Monday Morning Writing Motivation: Create Yourself

It's May! A new month, so I wanted to convey something about how writing can change you and turn you into something new. Because that's what writing does. Anyone who writes regularly knows that the process requires a metamorphosis. For better or worse, you are not the same person having written as you were when you started writing.

I think in general it's for better, because writing is not only a process of creation but a process of discovery. Even if you know the generalities of your story ahead of time – the plot outline, the characters' flaws, the location descriptions, etc. – there are still a lot of things you need to discover about your own story along the way. To have a story worth reading, you can't just insert a bunch of generalities. Specifics need to be tailored and reshaped and sometimes thrown out and created anew from scratch.

That creative process does not apply just to the story, though. A writer is by definition adaptable, understanding that no story can be produced that exactly matches the initial spark of an idea. Like all nature, a story needs to grow, to evolve over time, to change with its environment. The writer grows and evolves and changes over time along with the story. It's a positive feedback loop, synergistically improving both the writer and the story with each iteration.

I haven't read a lot of Octavia Butler's works, but the few stories I have read are very good. The Parable of the Sower is a dark, yet hopeful, dystopian tale about a young African-American woman who becomes an inspirational leader in a post-apocalyptic United States. However, it's also very much a story of remaking, of how the young woman has to comes to terms not just with who she is, but also with who she could become if she allows herself and works to make it happen. There is both a passive and an active quality to it, kind of like a mental tai chi with one part always extending while another part is always contracting.

So in this new month of May, how is your writing going to change you? How will you let it change you? How are you going to work to change yourself?

Monday Morning Writing Motivations

• April 24: Wake Up and Write!
• April 17: Benjamin De Casseres