Get Started & Finishing: by Elizabeth Stark

Part One: Carry a Notebook (Or The Updated Version)

The other day as we were walking through our yard to the car, one of my children said something to me that triggered a wonderful idea for a blog. “I should write this down,” I said to myself, but instead we got into the car and drove off, and the idea got into its own car and drove off in another direction, never to be seen again.

As writers, we are constantly coming across treasures and, nearly as often, throwing them away. Some might say that this is a natural filtering process: if we can’t even remember it, how important can it be? But if you’ve ever forgotten something really important (a dear friend’s birthday, a big payment), you know the faulty logic of such a claim.

Here’s the thing. The world and, especially, the people in it form our laboratory as writers, which is to say practitioners who use words to pin down some sort of truth, whether fictional or not.

Here’s my resolution: carry a little notebook and use it. Resist the temptation to remember without aid that brilliant idea, that flash of insight, that quirky detail. Just writing something down makes it more likely we’ll recall it, and the practice of weaving writing into the rest of our lives will undoubtedly strengthen the our writing.

When I was younger I did carry a journal around, throw myself down on a lawn or at a café table or on friends’ beds and scribble in it. I favored a journal without lines—big, white pages full of invitation. But the truth is, I can even send myself an email from my phone, a little missive with nugget to use later. How wonderful to have, instead of spam and coupons and petitions to sign, an inbox full of samples from my laboratory of human life.

 

Part Two: Hit Send

Yesterday, I sent my enormously revised manuscript off to my agent. I’d performed the dramatic revision and then my group had read and loved the book, but with some good notes—it was not a finished draft. I’ve spent a couple of intense months fixing the manuscript, including tearing out some big seams, rearranging and adding pieces and fiddling with—I mean strengthening—the sentences.

There comes a point of diminishing returns, when I can no longer tell if I am improving the thing. One sure sign of these diminishing returns is the “inspiration” to start the whole book over again; to take a dramatic new angle; to explore something I’ve never thought of before, like a different time period or a new set of characters.

At some point, there is only one thing left to do—until the next pass—and that is to hit send. Off it goes. Get it into someone else’s hands and take some time off.

Now there’s a period of patience. I would counsel myself, were I not myself, to find something else to focus on in my writing time. I have some shorter pieces I’d like to develop.

But for the rest of this week, I am going to be on Spring break with my kids, having adventures. That’s a reward and a relief, though I know that soon enough, that itchy, uncomfortable feeling that comes of not writing will surface. I won’t know what it is at first—won’t connect it to writing at all. And then I’ll realize—it’s time to start writing again.

By that time, I should have lots of juicy tidbits in my notebook or inbox to get my started.

What kernel can you capture today? Is there a simple system you can set up for catching such treasures? And, on the other hand, is there something you need to let go of and send into the world, whether to a reader or a potential publisher?

 

Elizabeth Stark is the author of the novel Shy Girl (FSG, Seal Press) and co-director and co-writer of several short films, including FtF: Female to Femme and Little Mutinies (both distributed by Frameline). She earned an M.F.A. from Columbia University in Creative Writing. Currently the lead mentor and teacher at the Book Writing World, she’s taught writing and literature at UCSC, Pratt Institute, the Peralta Colleges, Hobart & William Smith Colleges and St. Mary’s College. She’s at work on a novel about Kafka.