Guest Post: The Necessity of Blindness by J. A. Pitts
Originally published at Grasping for the Wind. Please leave any comments there.
Writers use words to categorize things - quippy phrases that catch the ear, and tickle the mind. It’s in our nature. My friends and I talk frequently about the tools we use to improve as writers. My buddy, Jay Lake, has a phrase I like -”Psychotic Persistence”. I’m not sure if it is his own invention, or something he’s picked up along his travels, but it is key to becoming a published author.
It is the way we continual believe that we will one day get published, even though the odds are long, and we must crawl over broken glass to get there. Yet, we succeed, time and again, despite the odds.
The ability to keep doing something where you are continually rejected (sometimes for decades), is a form of crazy that strikes not just artists. I think it’s what makes us great as a species, frankly. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Sound familiar? We must ignore the obvious, and persist in our delusion that one day, if we work enough, if we read enough, if we submit our work enough, that some editor will give us money for our words. This is nirvana.
But there is another aspect of this that I feel is vital to the success of a writer. I call this the Necessity of Blindness. Almost everyone writes a lousy first draft. There are exceptions, of course, so I’ll concentrate on myself as an example.
The Necessity of Blindness is that aspect of a writer who cannot see the flaws in their work at first. I finish a story, and send it to my first readers, praying it holds together, that the beginning, middle, and end all align to the point that the reader has a fulfilling experience.
I always fail. Well, fail is a strong word. Perhaps it is better to say that my high school literature teacher would not be quite as pleased with my prose as I would like.
I make mistakes, may the gods look upon me with mercy; misplaced commas, curiously placed question marks, run-on sentences, missing words, and overall plot failures so large, you could drive Hannibal’s elephants through them.
It is that blindness that allows me to finish the magical and necessary first draft. If I took the time to make every line perfect, to force the grammar into submission, and satisfy the most ardent Strunk & White fanatic, I would never finish the draft. And, that my friend, is the real failure of almost every unpublished novelist I’ve spoken with over the last few decades.
When I have a first draft, I have a finished product. Something that can be fixed. Get it? Fixed! Grammar mistakes, misspellings, bad punctuation, and the lot are irrelevant to the first draft. The plot is important. Oh, my yes. And the character motives, and the climax, and internal consistency. All those things are critical, but guess what. I can fix those too. Once I have a finished draft, I can go back, read what I wrote, and start repairing the little things.
Now, do not confuse this with rewriting. I find that there are those who will spend years going over the same piece of writing, changing the words, tweaking the prose, redirecting the story, to the point that they’ve written the life out of it. This is a bad thing. They lose the voice, lose the rhythm that made the work so compelling.
What you have to learn is the difference. That’s a key milestone along the way to becoming a professional writer. I am constantly relearning that skill. There is never a point where a writer gets to say, “Whew, I’ve finally learned it all, now I can cruise.” The second anyone says that, their stories begin to fail.
Readers want passion, they want action and adventure. They want dynamic situations and heart-warming love. Whatever your genre is, there are expectations you are going to fulfill, and the learning to achieve that is a life-long endeavor.
Back to the blindness. Because I don’t always see the problems, I don’t stop myself from moving onward. Now, if I didn’t go back and fix those overlooked mistakes, I’d never sell another thing. But, that convenient glossing-over we do as writers is critical to our success. At least, in my case. Your mileage may vary.
So, when you start to worry that your novel sucks, stop listening to those voices. Go forward, warts and all. Put up your shields, let the blindness fall over your eyes, and listen to the story.
Then, when you are done with that draft, set the story aside and let it ferment. Allow the scales time to fall from your eyes. That’s when you go back and reread your work. Suddenly you can see the items to fix - small things that can be tackled like a checklist.
Fixing a chapter at a time is amazingly different from the daunting task of sitting in front of the blank page, envisioning the novel yet to come.
Close your eyes, let the characters come to the fore, and write with reckless abandonment. Then, clean up the rough edges.
You deserve the chance to fix a finished piece, don’t you think?
J.A. Pitts is the author of the Compton Crook Award nominated Black Blade Blues
(2010) and Honeyed Words
(July, 2011), the urban fantasy series from Tor Books featuring berserker blacksmith Sarah Jane Beauhall. Follow all the news at www.japitts.net.