Practice

Practice

All stories are about change. If you ever reach a point in your writing where the action grinds to a halt, there is a very good chance that your characters need to do some shadow work.

This is a truth I’ve learned and relearned so many times in my life: For me, doing nothing always turns into deep noticing. The key is to simply continue to do nothing for long enough.

You struggle to solve craft and story problems until your brain hurts, you feel deeply fatigued, or even become ill.

How you create a book and how you create a life follow the same general process: you set out with an intention and move toward resolution. You may hold a vision of an outcome in your mind, but you don’t know exactly how to navigate your way there. You pay attention and try to make good decisions. You show up regularly, course-correcting as you go.

In fiction, poetry, and music, white space is used between scenes, images, and sound on purpose. The white space is a container for energetic reflection. It’s there to give you a moment to digest what just happened. To let the last word or sound ring out for effect. It’s an opportunity to pause, to make some sense of what has just finished, to get

“Why are you making your creative decisions into problems?”

When you’re writing a novel, you have to learn to tolerate the confounding wholeness that comes from simultaneously knowing your entire story and only pieces of it.