|
"Ten Pages A Day"Cynthia's Column March 2002 Over the years I have had a series of different inspirational memos stuck to my computer terminal, for that pre-dawn bit of encouragement most of us writers need in the cold, dark hours as we try to get our writing engines started each morning. As a young writer, I favored the "you-can-do-it," "make-it-happen" quotes and the words that inspired one to think about greatness. You know the ones. Goethe: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."Helen Keller: "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."I still love these. In 1982 after my beloved play closed in New York after one glorious night, I made a fifteen foot long sign on butcher paper and tacked it wall to wall near my bedroom ceiling, so the first thing I would see every morning as I opened my eyes were the words:"You win some, and you lose some, but you win some." It's not poetry, but it did get me out of bed and back to the typewriter many mornings when that was not necessarily going to happen on its own. When my dear friend Keith Walker died, I sat down at his home in Tennessee to try to write his obituary and found taped to his computer the words "Trust in God and do the next thing." Words that he lived by and words I have certainly tried to live by as well. And I had them on my computer for a long time. This last year, which was a very strange one for all of us, one of the bright spots for me was reading Stephen King's book On Writing. A terrific book. Entertaining and encouraging. I'm not a horror fan, and hadn't read King before, though I'd seen some of the movies, of course. His book on writing gave me new respect for him and made me like him. (I didn't really believe those "made a deal with the devil" rumors about him. ) King writes ten pages a day, 365 days a year. He told an interviewer once that he took Christmas and his birthday off, then later recanted. He had lied. He didn't take any days off. King has written this way for many years, except for a brief period of recuperation after being hit by a car in a nearly fatal accident. He says on good days he finishes by eleven in the morning and on less-good days not until nearly four in the afternoon. But he does it. Every day. This makes -- are you all doing the math now? -– 3,650 pages per year, or the equivalent of ten rather good sized books. Even giving credit for revisions and notes, etc. , you know he's got to be several years ahead, right? After reading On Writing, I picked up Bag of Bones on tape, so I could drive around and have Stephen King read his book out loud to me in the privacy of my car, unabridged. In that book a novelist hits a writers block when his wife dies, but he has been so prolific that he has four or five books tucked away in a bank vault and continues to publish one each year for four years before anyone has a clue he's dried up. Hmmm. Interesting. I don't think King has hit a block. But I do think when a guy that writes this (and like this) says he's going to do only four or five more books and then stop, it's a no brainer that he's stopping now and has a few books in the vault. I'd put money on this. Do I think King will never write again? Not a chance in hell. Does he need a break? More than any writer ever born, I'd say. And by God he deserves one. Some of you may remember a Column I wrote in this space a ways back on the "Cycles of Creativity."Using the Indian Gods to symbolize the different phases of the process. Brahma, the wild burst of creative inspiration. Vishnu, the hard work that follows. And Shiva, the destroyer who comes along to clear the decks between projects. We live in a society founded by the Puritan Work Ethic, but no one can stay in Brahma and Vishnu indefinitely. This causes burnout and early death to say the least. It defies nature. In other words, you have to stop sometime or nature (or a speeding car) will stop you. People's natural creative cycles vary from a few weeks to months or years. Maybe King is just now hitting a years-long Shiva cycle. Like the smart ant, he has enough books stored up for as long a winter as he likes. What I hope for him is that he finds another genre or subject that he decides to take on. He may, as he says, have done every variation on the horror genre that he cares to do. Fine. He can kick back and see what else is out there he wants to write about. So after reading King's writing book, I wrote a new yellow post-it note to myself and stuck it on my computer. A few of my writer friends and students who have stopped by my office have latched onto it and copied it down, one or two even put it out on websites, so I am passing it on to you. It is working for me. It begins with my two favorite words. "What if all your dreams could come true and the price was ten pages per day?" What if there were a magic key that really could open up the doors to our dreams? What if this was it? It has certainly been my experience in life that when I am writing like that, things flow. Fun, money, love, success, all the things that one hopes for in life. I know it sounds silly, but I'm serious here. I'm not talking about abracadabra wave-a-magic-wand magic. I'm talking about real magic. The kind that happens when you strip off the layers of pre-occupation. When you write the stuff that you have to get out of the way before the great stuff down deep inside you can find its way to your conscious mind. It's in there. And this may be a powerful tool you can take down into the mine to dig out the gold. Ten pages. Every day. Want to play? Are you up for a challenge? Let's go thirty days. I'm going for it. Thirty days from now, you could have three hundred pages you don't have today. Journaling counts. Letters. Count. Writing whatever you want, however you want. Let's blow the winter sludge out of both engines and get these planes rolling down the runway and into the air! Let me know what happens. How does it impact every aspect of your life, fully expressing who you are every day in writing? Letting your creative self have freedom and time. Actually doing what you have always wanted to do? Are you ready? Make your cup of coffee. Turn on your computer. On your mark!Get set! (I have a five page head start by this sentence here, but I'll spot you an hour. ) GO! Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |