By Carin White
One of my favorite quotations by Dorothy Parker is “I hate writing, I love having written.” These words ring true to my experience as a writer. Writing is hard, tedious, painful . . . even when I want to write I feel this way. I’m a playwright, screenwriter, academic, and fiction writer. . . all to say that I have a lot invested in this. And the feeling of wanting to find the nearest NYC manhole to fall into (a la Wild E. Coyote cartoons) only gets worse when I’m confronted with a writing task in which am not personally invested. In my desperate desire to write some beautiful gem of an idea or inspired moment (or frankly something decent) I start and stop, blocked by the crude and rough way the words appear together. My problem: I don’t give myself permission to write.
Or rather, I don’t give myself permission to write badly.
This idea is key. Writing badly is a great way to tumble out ideas so that you can find the core of what you wish to express. There is a common enough myth that the really great writers and artists can simply make magical creations out of thin air. If this is true, then why do we have editors? Why did it take Goethe his whole life to write Faust? Hmm? Even for those of us that know the truth behind the myth, we still get caught up in the problem of wanting to write perfection. All the more reason to remember that few writers or artists create their shiny works of brilliance in one go. Most of us have to grind out the clichés, the redundancy, the overcomplicated word choice. I’ve found that this desire to create something “print ready” shakes not just professional writers but student writers. Whether it is because the professional or student writer wishes to finish the work in the shortest amount of time, or the idea simply isn’t being expressed fluidly on the page, permission to write badly can free one up and provide the momentum needed to finish the work.
Published March 6, 2015
