(Non-Chess) Why I Write

[During my January update, I shared how writing a story has monopolized my chess time.  This explains that in more detail.  It's not chess related, so don't say you haven't been warned.]

I have a love-hate relationship with writing. It's something I really enjoy ... and also something I never voluntarily do. Given the amount of digital ink I've spilled on this blog, I can understand your skepticism.  Allow me to explain.

Have you ever taken a little kid to an after-school activity?  A decent percentage will whine and beg and plead not to go.  It's a real struggle to get them into the car ... and then you get there and they have a great time.  Absolutely love it.  Can't wait to go back ... until the next day, when the struggle repeats anew.

When it comes to writing, that's me.  I'm a grumpy kid.

Source: peacefulparent.com

I never write by choice.  I write because I have to.  Something compels me to do it. For this blog, I literally have time scheduled into my calendar to write something. If I didn't do that, I'd have 1/5 the content, probably less. Without the schedule, my writing doesn't get done.

With fiction, it is even harder.  I never "have" to write.  The scheduling trick doesn't work.  I'll just stare at a blank screen for an hour. I can't force myself to write, and usually I don't.  I have gone years without writing a sentence of a story ... and then I turn around and write something in a single week, start to finish.

Why do I write?  It's because I must.  It's because something demands to be written.  It's because the discomfort of not writing starts hurting more than the pain of writing.  This is why.

Writing Sucks

Let's just get this out of the way: writing itself sucks. It's the absolute worst.  You stare at the blank screen and hate yourself.  The cursor taunts you.  Every sentence you write is garbage.  Your words never flow.  You never say what you want to say, what you need to say. Even random internet comments sound better than what you write.  Why do we do even try?

Writing is a lonely activity.  No one can share the burden.  I write at my desk or on my bed.  It's always dark.  If I'm lucky a cat keeps my company.  Otherwise it's just me and the blank page and the nasty little voice that tells me nothing I do is good enough.

I slave away for an hour and might produce 500 words.  Don't ask how many words I've deleted along the way.  Every step is agony, and the temptation to just press "ctrl-a and delete" always hovers over my shoulder.

When looked at this way, it's no surprise that I don't write.  It's a terrible experience ... but one with the most amazing upside.

Bringing Something to Life

I don't write because I want to.  Clearly.  If I can convince myself not to write, I will.  I am fairly successful at this. An idea will pop into my head and say, "Hey, I'm an interesting story," and I'll smile and nod and suffocate it with a pillow.  'Interesting' isn't good enough, sorry.

And then an idea will come along, knock me down, pin me to the ground and place its teeth right around my throat. "Write me," it says.  The "or else" is implied.  I don't have much of a choice, so I write.

I write because an idea refused to go away.  It's like water behind a dam.  As long as it stays below a certain level, I can hold it back.  Once it reaches critical mass, though, the walls start to crack, and if I'm not careful, it will come crashing down, completely inundating me.

I write because certain ideas deserve to live.  I'm a Platonist at heart.  The idea of a perfect world of Forms existing outside our senses, wow, that speaks to me.  Our daily existence is but a shadow of the real reality, and whenever we do something, whenever we create, it's an attempt at emulating one of these Forms.

When I get a story idea, it's not just a random thought that popped into my head.  I like to think it's something greater.  I've happened to glimpse that perfect reality, and now the idea exists in my head.  I can hold it.  I can caress it.  I can mould it and shape it.  I can bring it to life.  I can take that little spark, ephemeral and untouchable, and turn it into something physical.  It is creation in the truest sense of the word.

When I say an "idea" inspires me, I almost always mean a "character".  It's a person and he or she deserves to be more than an idea.  I can flesh this out, quite literally: I can add detail and backstory and breathe life into this idea, going from thought to a living thing.  And I have to do this.  If I don't, then I am denying life to this character.  It's as if I killed them.

Worse, actually.  It's as if they never existed at all.

That pains me.  No, these characters need to live.  They ought to live.  They deserve to live.  I can do that.  I can give it to them.  And when that pain reaches a high-enough point, I sit down and write.  I write until the idea comes alive.

How I Write

I've tried planning.  That seldom works, or not in the way I want it to.  If I try to craft a plot, I'm tying my characters to a railroad track.  We only go in one way, even if other area have greener fields and beaches.  Indeed, the more I plot, the more cracks form.  It's as if my characters resist my attempts to define them.  

The first story I ever wrote (or at least what I consider my first story) had such a plot.  It involved an edgelord that thought life was nothing but suffering and so, logically, wanted to kill everyone to ease that suffering.  Yes, I was a teenager when I wrote this.  Yes, it's complete garbage.  No, I'll never share it.  What's interesting is how it failed.

Long story short, guy meets girl, guy loses girl, guy goes insane, guy tries to commit nuclear holocaust.  That's what I had planned.  That's the plot.  These are also the least interesting parts of my story.  It's what happened between these plot points that made this story worthwhile.

Basically, I took the four main characters and put them in random situations.  It's a random Tuesday after school, what happens? I then write what happens.  Ok, now it's Halloween, what happens? I then wrote that.  Through each scene, the characters grew and evolved.  It's just like how you learn something new everytime you hang around with a person in real life.  That's what I got to experience.  With every 'random' scene, my characters become more rounded.  They became more alive.

And then I forced the plot to happen and things went way off kilter.

A few years passed and I re-wrote the story while ignoring most of my stupid plot.  I gave the characters a chance to grow in whatever way felt natural.  I basically did nothing; the characters simply revealed themselves to me.  Still not very good, and reading it now, it reminds me of a sitcom: a series of random events just for the sake of seeing characters do stuff, with no greater overarching structure.  It was a much better writing experience, though. I didn't need to force anything; I just let the scenes evolve.

This is how I've written ever since, just with a pinch more structure.  I've got a bunch of characters and I've got a destination, but they can get there anyway they want.  I honestly don't know how it will end.  I just write for a bit and eventually a logical way to tie things together takes shape.  And if I don't have a way to tie things together?  Well, keep writing scenes until I do.

Writing sucks, but this is the most success I've had with it.  Take some characters, plop them down somewhere, see what happens.  Watch them grow and change and react and adapt.  Watch the relations between them develop and grow and blossom.  Then put them in a new situation and repeat.  Do that until finished.

My Characters

I've mentioned that I only write when I feel compelled to write, when an idea forces me to do it.  It's only happened four times.  That is, I've only had four distinct characters that have pushed me to the point where I had to write.

First, there was Lorelei.  This was my original "edgelord" story I mentioned above, but Lorelei was a random side character that, the more I wrote, the more she took center stage.  I essentially completed that story because of her, all 477 pages and 267k words.  Yes, most of that is bloat.  It's my first story; it's supposed to be bloated.

I later re-wrote most of it, trimming it down to 226 pages at 125k words.  Technically the story isn't finished, but I doubt I'll add more at this point.

Second, there was Sarafina.  She came during my master's degree studies, where I was so disinterested in the material that I wrote a short story instead.  It took only two weeks or so to get this idea down, and most of that was done across four days.  I'll never write 30k words faster.

Third, there was Luna.  Do you know how you aren't supposed to have a favourite child, but you do anyway?  That's Luna.  This story came in fits and stops, where I would write for a bit, lose steam, sit dormant for awhile and then come back with a vengeance.  I believe I finished it in undergrad, but the date is fuzzy.

Beyond being my favourite story, Luna is notable for being completely handwritten.  I don't know the wordcount, but it's 293 pages... and I write pretty small.  Assuming 500 words a page, that's 146k words, approximately.

Sample page. My handwriting is still more or less the same.

Finally, there's Lexi.  I don't know much about Lexi, because I'm still writing her.  The idea popped into my head and hasn't let go.  Indeed, Lexi is to blame for why my chess training has been paused.  At the time of writing it's around 30k words and 50 pages... and it's got a long way to go still.

I share this to show the extents I will go.  It might just be a few dozen pages.  Perfect, done.  It might be several hundred.  No problem.  I do what is necessary.  Obviously, I'd prefer to write shorter stories, just because it is easier, but that's not the metric that counts.  Is the character fully alive?  As long as the answer is no, then I must write until it becomes yes.

I Am Not An Author

This is a bizarre way to end, and I know it doesn't make sense.  I know it's logically inconsistent.  Anyway, here goes: I write stories, but I am not an author.  These will never get published.  They are entirely for my eyes only.

"But Smithy," I hear you say, "you write because you want to bring characters to life. Why would you then hide them away so others never experience them?"

Great question.  I don't know how to answer it.  I only know two things.  First, I write because I have a burning desire to see these characters come alive, and second, I write for an audience of one.  That's just how it is. A star burning billions of miles away is no less brilliant just because we never turn our telescopes there.  It doesn't need to be seen to be special.  It just is.  There is worth, even if it is hidden.  A good deed is no less good just because no one was there to watch you do it.  It's the same here.

So no, don't expect to see draft chapters on this blog.  It's chess-only for a reason.

Conclusion

The creative process is wonderfully rewarding.  It has to be; why else would anyone bother to write?  I also imagine every person is different.  I've simply shared my muse, what makes me tick.  It's characters, and not just any characters, but interesting characters, ones that deserve life.  Through writing, I can give it to them.  I can be the life-bringer.

That's why I write.