters* to get to something concrete that you could really use in the meantime. And so we arrive at Chapter Fourteen, where Brande outlines a method of going from practice writing to actual, honest-to-goodness story.

1. Examine your morning writing again, this time with the aim of finding a simple short-story idea.
2. Decide what is needed to turn this idea into a fully fledged story
3. Spend a few days fleshing the story out in your head…

Yes. Really. A few days–at least.

For a day or two you are going to immerse yourself in these details; you are going to think about them consciously, turning if necessary to books of reference to fill in your facts. Then you are going to dream about it. You are going to think of the characters separately, then in combination. You are going to do everything you can for that story by using alternately your conscious intelligence and unconscious reverie on it.

—pp. 140-141

4. Now, just as you did with your writing exercises, make a date with yourself for the actual writing of the story, leaving time to get from beginning to end in one sitting.
5. Once you have set this date, dismiss all thoughts of the story from your mind.

To use Brande’s example, you might say to yourself, “At ten o’clock on Wednesday I will begin to write it.” From the moment you say that until Wed. 10:00 AM, don’t even think about it. If thoughts of your story come to mind, gently let them go.

To my mind, this mental abstinence has two great effects. First, it allows your unconscious to really get to work on the story. Many writers talk about letting their ideas “compost”–that’s what this is, a period during which the conscious mind stops gnawing on the bone and lets the humid dark of the unconscious turn it into fertile soil.

Secondly, it increases the urge to write. The longer an impulse is denied, the stronger it gets. If you, like me, are prey to constant resistance and procrastination when it comes to a writing project, you may find that simply denying yourself permission to write on that project–changing the internal narrative from “I should be doing this” to “I am not allowed to do this”–will magically cause you to want to write more than anything else in the world.

Finally…

6. When the appointed time arrives, write.

Write confidently. Write until you have set down an entire draft of the story from beginning to end. Do not let misgivings or aesthetic concerns give you pause. This will be a rough draft. It’s allowed to be terrible. What it isn’t allowed to be is incomplete.

Later in the chapter, Brande continues by telling the reader to lay the story aside for a few days, then give it a critical reading preparatory to revising it. I’m not going to go into it here. I will only point out that, if you’re new to this, when you reread the story later you may be surprised at how well you’ve written.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that tomorrow, November 1, is the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. As the clock turns midnight in each time zone, writers across the globe will be putting down Word One of their hoped-for total of 50,000. It’s not unlike this exercise of Brande’s, but writ large: instead of a short story in a sitting, it’s a short novel in a month. This exercise, in fact, is not a bad way to approach “NaNoWriMo.” Even if now, on the last day of October, you haven’t the faintest clue what you might write about, give it a shot anyway. Here’s how you might do that:

Look through your morning-and-appointment writing for a theme or character that, in its frequent appearances, poses a likely topic to stay with for 50,000 words. Spend an hour or two thinking about that topic and coming up with a first scene. Not an outline for a book; just one scene. Flesh out the main character in your mind. Decide where the scene will take place. See the room, the city, the highways and forests in your head. Finally, make that date with yourself: “Tomorrow at 4 PM I will write the first scene of this novel.” Then let it go until tomorrow afternoon arrives.

When you’re done writing, repeat the process. Take some time to decide what the next scene will be. Make a date. Let it go.

You can eat up a whole month that way.

Good luck, and see you in January!

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*In case you’re wondering, Chapter Twelve, “On Originality,” is about trusting your existence as a unique snowflake to imbue your writing with originality. Chapter Thirteen, “The Writer’s Recreation,” is about the necessity of wordless forms of entertainment to refill the inspirational well and make you want to write.)