Oodles of stuff has been written about writing. I'm adding my voice to thousands of others, many of them better, more experienced and more expert than I am. I'm a novice craftsman. I'm not trying to steal Stephen King's or James N. Frey's thunder, here; I'm just putting my two cents in.
Second, I like analogies. I use them all the time. They're useful, particularly when you teach ESL for a living. I used the example of a drunk person trying to talk to demonstrate the concept of incoherency in class earlier this evening.
I achieved a sort of writing epiphany this week, in the throes of NaNoWriMo. So I thought I'd share it with you, relating it to the four stages of enlightenment in Buddhism.
The interesting thing about these four stages is that they're not something one achieves in a single lifetime. It takes at least seven rebirths to get from start to finish, if you do everything right. The first stage, Sotāpanna (stream-enterer), is the lowest level. This means that you've embarked upon the Noble Eightfold Path, "opened the eye of the Dharma," and have complete confidence in the Three Jewels. You've jumped out on that road, as the Van Halen song goes. And you've pretty much secured yourself a get-out-of-jail free card: since you've attained, even at this initial stage, an innate knowledge of the inner workings of Buddhism, you won't be reborn as anything lower than a human in your next life. You'll probably wind up as human again for the second stage, but you won't become an animal or a demon. You're on the right track.
This is the stage that every fledgling writer goes through. You're in the bookstore, gazing with envious eyes at the names of all the published authors in your favorite section. You take one off the shelf and leaf through it. In a fit of ambitious fervor, you say to yourself, "I want a piece of the pie. I'm going to write a novel. If this guy/gal could do it, then so can I."
You rush home, breaking at least three traffic laws in your hurry to reach the nearest laptop or typewriter (or notepad and pen). You sit down...
...and discover that this is actually a lot harder than it looks.
Several hours, days, or possibly weeks later, with sheaves of wasted paper lying around the house (balled-up or blowing around intact), you admit that you've bitten off quite a bit more than you can chew.
This is it. The pivotal moment. The turning point. The critical juncture. Will you turn away from the path, forsake the way of the writer, and go off and do something more immediately and materially rewarding, like clearing minefields? Or will you stick to your guns? Keep seeking the elusive thrill?
It may take you a while to decide, but ultimately you come back. The typewriter calls to you. The laptop serenades you in your sleep. Every florid, stirring, eloquent bit of writing you've ever read comes back to haunt you, torturing you, taunting you to do better. After an indefinite period of soul-searching, caffeine, alcohol, denial, penury, penance, distraction and pain, you're back in front of a keyboard with your hair a mess, your colon on strike, your eyes bleary and your heart singing.
You've embarked on the path. You've entrusted your soul to the Three Jewels: Buddha (the highest spiritual ideal that exists within all beings, that of crafting tight prose, flowing style and the power to turn simple ink and paper into resonant gold); Dharma (the teachings of the Buddha, also called The Elements of Style); and Sangha (the community of those who have attained enlightenment, otherwise known as the bestseller list: the Faulkners, the Fitzgeralds, the Hemingways, the Plaths, the Lees, the Kings, the Grishams, et al).
Congratulations, you're a writer. Now what?
Stage Two: Sakadagami, the once-returner. You'll return to the human world once; after that, your rebirths take you progressively higher into the Pure Abodes. Now that you've cast off three of the worldly fetters (TV, the Internet, and cell phone games) and have gotten serious, you're on the fast track to success. This is the stage when you start to realize certain things about writing.
First, it's not as hard as you initially thought. If you practice, it gets a lot easier. The juices start flowing whenever you sit down at that keyboard. Some days are incredible, of course, and some are downright rotten; but you start to get the hang of getting the pure, immaculate picture in your head down on the page.
Second, you begin to let go of your search for perfection. As a stream-enterer, you were obsessed with getting things right the first time, and you savagely eviscerated any sentence, paragraph or page which didn't sing to you. There was nothing for you beyond the writing itself: no editing, no revision. You wanted it all down in one go, a finished product in the first draft. But when you got to the end and started looking over what you'd done, it all appeared puerile and hackneyed. So you tore it up, burned it, threw it out the window. Now, as a once-returner, you have a wider perspective. You may still edit as you go, and power to you; but you're more sanguine about letting things slide, checking them over in the editing, tweaking and pinching and shuffling things about. Writing is now about getting ideas and concepts down on the page; the revision process is where you tease out the fossils and unearth the gold.
Heaven only knows how long you remain in the second stage. I was there for almost three novel manuscripts and an unholy number of abortive attempts at short fiction. Now I'm not sure where I am: I think I'm sufficiently enlightened to embark upon Stage Three, but my short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction writings are just sucky enough to hold me back.
But let me explain the epiphany I had:
Relaxation.
Complete, utter, total relaxation.
This is my second NaNoWriMo. My first one was horrendous. I had all sorts of time, because Miss H was home in the states and I was still working at a hagwon, so I had the morning and a bit of the afternoon to write, write, write. But it was my first time writing on a schedule...and a rigid and demanding schedule at that. Earlier I had recognized the need to write on a daily basis, and get a sort of mental routine going; but I had been rather dissolute about implementing it. NaNoWriMo was a slap in the face, a wake-up call.
Now I have embarked upon a second year's NaNoWriMo. I'm being casual about it. I haven't logged in to the website. I haven't posted excerpts or word counts. I'm not keeping track of any of my fellow writers. I'm just penning the first 50,000 words of Novel #4. And it's easy.
You know why? 'Cause I'm chill.
Chiller than I've ever been before.
I outlined this book ages ago. It's the third installment of my magnum opus, my epic sci-fi action-adventure alternative history series. (Does that description get you excited? It does me.) For as many hours as I've spent actually writing the first three books of the series, I've spent at least ten times as many scribbling notes, random snippets of dialogue, and sketches of maps, vehicles, weapons, creatures, and characters in my various and assorted notebooks—dozens of them. I have hundreds of thousands of words in Notepad files and Microsoft Word documents: outlines, character bios, vignettes, timelines, back stories, synopses, summaries of events taking place before and after the main storyline, lists of vital statistics (names, birth dates, hair colors, eye colors, ages, nationalities, etc)...on and on and on. I have planned this shit out. Small wonder this third installment is rolling off my fingertips like Twinkies from an assembly line.
But it's more than that, though. I've learned to relax. I've learned not to worry about the many minor style errors, awkward grammatical constructions, contradictory characterizations, wooden lines of dialogue, shoehorned circumstance and contrived coincidence which worm their way into my writing. I reread at the beginning of every writing session, and my eyes unerringly find the problems and correct them. I've learned. And I'm still learning, a bit every day. I wouldn't say that I've developed my own signature style yet, but the gears are turning. I've come so far from the days when I would write drivel and fail to catch it in the editing. I'm starting to feel—to sense what great writing is, and how to approach it. I think I've even touched it on occasion. I've kept up with my reading: I finished Brave New World and am halfway through Part Two of Anna Karenina. Excellent works both. Read great writing, and ye shall produce great writing. Relax, and ye shall proceed. Take long walks (and go to the gym in the evenings) and your mind shall be cleared of clutter. Don't stress too much about your job or your filthy apartment or your poor lonely parents or your yellow teeth or your crazy cat, and you'll make out all right.
The third stage of writing enlightenment is learning to let go. Quit stressing about what Strunk and White scream in your ears. Don't disregard them, just don't let them intimidate you. Don't forget or forsake the rest of your life; don't be afraid to put down the pen and pursue it, either. Get a routine going, but keep your schedule open for introspective walks in the autumn sunshine, or a glass of beer with a friend, or a cup of tea on a rainy morning, or an afternoon with a pipe and a good book.
Relax. Chill out. You'll finish in due time. Have fun with the process. Keep working, keep practicing. Keep your feet on the path.
That was my epiphany.
Thanks to it, I think I'm at Stage Three: Anāgāmī. That means "non-returner." This is one who does not return to any human world after death. Having overcome sensuality, non-returners are reborn into five special worlds, the Pure Abodes. They are closing in on their goal: they have abandoned five out of the ten mortal fetters. They are well advanced.
I have two novel manuscripts completed, two more in the works, dozens of finished short stories, a smattering of novellas and novelettes, and even a couple of poems floating around. These were my stepping stones, my first tentative steps toward enlightenment, my awkward initiation into a larger world. Back then, writing was a chore, a nerve-wracking and embarrassing ordeal, like taking an exam that you hadn't studied for or having a conversation in a foreign language. Now it's like grabbing the tail of a runaway tiger—or a comet—and taking the ride of your life.
From here on out, the material I produce will continue to improve. I will tweak the stories I can tweak, abandon the ones I can't, and strive to climb higher up the ladder to the final stage. I aim to become an Arahant: a fully-awakened person. He has broken all ten fetters which bind souls to the cycle of rebirth, and will never be reborn into any plane or world again. These are the Faulkners, the Hemingways, the Fitzgeralds, the Frosts. These are the guys who just get it. As a second- or third-level acolyte, I can only imagine what the fourth stage has in store for me, but I can hazard a guess. I think that it's nothing more than the ability to sit down in front of a keyboard with a notebook, a pen, a dictionary and a thesaurus, bang out a really good novel and whip it into publishable shape in a month or so. No distractions, no (major) frustrations, no ineptitude, no self-consciousness, no insecurity, no hack writing, no fear, no harm, no foul: just skill. Talent. Practice. Ability. Perseverance. And well-deserved triumph.
The Arahant writer is like a master potter: able to walk up to a wheel and, with his bare hands, muscle memory, and a lifetime of hard-won knowledge and wisdom in his head, create a masterpiece. He may turn out a few stinkers now and then, but he'll be consistently good. And sometimes he'll be damn near perfect.
True craftsmanship, in other words.
That's the writer's enlightenment.
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