Tip No. 1: Journey or Destination?

This might be termed the “why exactly are you writing” section. From my observation, it’s critical to be brutally honest with yourself when you consider the issue, for this is, in one sense, the foundation for everything to do with your writing – how and when you do it, the attitude you take toward it, the tools you feel are necessary, the output you consider acceptable, the amount of time required to produce it, etc.

Writing as a Journey
For some writers, the process of writing is its own reward and the output incidental – these individuals are on a journey.

For example, I have a friend – a very good writer – who has been working for years on a fictional treatment of an episode in the history of the New Hampshire town in which she grew up. Occasionally, she gets frustrated at her lack of progress and complains to me that she can’t understand why it’s taking her so long. To the objective observer, one obvious answer is that she writes only “when the mood strikes,” another is that she is something of a literary Luddite who refuses to use even an electric typewriter, much less a PC, as she feels that this would pollute the writing process and somehow make what she is doing less significant. (I would guess that it’s impossible to write – or, especially, revise – very quickly using an antique Waterman fountain pen!) Another clue might lie in the fact that she has confessed to spending as much as a week pondering exactly the right adjective to use. Thinking it might aid her in this quest, I gave her a copy of Rodale’s Synonym Finder, an invaluable little tool I discovered in grad school, but her response was lukewarm. It seems that such an easy out was not quite “the thing.”

There’s certainly nothing wrong with wishing to employ a highly personal writing process. My friend is writing because she loves to write, and that’s wonderful. I respect her for doing it her way, but it has occurred to me that she would be happier if she would admit to herself that her approach matters as much to her as any result and to accept that she’s having fun, however long it takes her to complete the book.

Writing as a Destination
For some writers, the process of writing is no more than a means to an end, existing only to serve the goal. Not for these stalwart souls the happy meanderings of happenstance byways; rather, they employ whatever approach will enable them to produce their desired output in the most-efficient way possible. They tend to write to a schedule or at least to have a writing routine. They usually have whatever tools will help them work most efficiently. They control their process and change it at will as needed, acknowledging it simply as something that enables them to get done what they need, or want, to do.

“Destination” types usually have some benchmark that they hit each day, no matter what – so many words or so many hours. Many big-time professional writers work in this way. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), for example, one of the most successful and prolific fiction writers ever, wrote for several hours every morning, wherever he was and whatever the circumstances.

Why All Writers Should Know Whether They’re “Destination” or “Journey” Types
There is no “correct” or “incorrect” way to approach writing, so why should we waste time worrying over the way in which we like to do it? Yet “Journey” types often worry at their inability to finish things as quickly as others, and “Destination” types sometimes suspect that they have “sold out” to efficiency rather than allowing their work to “mature” and “ripen.” This is a complaint that I have occasionally heard from those who do corporate writing – brochures, videos, web sites, all the methods used by large corporations to communicate with their multiple target populations – who sometimes get depressed at the fact that they are just, to use their terminology, “churning out words.”

If each of us accepts that we have a different way of going at things, then we can’t be either “wrong” or “right,” just true to ourselves, which is the basis for good writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, whatever the format and intended reader.

© 2009, Gail Hewitt. All rights reserved.

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