“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” Sylvia Plath.

Hello my friends. As the semester winds down, and I delve deeper into the writing process, I find myself looking back over the past blogs to see what patterns have emerged and what questions I may have raised rather than answered. This space has become not only a vehicle to try to explain process, but also to explore my own. At the risk of being repetitive, I must restate that the benefits of trying to explain a thing is that you further understand it yourself.

Looking through the past blogs, I can see the themes of procrastination and resistance emerge, as well as a feeling of awe about how the creative process works. There is a danger here that this week’s blog will stray into the obscure realm of meta-meta-fiction—that is an analysis of my analysis of the writing/creative process. Before I build an ivory tower and lock myself away in academic catatonia, I am going to cherry pick an underlying theme that I think has sat like the proverbial elephant in the room throughout these blogs: Passion.

I don’t want you to read that word and immediately run to the trope of the obsessed artist so tortured by his vision that he loses sleep and everyone he loves and drinks or drugs himself to death. If you want to explore that theme, you can read biographies of Ernest Hemingway, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, or any of a hundred tortured souls whose demons gave us exquisite beauty at the cost of their hosts’ lives.

What I want to explore is the much more common trait that I think every writer must cultivate. I call it passion, but if that word has too many connotations for you to understand what I mean, perhaps I can clarify by saying that whatever you write has to grab you before it can grab anyone else. You must care about the story, the subject, and the characters that you are writing about.

Here I will give you somewhat of a disclaimer and somewhat of an admonition. If you are making a living ghost writing, or collaborating, or you are entering contests or writing pot boilers to keep your lights on, then you might think that my romantic notion of passion and being turned on by what you are writing doesn’t apply. Au contraire, mes amis, I think that those situations are exactly where you need to find the passion that exists within you, because I believe that if something is worth writing about—and see the Plath quote above for what that can be—then there exists within that subject something to get passionate about.

All writing is confessional whether it is an overt memoir of your life, or whether that memoir is overt or whether it is disguised as fiction. It doesn’t matter if you decide to write about something or you are assigned or commissioned to write about it, you are going to filter the subject through your own unique lens.

I can’t think of any subject less interesting to me than a biography of some baron of industry and how they rose through the ranks to CEO and beyond. The only way I would want to write about that subject is to illustrate how the entire capitalist, corporate-ladder-track mentality involves so much moral and ethical compromise that what is left of a person when they reach the top is not anything to celebrate or admire let alone praise as a role model. Of course, if the CEO of Exxon commissioned me to ghost write his story, I doubt whether that would be an acceptable angle to them. So, if the money were too good to pass up, I would have to find some other way to get passionate about the story. I am somewhat of a perfectionist, and I can be competitive, mostly with myself but not always, so perhaps I could focus on the fact that, whether I agree with his decisions, or whether his version of the American Dream is something someone should actually strive for, he did succeed at it, and he was driven and had passion. If I transfer my passion for my creativity into his story, I can now write it as if I give a damn about his 200-million-dollar golden parachute. I still would have to take a long, hot shower after I wrote it, but at least I would be showering with lights on and the rent paid. I’m just saying.

What I see in writers that have problems getting things on the page or completing projects is a lack of passion. Recently, I met a person who has an idea about dystopian world series involving racism and police and it is both topical and universal. He is paying two people to write his vision, but when I spoke to him, it was obvious he had a vision. He could talk about it and expound upon it and when I suggested some things or asked questions, he knew the answers because he knew his characters and his world. I believe the only way that can be possible is that he cared about the world he had in his mind. To some extent, it was real to him, so it wasn’t hard to answer my questions because in his mind, there was no other answer that could make sense. The female lead was passionate, but she was very naïve, and she didn’t even know she was because that’s how naïve she is.

Again, I will repeat: If it doesn’t grab you, how is it going to grab me?  I must tell you that I have never, nor will I ever write a biography for any of my characters. I will not write where they went to high school, or their favorite color, or that they were beat up by their older sister unless that is going to be directly or implicitly stated in the story. However, if I had a character who is about to kill his daughter’s rapist and you asked me what would happen if someone cut in line ahead of him at the hardware store where he was buying the lime to bury his victim, I could tell you in detail how he would react. That is because he is real, and I care about the story and him. I want him to make an impact on you the way he has made an impact on me. I suppose it is possible to list a series of character traits, and then pick a plot line and write a good story that will move people, but I think it is infinitely harder than if you get to know your characters and choose stories that resonate with you, or choose an aspect of a story you have to write that will turn you on.

Finally, addressing the Sylvia Plath quote, I need to tell you to an extent, writing should hurt. You should be laughing with your characters, and crying with them, and getting angry with them. When your character gain something, you should be overjoyed, and when they lose something, it should take you a little time to recover. If you can write the best friend’s death scene, and then get up from your writing space and not be in a weird space where people laughing seem alien, and the world seems somehow diminished, you are probably doing it wrong.

I remember when music was my main creative outlet. I would spend hours writing songs and recording parts and when I was finished, or had to stop for the day, I would be non-verbal for a period of time. I could reply to people who spoke to me, but it would take me a while to get back to non-musical communication. Sometimes I wouldn’t voluntarily engage in conversation for hours.

Your writing should do that to you. Even if you are just outlining, the world should open up and envelope you to some extent and when you have to leave it, it should feel  like you are leaving an actual place. This is probably a continuation of last week’s blog.  You need to immerse yourself in the story. It should matter. You should care about it. Because if you don’t care, why should anyone else?

Take the plunge, my friends.  Keep writing.