Marilynne Robinson wrote in the New York Times Book Review on 24 Sept. 2017: “Writing should always be exploratory. There shouldn’t be the assumption that you know ahead of time what you want to express. When you enter into the dance with language, you’ll begin to find that there’s something before, or behind, or more absolute than the thing you thought you wanted to express. And as you work, other kinds of meaning emerge than what you might have expected. It’s like wrestling with the angel: On the one hand you feel the constraints of what can be said, but on the other hand you feel the infinite potential. There’s nothing more interesting than language and the problem of trying to bend it to your will, which you can never quite do. You can only find what it contains, which is always a surprise.”

True. Even if we do try, we try in vain to explain instead of explore. And every time we find it to be so, that whatever we imagined producing is altered by the act of putting it in language – which is always different, always something else, and always better than what we fancied our wits might conjure. It is indeed a delight to be one’s first reader.

Singing songs like the ‘The Man I Love’ or ‘Porgy’ is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck.    – Billie Holiday

This is where we want to be, isn’t it? No matter whether we are writing, running, in a meeting at work, making cheesecake, or practicing our piano, we want to be where Billie was when she was singing – eating it up!

So how do we do this?

1. Identify your Chinese roast duck. What is that thing that you love?

2. Withhold judgment about that thing you love. Unless it is immoral or unethical or will hurt you or others, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about it or whether it will make money.

3. Make the decision that your Chinese roast duck is going to be a central focus of your life. It’s OK, go ahead, make it a central focus.

4. Eat your Chinese roast duck every single day. Do not go to bed without having eaten your roast duck. Treat it as if it is the one thing you have to do in order to stay alive.

[Your thing here] is no more work than sitting down and [your favorite food here], and I love [your favorite food here].      – [Your name here]

“If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” – Mahatma Gandhi

In the dictionary of idioms, if you look up ‘biting off more than you can chew’, there will be a picture of me sitting with my laptop writing my book. (Maybe in your dictionary the picture is of you – writing, planning your own business, on a treadmill.) Many of us have story ideas that are large and unwieldy and beyond our immediate, possessed capabilities. We write armed only with the knowledge we gained yesterday and a hope for what might be known tomorrow.

There is an oasis to which we must return over and over along the way – the pool of simple belief that we can indeed do it. It is a blind belief. We may not be capable, yet, but capability will come with the course. Capability breeds capability. It is only after we have accomplished a task that we have the skill and ability to do it. This is the difference between doing something the first time and doing it the second time. This is the way-station on the road to mastery. It is in doing that we become.

There is no way of achieving true form without opening possibilities of all manner of travesties.

– Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

One does not typically go to a theological text looking for writing advice. It’s no secret that such texts are not easy reading and are not concerned with creative craft. Both are true for Zornberg. This quote is from her book about Genesis. She makes it while discussing God’s acts of creation. But, when I read it I was stunned by its application to the craft of writing, its encouragement of first drafts – of first drafts of first paragraphs.

In fact, this may be the best principle, the best guidance for a first draft that I have ever read. It is critical that a writer get his or her head around the truth of this statement.

Anne Lamott* refers to the value of really crappy first drafts. Same thing. The first draft, the “opening possibilities” is the first step toward writing what readers will joyfully read. It is the only first step. There is no other starting place – not thinking, not talking about it, not reading, not plot outlining, not research – “true form” will result from none of these.

“All manner of travesties” are in store for the craftsman. This is good news. This means he has started, the dust unsettled.

*Assuming you have read “The War of Art” by Pressfield, you should now read “Bird by Bird” by Lamott. By ‘now’ I don’t mean this week or next, I mean as soon as possible after you read this last word.