by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I spent the other morning at the DMV. The DMV, for my non-US readers, is the Department of Motor Vehicles. It’s one of those dreaded places here in the States—full of high counters and long lines.
My son was with me to get his driving permit. We’d arrived 45 minutes before the office opened and were already 5th in line. By the time it opened, the line wrapped around the corner of the squatty government building. It was freezing outside—a shock after such a balmy winte–and my son and I were moving around, swinging our arms, as we waited. His bouncing was probably nerves and mine was a futile attempt to keep warm.
We finally navigated through the different stations after a bad moment where we’d sat in “the wrong set of chairs” for what we were in line for. The DMV has always reminded me a little of Dickens’ Circumlocution Office. We quickly sat in the right set of chairs and my son took his test.
And, thankfully, passed it. But he wasn’t completely satisfied because he’d missed several questions and he’s a typical Type-A firstborn.
“Mom, I missed the stupidest questions!”
“I’m sure they weren’t stupid.”
“They were. One of them asked when roads are the slickest. I chose ‘after three hours of raining’ because of all the cars that hydroplane—the roads have got to be really slick then. But they said the right answer was ‘within the first 15 minutes of raining’,” he said.
“Ohh. Well, yes. They’re right. That’s because the oil rises up to the road surface and you skid on all the old oil puddles on the road,” I explained.
This didn’t cheer him up. “See! Even you knew it and you haven’t even studied the book.”
“But I’ve been driving for 26 years. I know it completely through experience.”
I think that’s one thing that sometimes gets missed when writers recommend frequent writing as a way to improve. What tends to get mentioned is the skill you acquire.
What I think practice and experience gets you are personal strategies for advancing a story and the confidence to complete one.
If you hit a roadblock, you’ll know the best way for you to handle it. For me, that means marking the scene with asterisks and coming back to it later.
You’ll know what to do when you’re stuck on a scene and you aren’t in the right mind-frame to write it. For me, this means skipping the scene and writing another one that’s better suited to my mood.
You’ll find the easiest method for you, yourself, to write a book…you’ll learn if you should outline, wing it, write in the mornings, write in the evenings, write during your commute. You’ll learn shortcuts, your strengths and your weaknesses. You’ll learn how to keep yourself motivated.
You’ll gain confidence that you can finish a book, submit it, and stomach the reviews, good or bad.
Experience is the only way to figure out what works best for us. It’s the only way to know how to make it through the obstacle course that each book presents. It’s the only way to deal with the end result of being published and having that book in the hands of the readers.
You can read manuals on driving and manuals on writing. But experience counts more. (And, I’d add, experience reading the genre that you write.)
It’s true that our writing improves each time we sit down to write and with each book that we finish. I know my books have stronger verbs, better dialogue, rounder characters, and more literary elements than they did when I started out.
That improvement is more intangible and murky, though, unless it’s directly compared side by side with other examples of my writing. What motivates me, usually, are tangible results. Motivation is a stack of finished books and my level of confidence— things I can easily see, easily feel.
It’s the knowledge of what to do at an intersection full of oil slicks when it starts to rain.
What does your regular writing habit help you gain?
Good story about your son. Took me back to my test 36 years ago!
Good points about experience. A regular writing practice helps me gain and maintain discipline. I have to write for my work, but writing for books, newspaper articles (I do regular guest editorials for our local paper), journals, etc., is all extra. Once I get out of the groove of writing, it is hard to get back. So, it is essential to write something nearly everyday.
Paul Woodruff wrote, “In matters of character, strength leads to strength, and one lapse leads to another” (Reverence, p. 25).
So very true. I’ve become more adept at letting my brain work the way it wants to work – and that makes everything easier! :)
Elizabeth – Oh, please don’t get me started about the DMV…. I am glad your son passed the test, though.
About writing? Absolutely you gain confidence and knowledge about yourself as a writer. You also gain faith in your ability to get over those rough patches.
What do I gain from regular writing? Most definitely the things you mention such as better, richer writing. My newer stuff is much better than my first shudder attempts. I also gain a vision of myself as a writer (as opposed to a person who occasionally writes). Make sense?
This is true, experience will show us the best way to do something.
I’m fortunate that in our tiny DMV, I’ve never waited longer than 5-10 minutes.
T
Warren–Good quotation! I think you’re so right about the discipline of it. If writing is rote to me (in the sense of just automatically sitting down to do it…not the sense of what I’m putting on the page), then it makes my life so much easier. I don’t resist it.
Elizabeth – The quotation above from Woodruff is from a book we had to read for a grad class and I’m using for a paper. A couple of other good ones: “A remarkable feature of virutes is that you cannot argue people into having them when they do not … Virtues are cultivated over time, and they have the greatest lasting power in close-knit communities.” (Reverence, p.24)
So true. We can read and gain knowledge but at some point we just need to write. Experience is the best teacher. I think reading and writing together has helped almost more than reading craft books. But it’s really been a combo of all three.
And tell you’re son that I’ve been driving for a while and I didn’t know the scientific answer to that question!
Not sure there is anything regular about my writing habits, but experience is definitely an advantage. And wonderful to think about that you´ll never be too old to write.
One thing experience means to me is the conviction that as I have finished a couple of books already, I will also be able to get through more – it is just a question of time and determination.
It’s like trying to figure out how to ride a bike before ever getting on it. There’s only one way to learn and that’s by doing it.
The dreaded DMV…ugh! Congratulations to your son! My son just turned 15, and I know we’ll be in your shoes soon.
So true about experience. Even in my limited experience, I can see how much I’ve grown. Thinking about it, reading about it, or talking about it doesn’t come close to doing it.
Thanks, Elizabeth!
Laura– Oh, that’s probably because it’s usually so dry here. Then, when the rain just barely starts up, the oil and water don’t mix and the oil rises up. Something like that. I feel the skidding, for sure! But it’s proably because of my drought experience.
Jemi –I think that’s so much better than fighting it to adopt someone else’s method.
Margot–Ah, I like that. Yes, that we identify ourselves as writers because we’re putting the time in…I think that’s very true.
Journaling Woman–You’re very lucky! Wish ours had such short lines.
Warren–I’ll be sure to check out the book. Thanks for the tip!
Diane–A good analogy!
Dorte–That’s something I think about every day. It’s one of the few things in life where age doesn’t matter.
Julie–Thanks! And seeing growth is the best motivator, isn’t it?
Hi Elizabeth .. experience teaches us so much – and it’s what so many of us as youngsters now and then – don’t realise .. til we’re so experienced and ancient!! Me ..
Glad your son got through and you don’t have to go back .. Hope he enjoys his driving and becomes accomplished … cheers Hilary
Elizabeth: After a 19-year newspaper feature career I worked for 10 years on my fiction writing, trying all the while to find an agent to sell one of my novels. In December I finally was offered representation from Katie Shea at the Donald Maass agency—and I’m so glad it didn’t happen a moment sooner.
When working on revisions, she’d say, “This scene is flat and emotionless. Change that.” I needed all that experience to know how to do so! My ms much improved, it’s now out to 13 major publishing imprints. And should I be so lucky as to be offered a deal, I know I have the experience I’ll need to make the additional changes an editor is bound to request.
trekking your blog!!! thanks for sharing..
cheers!
..TREK..
So true, Elizabeth! What’s always fascinated me is how some of the things that work for me when writing newspaper articles don’t work for fiction and vice-versa. I find my fiction revision process works more like my article writing process, maybe because in both cases I have the pieces and am assembling them. Drafting fiction sometimes ends up being more like the interview process in reporting for articles, where I’m in discovery mode.
Perhaps the most valuable aspect of experience for a writer, all question of craft skills apart, is the thick skin we learn to grow about rejection.
Creative writing courses can do a great disservice to newbie writers – and I’m a CW tutor at a UK university – by suggesting that all folk need is to perfect their craft and a six-figure advance from Random House will be in their hands next day.
The truth is different. Some of the finest novelists I know never earned out their advance. With experience, comes stoicism…
Hilary–Me too! I think he was surprised that we get so much knowledge from *doing* instead of reading the driving manual. On the road training. :)
Kathryn–Now that’s representation! Congratulations!
And that’s something else, Kathryn, that you’ve touched on–when you get an editorial letter back after finding a publisher, you won’t be scared. You’ll know there’s nothing in that letter that you can’t fix.
icedgurl–Thanks for coming by.
Jennie–That’s such an interesting way of looking at it. I was a journalist for a while, myself (well, on the magazine end of things) and I know what you mean. It was very tough to go from writing fiction (for myself, at the time) to writing articles. Then it was *so* difficult to change from articles to novels. It sounds like you’ve got a great handle on an effective way to approach it and in finding similarities between the two.
John–You’ve put it eloquently. At first, it was hard for me to accept my stoicism because I worried it meant that I didn’t care. I *do* care about my reviews, but I look at them in a much more analytical way–what can I take from bad reviews to make my next book better? I always feel somewhat calculating, but gosh…it works. It makes the next book better; I don’t get my feelings hurt; and I have the knowledge that, if nothing else, another book is in the works. I haven’t invested all my emotions and all my hopes and dreams in one book. I’ve often compared it to Only-Child Syndrome…when you’ve only got the one book, you smother it and worry over it too much. I know a couple of traditionally published authors who gave up after the one book. I just hate that they did that–they’re great writers.