We spoke the other day of how writing can be pleasure, or can generate pleasure. We meant that the pleasure comes, like a gift, often enough, through the pains of finding something to say and then pursuing that something.
This is hardly a revolutionary concept. Compare writing to the pleasure-pain of running, say. You may hate going out on the road at 6 am, doing your roadwork in chilly weather, in reluctant times. And doesn’t a comfy bed make for reluctant times?
Still, you get up, don your runner’s togs, and light out for the streets before anyone else is up. You do this every day despite the pains and find that somehow the pains give way, as you stride along, day after day, mile after mile, to some strange buzz of pleasure.
Maybe the pain centers have just numbed up. That which, unused, hurt — now, used, is pulsing with pleasure. The old muscles have stirred and risen up. It’s a kind of rebellion against indolence and ennui.
You’ll find that practice in writing if it doesn’t make perfect — at least makes it possible. Makes it possible to go on, loping, plodding, trotting, however you are going. And that daily, weekly, monthly practice builds up the muscles and habituates you to the exercise.
You’ll start finding a rhythm, as a runner finds his rhythm too. So that you needn’t think about every stop, plot it out, outline your route. You warm up, don’t you, stretch a bit — and then start loping.
For a writer, warming up may be as simple as jotting down stray ideas. Brainstorming, that is, making connections. Brainstorming (which deserves an entry or 10 on its own: wait now, please) will start building heat and lighting fires. It will put things together that you had no idea belonged together. It will create its own odd logic.
You can start an essay about the pains of writing, for example, by jotting down:
And so it goes. This brainstormed list is not much, just a beginning. There’s not much order here or method. But there’s heat. There’s the beginning of a fire. There’s the dawning realization that this exercise is not all that bad. That the emotional and intuitive parts of the brain, and the being, can get in on this work too.
As a writer and teacher of writing, I believe 100% in the power of brainstorming. Often, my students wish to avoid this prep work. It’s not just that they’re lazy (which they may be). It’s that brainstorming seems so silly, irrational, purposeless.
Precisely!
Hell, this is almost fun already!