On Discipline, Binges, Blurts, and Mosaics: My Writing Process
I’ve been a working writer, in the trenches authoring books and shorter things since the early 1990s. When I teach classes or do readings, people often ask some version of these same questions: “When do you write? How do you write? What is your PROCESS?” I understand. They’re really asking: “How can I do this crazy thing?” And they’re asking this because writing is hard, completing projects is hard, and there’s no clear roadmap to the writing life.
When people ask me this PROCESS question, I usually just say I’m a binge writer. But it’s more complicated: When I parse it out, I come to this: I’m a Disciplined Binge/Blurt/Mosaic-and-Blend writer.
Whaaa?
Since my process is so seemingly chaotic, let’s break it down.
The Disciplined Writer
There’s a lot of rhetoric and fantasy out there about the “correct” way to write, and it boils down to the saying, Writing = Butt + Chair. Imagine a beautiful room of your own, quiet, with bookshelves, tea, and a cat. You rise early, do your exercises, probably drink a healthy smoothie, then sit down at 6, 7, 8, or 9 AM every single morning and crank out a certain number of words or pages, or work—fingers on keyboard—for a certain number of hours. You create outlines and goals. You write shining words. The words fill pages. The pages turn into dozens of pages, and at the end of a year, you have a book!
I have friends who consistently write this way and I admire them greatly. They get a lot done. But for many of us, this is largely a fantasy: we don’t have the setting, the privilege of having this kind of time and space, or the kind of brains that can do anything every day.
I am fortunate: I do have a beautiful room of my own, quiet, with a tea kettle and (two) cats. I’m, however, quite chaotic-minded. I may seem organized, but this is a myth.
My brain never stops circling, thinking about the handful of creative projects I’m juggling—plus my responsibilities, relationships and family concerns, the state of the world. I walk through the house with one shoe on. I exit rooms with drawers open, the refrigerator ajar. I can’t remember the name of that celebrity (you know the one who kept getting out of cars without underwear in 2005? I think it starts with an H. We were in Costa Rica and kept seeing footage of her on the TV above the tropical bar…).
These are likely not signs of dementia—I’m 66 and I’ve always been this way. How, then, have I written and published nine books (with 3 or 4 in the drawer) plus dozens of short pieces and a ton of poetry?
It’s because I do have discipline… of my own sort. I take classes with assignments. I agree to deadlines. I meet with other writers over Zoom for writing time; we work on our own work, but we do it in community, and since I host these gatherings, I’m committed to showing up. Larger picture, I keep returning to writing again and again over the years. I write in my studio, in bed, standing up in the kitchen. I write slowly, in a nonlinear fashion, and, over time—sometimes decades!—I complete a lot of work.
The Binge Writer
My favorite form of writing is the Binge. A binge writer doesn’t hit the desk every day, or even every month. A binge writer carves out time, takes a leave from work, spends days or weeks at a retreat or a friend’s house, or, at the least, waits until a deadline looms and then goes at it wildly, staying up late into the night, canceling social plans, absorbed in the work, barely sleeping, taking long walks and muttering to herself, cutting off contact with friends and family, until she’s drained.
A binge writer is not unlike a binge drinker: responsible and hardworking in real life most of the time but occasionally cutting loose past the point of lucidity; found most of the time being an upstanding citizen, found occasionally rolling in a gutter and muttering about the Cosmos. A good binge will leave you with a good messy draft with a throughline, or at least a bunch of soggy, messy words to play with.
I’m drawn to the Binge approach because I resemble my character Stevie in my story “Abandoning Nature” in my new collection, San Andreas: Short Fiction on Shaky Ground:
I am a detail man. My apartment is orderly yet none of the furnishings go together. I concentrate on minutiae; the shape of pebbles in the tray under the orchids I have grown to bloom. I appreciate the rows of earthy roots at the nearby market, but I don’t know how to make a stew. … I’m good at my job. I make lists. I identify details. I cannot stand back. I know there must be a play. I can set the stage. I can identify the characters. I cannot see the story; tragic, comic, melodrama, farce.
Like Stevie, I, too, am “a detail man.” It’s hard for me to see the big picture, in life, or in my writing. The narrow focus of a binge helps me think long thoughts and see a manuscript as a whole.
The Blurt Writer
Even when I’m not being disciplined or binging, I’m still blurting. Even when I’m not writing, I’m writing. A Blurt writer never fully leaves her writing. No matter what else is going on in life, small blurts of brain content spew or seep out round the clock. She carries a notebook and a pen, she has thousands of notes in her Notes app, she wakes up in the middle of the night to jot down scraps of thoughts, sentences, overheard dialogue, cool words. Blurts are raw material that might be added to works-in-progress, or ideas to start new ones. Blurts keep me connected to my writing self.
The Mosaic-and-Blend Writer
Over the years, I’ve negotiated myself into a writing process that works for me. When I begin a project, I start with the Frankenstein’s Monster draft. I go through files on the computer, I scan through my notebooks, I hodgepodge a bunch of my blurts: fascinating crap or brilliant moments or vague ideas. And then I start negotiating for structure.
Mosaic-and-Blend writing is not linear. At times, I feel that I can’t write a cohesive sentence in one go to save my life. My motto, “You have to grow a tree before you can prune it.” Mostly, I’m a good editor. I hold my breath and force myself to trust my process. Something will happen. The piece of writing will emerge. And then I can revise and revise or forget about it for decades… and then revise it again.
Look, there’s no one right way to do this writing thing. This is what works for me. And did I put butt to chair and binge and blurt and mosaic and blend this piece you are reading? You betcha I did.
What works for you?
