There are myriad accounts of how to go about writing a piece of fiction. Probably every writer goes through their own trial and error processes to get to the point where they can begin to see a draft form. It matters less how you get there than that you have alternatives to get there.
The Long Meandering Draft
Novelist Meg Wolitzer talks about writing enough of a draft that she can then know whether it is worth pursuing:
“I sort of follow an eighty page plan. I write eighty pages without worrying about what I’m doing, or what anyone will think of it, or even what it is, exactly. And when I’m done with those eighty pages, I print them out and have a look at what I’ve got, as opposed to what I fantasized I’d have. Then I make drastic changes. Eighty pages is enough pages for a writer to feel she’s accomplished something, but it’s not so many pages that, if she decides to put aside the book, she’ll feel as if she’s wasted her life.”1
This is an interesting method, though eighty pages may still be a lot to generate to begin with, and then, to get a handle on. And this is for writing a novel, mind you. A story will have different rhythms, and different impetus. In fact, this method probably works great for writing a novel, in terms of a (relatively) small initial investment. On the other hand, what is meant by drastic changes? Also, not every writer is going to have the time to devote to 80 pages of speculation or have the confidence to make “drastic” revision, or to even know how to do that.
I have a suggestion that is a variation for those who tremble at the thought of writing eighty pages. Against this quantity approach, an alternative is a time approach. Write for thirty days. Maybe at the end of a month you will have 80 pages. I think, for myself, I’d likely have a lot less, but at least a month of concerted writing on one project might yield up the beginnings of a workable draft.
The Data Dump
One method that usually does not work, though I still indulge in it on occasion, is the headlong data dump. Also known as the stream of consciousness free-write, it only works within the framework of a larger organizing principal, such as when you have a good idea where your story is going. But I once wrote thousands of words, maybe as much as ten thousand, in this solipsistic mode toward an unfocused story, only to look at it all after typing it up and realizing I’d likely wasted a month on it. This is why it is better to have a concentrated focus and an end goal in mind.
But all is not necessarily lost. If I’ve written a decent amount, I am hounded by trying to ultimately use it. It might take years, but I tend to think about what I’ve written, or forget it completely for months. If it is not viable one day, it often can seem viable two or three or six years, or ten, later. Nothing ever dies in writing, I think, once you’ve reached a place where you are able to produce successfully, or maybe it’s that nothing ever goes away. Which is also why it feels incumbent to make the writing count. I write everything as if it is to be published someday. I’m always “on”, always in a mode of useful production. This attitude came out of having a few things published, and recognizing the kind of beautiful, desirable reality in that. It’s almost as if writing for me is the assertion of my presence in the world, of my existence.
Imitation as Inspiration
Another approach is to simply try to write a novel like one that moved you or made some favorable impression. It’s almost imitating, but you will never write quite the same thing as what you are drawing inspiration from. And this is not to advocate for plagiarism; if anything, I am talking about an homage. This method works especially for the short story. I used this approach on a story I eventually had as a finalist for a prize, and then placed in a journal.2 The story I wrote is nothing like the one that inspired it. But what is there is the psychological tone, the grapple with the emotional freight of the story. Those specific qualities were the secret ingredient I wanted to convey in my work. This could be the easiest way into and out of a story, trying to write from envy and admiration, because you always have the reference standard. (There is no short supply of inspiring work to look to.)
Outlining (In Your Head)
You can work it all out before hand, in your head, building the story and its many arterial pathways as the brilliant novelist Rachel Cusk has said she did with the Outline trilogy, writing each of the books in three weeks, full stop. It may beggar belief, but if she said she did it, who are we to doubt? This from a life of raising two children and hardly having the time to write or perhaps not finding it serves her work to cadge a few hours to even make notes or an outline, a sketch, sketches.
I have never used outlines, or pre-plotted anything, and I think the idea of proceeding with a sterile plan turns me off. I know I could try this approach, but it’s usually when I let my mind wander on my material that I come to the most inspiring and intriguing outcomes.
Let It Be
You can let the work sit, “lonely and abandoned in a file, a physical file,” as David Means, an idiosyncratic and masterful short story writer does. Leaving it, “while I move on and my subconscious does the work.”3
Write Anything Else
Another way I find to write fiction—or when I am struggling to—I write instead about writing fiction. This has the effect of at least getting me writing. Much of what I generate for this venue is a necessary break from trying to crank on creative work at every writing moment. That’s another way in, to look for a way in. To write. It’s not a self-conscious act, but a practice: write until the end of the page. Write a fragment. Describe something you’ve never tried to describe before. The goal might be, like the team that leaves it all on the field, to be the writer who leaves it all on the page. Meaning, I think, bring your best to bear upon the writing you are trying to do.
Transformation of Revision
And finally, there is nothing wrong with revision, no matter how much material is generated. To go back and re-read what you’ve written, looking for an opening. It is often a way to get the writing on track, because you are elaborating on something in the piece you might have forgotten, some clue to the piece that you’re not even aware of, as it works on a subconscious level. All of these moves will change a piece, constantly. It is never a static thing, the piece of unfinished fiction. It awaits transformation.
A daunting issue that comes up in the writing of anything longer than a few pages will often be, is this worth it? The question then is really, will this be published, and, owing to the semi-obscurity of my name among thousands, if not millions, of other semi-obscure and some more or lesser known writers, will it even be read? Writing is a crack in the void; it’s never going to matter unless you, the writer, want it to matter.