Sharpening the Myth of Recreational Work

So, this past week I had a friend call my writing "sharpening the saw". This is a reference to Stephen Covey's book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In his book Covey says that the seventh habit of effective people is sharpen the saw, or in other words, take care of yourself. Relax, exercise, take some me time. For the record, I think that's a good idea. But it got me thinking. Is that what my writing is? Is it just an activity to do so that I can go about the rest of my life more effectively?

No.

To be fair, my friend's comment came during a conversation in which I said in essence, "If I don't write, I am not effective in other areas of my life." So it does fill the same space as sharpening the saw in at least one way.

But here's where it's different for me.

When I was in school I would sometimes procrastinate an assignment. Ok, I procrastinated most of my assignments. When I would finally finish my assignments I would get the same feeling as when I write. A sense of accomplishment. The feeling of relief that I have completed a task that I've needed to get done. I get the same sense of accomplishment after any good day's work.

Sharpening the saw is generally an activity that clears the mind. A diversion. An enjoyment. My friend's example was video games. A perfect entertainment. It helps him de-stress after work.

And his comment got me thinking about a common misconception of many artistic professions. That it's fun. Easy. A game.

I use to think the same thing. I scheduled myself with a heavy workload and then I gave myself time to write so I could wind down.

When I was studying theater it was the same thing. And it's easy to understand. When you go to watch a play, you are enjoying yourself. When you sit down to read a book, you are escaping. When you sit down and boot up a video game it's fun. It's easy to forget that your enjoyment is the end result of hundreds of hours of hard work.

On top of that, it's easy to assume that writers are taking it easy because they choose to write in their free time. Writing can be cathartic. It can be entertaining. It can be relaxing. But most of the time it's hard work. I don't choose to write in my free time because I need to blow off some steam. I choose to write in my free time because no-one is paying me to do it. I write because I have stories that come to life in my mind, begging me to be set free. I have characters and scenes that fill my thoughts whether I look for them or not. I write because when I don't write, I feel like I am betraying the one good gift I have to offer the world. I write because I have to. But I don't write to sharpen the saw.

So, if you want to be a writer, don't be surprised if no one recognizes the hard work you're doing. It's not their fault. It's a different lifestyle.

And, always remember to take time to sharpen your saw.

Formula, form, experience

In studying writing, I've often encountered an idea that stories can happen some way other than chronologically. It's silly, of course, but let's start out with some vocabulary:

Story - The events that happen
Narrative - How the events are told

I know, these are not the real definitions. In fact, story and narrative are both words used to define each other. We could probably go back and forth about the best words for the job, but I'd rather talk about a particular concept and these two words are good enough for now.

Here's the concept.

A story goes on forever. A narrative has a beginning and an end.

It's the same relationship that a line segment shares with a line. A line segment is only part of the whole line.

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Why is this important? Because when people start to say that a story doesn't need to happen chronologically, that's baloney. The story moves from start to finish, and we can't stop it. If you write about someone's death and then write about their birth, they were still born first. And, here's the crucial point, as an audience we'll put the story back in it's natural order. When I watch a movie and the narrative takes me back and forth through time, my brain still takes the pieces of the narrative and puts them together chronologically. I make them into a story. It's what happens no matter how clever your writing. It's how the story happened. It's how the audience will understand it.

Now, when you understand what your audience is going to do (put the story back in order no matter what you do to mess it up), you can play around with narrative all you want. Do you have to tell the story in order? No! Tell it backwards, tell it forward, tell it inside out. Understand that your audience's brains will unravel everything you did by the time you get to the end, but then make that narrative journey exciting.

You can make your audience question the order of events. You can even help them step back and ignore the order if you want. But it's important to realize that the arc of a story happens the same way no matter what, and your audience will try to find that in your narrative. We're exposed to an idea, we struggle with the idea, and then we resolve the idea with our mental model of how the world works. That's how we interact with new information. That's how we interact with narratives.

So, just keep that in mind. No matter what, your audience is going to put the pieces of your story together in a way that makes sense. But how you present those pieces is totally up to you.