#19: hello darlings, some thoughts on stubbornness
Hi everyone!
Sorry to be scarce on the ground this month, but I went straight from turning in Lois 3's first draft to revamping Blackwood (which I think is going to be called Strange Alchemy now! my original title--full circle) and am about to finish that up and turn it in...just as Lois 3 edits have landed! It's that kind of fall. We also turned in copyedits on the middle grade and very very soon we get to show you the cover. (Patrons have already seen it, actually!)
Anyway, I'm also thinking ahead to what I want to work on once Triple Threat is officially off my desk. Yes, we will write a second middle grade, but we don't really have to start in earnest on that until the new year. There's a book I know I want to write (fingers crossed for it) and I also know it'll end up being something because my mind returns to it constantly. I've been looking forward to digging into it ever since I had the idea and it's there, waiting, which is always a good sign. Sometimes it's just about deciding to make time and space for something and see what happens. Sometimes it's about doing that, trusting your intuition, even when the world says you're being a crazypants.
I also read Creativity, Inc, this month, after someone recommended it on twitter. It's by the head of Pixar and while there is a fair amount of business gobbledegook (though the useful variety), there's also a lot of useful things about creativity. This is very much not the lightning bolt of inspiration model; it's more the lightning bolt followed by intense travels through a storm before you can get a clear view of where you are and where you're going model. And I think that's really instructive, and have been thinking about it a lot in tandem with this other book I want to write and career things in general.
Many times when I talk to what I would consider non-serious beginning writers (they don't read much, they say they want to write but don't) they seem to want The Secret. The Trick. How do you just cough up a book and get it published?
Which, you know, isn't how it works. I mean, maybe it has once in history, but for the most part no. We know this. Doctors don't decide to do surgery and just go in and start cutting and do it perfectly after thinking about it a little. Novelists don't barf out words and dust off our hands and go, Welp, there's a novel. Usually it's at best a novel-shaped thing that we painstakingly manage to create and then we do surgery, sometimes many times over, to get it to be an actual novel.
What all this takes? The part where you keep going even when it's hard, where you force yourself to forge ahead into the dark forest with no map, where you put your life on the line by spending vast amounts of it in service to this thing that you're trying to create?
In the midst of sometimes confusing business stuff and uncertainty and anxiety and all the usual stuff that goes with being a creative person or making a living in the arts?
Well, that's stubbornness.
Excuse me for a second while I pretend this is a college paper I'm writing freshman year and I'm pretending to be oh-so-erudite (and fill up space) by citing the dictionary definition of something. (Don't look at me like that. We've all done it. And this time at least it's because I actually found this interesting!)
According to Merriam-Webster, stubborn is defined thus:
- refusing to change your ideas or to stop doing something
- difficult to deal with, remove, etc.
Or the even better long definition:
(1) unreasonably or perversely unyielding: mulish (2): justifiably unyielding: resolute b: suggestive or typical of a strong stubborn nature <a stubborn jaw>
performed or carried on in an unyielding, obstinate, or persistent manner <stubborn effort>
difficult to handle, manage, or treat <a stubborn cold>
lasting <stubborn facts>
The phrase stubborn streak, it has a ring, doesn't it? I submit to you that a stubborn streak may be one of the few necessary qualities for being a writer.
Of all these, I think the first of the long form is the best: "unreasonably or perversely unyielding: mulish"
Perversely unyielding. This describes my process to a T.
When I'm in doubt about getting something done or accomplishing something or continuing to keep on keeping on this writing life, mostly what I fall back on is my innate stubborn streak.
You think I can't do this? I think I can't do this? I'm going to do it. You'll see.
Also, the word mulish. I think maybe that's a great adjective for writers too.
Let us be mules. Mulish people. Where my mules at?
Charles Darwin wrote about mules: "The mule always appears to me a most surprising animal. That a hybrid should possess more reason, memory, obstinacy, social affection, powers of muscular endurance, and length of life, than either of its parents, seems to indicate that art has here outdone nature."
I love revising, in part because it's an active form of stubbornness. I will work on a book until it's the best I can make it, until I can see clearly, until the rain is gone. (;)
So I have a few weeks to take this novel draft from good/okay/existing to what I hope will be the best of the Lois Lane novels so far. And I'm going to be as stubborn as it takes to get from here to there. And then I'm going to be stubborn again, on the next one.
You do the same. Whatever it is you're working on or want, don't let anyone dissuade you from your path. See where you're going and refuse to go elsewhere.
Mulishly yours,
G