The MidLifeBloggers Writer’s Workshop is now in the Archives. This was the first of our sessions, published in September 2009.
The first thing I know about writing is that it’s a Process. Writing is not something you have done; it is something you are doing. Sound nitpicky? Actually, it’s a radical idea, which is blasphemous to the mindset of our culture. Think of it: inherent in my statement is the assumption that the product of your writing should not be the singular point of your writing.
Unfortunately, we in the Western world have been trained otherwise. We are a product-centered culture. Our tendency is to think that the things we do don’t matter until and unless they’re finished. Even more, for many of us, the things we do don’t matter until someone else values them. So we focus on our product, on getting it done and making it worth someone else’s approval.
But what if that product, that piece of writing, turns out, as is often the case, to be less than we imagined? Or, it doesn’t achieve the end we intended, get the comments, provoke the compliments? Then we’re dealing with the soul-sucking notion that our whole effort was a failure. Our goal was not met, our time was wasted, we let ourselves down. So now we’re depressed. And a depressed writer? Well, that’s a recipe for writer’s block.
It’s a trap, this process-product dichotomy, and it’s a habit, a knee-jerk habit that’s been so ingrained we slide into it without thinking. In order to avoid it, then, we need to break the habit,which is no easy task. Books have been written and articles published (all by writers who have no bad habits I’m sure) about breaking a habit. For me, I go back to my mother’s methodology for dealing with a child with undiagnosed ADHD. She was a big sign-maker, so the teddy bears on my bed all wore sandwich boards: Concentration. Pay attention. Stay seated. When I would start to wander, I’d see them and they’d refocus me.
These days I do it with Post-its. I stick them on my computer screen, my refrigerator, and my bathroom mirror. They say things like: Just do the writing. Forget finishing. Process, not product. it’s enough of a reminder, a memory jolt to get me out of that glorifying product mentality. And I still have one that says Stay seated, because I still have trouble with that.
Do you get stuck in the Process-Product dichotomy? How has it affected your work? Your pleasure in your writing? How do you get around it? Tell me in the Comments, please; we all need to hear!
Jane Gassner
