I’ve just been interviewed by a publisher of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction for a feature at their blog. Along with questions about my writing career — how I got hooked up with Ash-Tree Press for Divinations of the Deep and Mythos Books for Dark Awakenings, how I came to my overriding focus on the combination of horror with religion and spirituality, what my writing process is like, etc. — the interviewer asked me if I had any advice for aspiring writers.
It was only after I had answered the question that I realized I had ramped up into a state of heady intensity as I tried to distill my best advice to writers into the span of a few sentences. Since I know this type of thing is of interest to Demon Muse’s audience, I figured I’d reprint it here, with a few slight expansions.
Here’s what I said:
1. Find and cultivate your passion.
Figure out what you’re really interested in, the ideas and themes that naturally excite you and obsess you and keep you spiritually alive. Then find the books and authors (and music and movies and other art) that deal with these things, and absorb them with wild abandon, like you’re a starving man who’s been thrown into a banquet hall. Know that often these stages — the discovering of your passions and the reading about them — happen in reverse, so just enjoy it. Let them feed into each other and enhance each other. By doing this, and by letting it interact with your wider life, you’re figuring out what you are uniquely meant to write.
2. Write like your life depends on it.
Write like crazy. Throw yourself fully into it. Try your hardest to produce something excellent, even as you forgive yourself instantly and unhesitatingly and completely for producing crap — which you inevitably will. Figure out through experience whether you’re more of an intuitive or a structured/plan-based writer, then develop that orientation with a vengeance. Work hard, shedding blood if necessary, to come to a complete MASTERY of grammatical and other technical rules so that you never have to think or worry about them again for even the briefest of instants. Make them part of your blood and bone. Likewise, make the incorporation of your deep passions into your writing be a natural and organic thing. Don’t think, “I have to channel my passions onto the page!” That way lies paralysis by a too-heavy burden of self-consciousness and self-expectation. Just write what’s natural, what wants to be written, and the passion part will take care of itself.
3. Follow your muse by following your changing loves.
Know that some of your passions may remain constant while others will evolve over time, just like you do. When you realize a shift like this has happened, run with it eagerly, since it opens new vistas. As Ray Bradbury famously said, the keeping and cultivating of a muse consists of continually running after your loves. What you loved when you were 10 years old won’t be identical to what you’ll love at 20, 30, or 40. You’ll need more complex and textured things over time, and maybe even totally different things. But whatever you’re passionate about right now is valid, is what’s meant to be. And it’s the key to using and being used by your creativity.
4.Collaborate with your unconscious.
Make friends with your unconscious mind. Consider personifying it as your muse, daimon, or genius, and adopting the viewpoint that in your creative work you’re collaborating with an autonomous force that lives in your self. For help, read this blog and other relevant things.
5. Learn your own process and be true to yourself.
Find out what works for you — the procedures, habits, styles, literary forms, writing schedule, and overall approach that consistently result in your best creative work. Then use them fully and ignore outside advice, including what you’re reading right here. The only one whose guidance and approval you really need to worry about is your inner partner. External advice is primarily useful for revealing how you are innately meant, and not meant, to work. Don’t worry, your daimon will let you know.
OVER TO YOU:
- How have your innate passions made themselves known through the circumstances of your life, both inner and outer?
- When and how have you become aware of it when your muse is leading you to move from old loves to new ones?
- Are you personally helped or hindered by the idea of creativity as an autonomous force that you collaborate with instead of a private function of your own mind and brain?
–
Image credit: “rhızomıng εmεrgεncε▲submεrgεncε plεats” used under creative commons from jef_safi
No related posts.
