PART NINE: Tangents and other invented writing fears
if writing was a straight line, we wouldn't read each other's stories
You’re not off topic, you’re following the writing. (this is why they call me the #irreverentbookcoach on Instagram…saying it like it is …that’s my jam.)
Call it losing the thread, following a tangent or my favourite, going down the rabbit hole (thanks Lewis Carroll and Alice) —why are you saying it like that’s a bad thing?
Writing isn’t a controlled exercise. This isn’t a spaceship you’re launching with a checklist strapped to your thigh. This is creativity, alchemy, the evolution and convolution of ideas, and if you really need a metaphor… it’s a bowl full of fishhooks. You can’t pull just one because the one you tug first catches another or many others and brings those along too.
I get it, we like to feel like our direction makes sense. Our biology has us prepared to respond to the unknown in order to save our lives, but writers, you aren’t at risk by following an idea.
Sometimes the most interesting and innovative ideas emerge when we allow ourselves to explore those unexpected threads. Think of it as a journey where a detour might lead you to a hidden gem like Lake on the Mountain, a place here in Ontario, Canada. Let me remind you of some of the benefits of going where your marvellous brain sparks an inkling when you are writing…
Fresh insights come from exploration. What seemed unrelated when it first dawned on you will come into clarity and the journey there will deepen your reader’s experience of you and your message. Take the road less travelled by.
Exploration is brain fuel. I won’t go all neurobiology here, but new neural pathways keep our brain alive, and like any footpath in the forest, the discoveries may not be new but the way you see them can be, because the light changes, a rain just finished, and you’re not scared this time.
Writing is dynamic. Your response is what makes us human. We can never tell the same story twice, this is why rewrites from scratch work so well. Take what you wrote yesterday and start copying it over from the first sentence, then put it away, you’ll go somewhere different today. Find the subplots in the bracken.
An outline can be self-defeating. Cling too closely to an outline, or hold fast to the script without freedom to peek under branches and you’re likely to come up against a wall. You’ll start using words like stuck, and blocked. Creative paralysis is the outcome of outline writing.
Unrelated is inspiring. Intricate plots, metaphors and connections are born of new explorations. Your reader needs you to keep them stimulated, hopeful, curious and captivated, and you can do that by allowing yourself to go down the rabbit hole.
My suggestion… when the tug in a new direction comes, get up and wander around for five minutes while you test whether you really want to go there. Uncouple from the resistance by stepping away from the first impulse to say no. Come back to the page in five minutes and decide on the next paragraph.
Tangents are creativity nudging you to be brave. I’m talking about how to make use of them and all the tips to acceleratre your book into existence in my FOUNDATION program..have you heard?
Join FOUNDATION, a self-guided intensive for writers who are ready to craft their non-fiction book or memoir and don’t want to delay their dreams any longer. Go from “I wish” to “I did” with proven tools and advice previously only available in my exclusive, invite only masterminds.
