marfisk | Writing Patterns (Reply)

(Yes, you know who you are who prompted this ;).

A lot of people complain about writing books that specify THE way to do things as though all other techniques are garbage, a complaint I agree with. It's easier not to qualify every statement, but sometimes the tone comes across as saying only idiots choose another path.

That's not what I'm writing about though.

There's a corollary to this that I don't see getting much press from writers. Though not the first time I've run into it, I had a conversation along these lines today and decided to talk about it here in case others might benefit from my perspective.

What I'm talking about is the tendency among authors to malign their current process. Now I know that just because a writer happens to work one way now doesn't mean that writer will still be using the same writing pattern in a year, two years, or more. However, if a writer has an established pattern, it makes more sense to me to accept the current state as a "for now necessity" than to fight against it.

This is an aspect of self-awareness that many people skim over. Though they complain as above about people telling them about THE way, their acceptance of alternatives encompasses not their own patterns but only those of other writing books or successful writers they know. Sometimes this is because their current process is onerous, sometimes it's because they believe they should be able to follow something like Holly Lisle's One-Pass Manuscript Revision process and when they find their draft has too much work required, they get frustrated.

I've been there. I've measured myself against others' productivity, how quickly they bring a draft to market, their submissions patterns, and what have you. It's easy with all the information out there to find some way of knocking yourself or your process down.

Here's what I say to that habit: get it behind you. Move past comparison to others and toward understanding what you're doing and why. I'm not saying you can't change your process. I'm not saying you shouldn't take the opportunity to learn other methods of working. What I am saying is that you should to recognize your current pattern as what you need at this moment based on what you know at this time. Don't fight it. Accept it.

Yes, you should work to change the pattern if it is not producing what you want, but that's not the same as fighting it.

Fighting your pattern is harmful to your self-esteem, to your ability to grow, to your very health at times, mental or physical. You adopted this pattern for a reason. I can't tell you if it's because there's a huge hole in your knowledge, whether you're on the cusp of a radical growth, or whether something happened to knock you back and you're in a mad scramble to recover. The cause almost doesn't matter.

This is your current pattern. Accept it, embrace it, take advantage of the fact that your mind and body have found a way to progress no matter how slowly, how awkwardly, how not like you wish you were. Go ahead and study other processes, learn new techniques, fill in your knowledge so you will be ready when it all comes together and your pattern shifts, but don't condemn the pattern you have now if it is producing any forward motion at all.

A rolling stone gathers no moss and an object at rest stays at rest.

The more you fight, the more you drive yourself to a standstill. Sure, maybe that pattern's no fun, maybe you feel like you missed the bus, that opportunity never bothered to come knocking, but there's an old saying, "God helps those who help themselves." Whether you believe in a deity or not, the principle applies. By fighting, you are refusing the method of progress you have found for right now. You are seeking the greener grass on the other side of the fence rather than lowering your head to graze. If you would only feast on what you have around you, you could grow strong enough to leap the fence, to knock it aside, to burrow under, and then discover for yourself whether the new process you're exploring is actually better...or just different.