🧵 Thursday Thread: The Morning and Afternoon of Writing

Let's talk about how we write, our processes (including obstacles and supports). I'll start by sharing my theory about the "mornings and afternoons" of writing, and why it works for me (sometimes)!

I believe that cultivating an awareness of how we write—that is, who we are as writers, what works best for us, what feels good, what kind of frustration helps us and what kind of frustration hinders us, circumstances that can lead to breakthroughs, circumstances that tend to lead to blocks—helps us exponentially in our growth as artists.

Sure, we can look at our “output” and draw conclusions about ourselves as writers based on the “products” of our efforts. In other words, we can judge ourselves based on what we produce—pages, word count, publications, etc. And surely we will do some of this judging. It’s in our human nature.

However, if we can make time and space to observe ourselves as writers, our process as writers, we open up the possibility of artistic growth, and not just in terms of the art, but also in terms of our human potential. We develop ourselves when we learn to see ourselves, and we learn to see ourselves when we pay attention to our processes, which includes our habits, reactions, responses, failures, successes, etc.

In that light, I think of something I came up with back in 2017, when I had the chance to see Elizabeth Strout here in Minneapolis. She gave a talk through our library system’s author series. And she described her writing process, which involves spending the morning inventing characters and putting them into situations that make them feel something. She makes the characters feel something she has felt before—and to do this, she conjures the feeling she once. felt, the memory of that feeling (fear, joy, grief, elation, etc.) and then devises a way to make her character feel what she felt. That is her morning of writing.

Then she has lunch and takes a walk.

After lunch, she has to do the hard work of figuring out how these characters and the events she concocted for them relate to one another—how do they fit into a story together? What is the story? This is harder, she says, than the morning of writing, which is playful and free. The afternoon brings questions of logic, cause and effect, interrelated elements, etc.

Strout’s description of this process had a powerful effect on me, and I have adapted her way of thinking about her writing process, this idea of morning and afternoon, to something a bit broader, which is this:

In the morning of writing, I am drafting. I am finding the words and laying them out like stones. I am swooping them all back up and shaking them in a china cup to throw them down again—this time, more wild, more strange. I am testing things, playing with different options, moving things around like I have all day, like I have all year, like I have my whole life. I’m adding words as fast as I can and not worrying what they add up to. Then I’m slowing down and savoring this word, and that one, just for the thrill of it. I am deliberately resisting the urge to know what I am doing, let alone what I am writing.

That’s my morning of writing.

Then, in the afternoon of writing, I must face the harder work, or, at least, the very different work, of figuring out what to do with the beautiful messes I have made. What is this stuff I wrote? Are there any good parts? What is this pile of words trying to say, trying to become? What do I need to do to help it become something closer to what it already is, somewhere out there in the multiverse, where it has already been written, where it already exists?

That’s my afternoon of writing.

However, I don’t necessarily do the morning work in the morning nor the afternoon work in the afternoon. The times of day are not relevant to me (my life does not work that way!). Instead, morning is a metaphor for how I begin, and afternoon is a metaphor for how I finish. Except that, of course, I must alternate between “morning” work and “afternoon” work many times in a single essay, story, chapter, what have you.

In essence, I think of it this way:

The playful experimentation of the morning should never be wholly pushed aside for the more logical work of the afternoon. That spirit of play should always be there, even if just a pilot light, in order to allow for the sparks and flares that make work unique and beautiful and alive.

But the more logical and outcome-oriented work of the afternoon should always be pushed wholly aside in the morning of writing, in order to keep that space free, exploratory, and wild. If the logical, outcome-oriented work of the afternoon presses itself into the sacred and unmeasured work of the morning, it will put out or at least dampen the pilot light of possibility.

For me, this way of seeing my process works much better than the familiar metaphor of a “writing hat” and an “editing hat.” I’m sure that works for some people! But for me, seeing the nature of creative writing as significantly more fluid than “writing” and “editing” works better.

I have taught this method, or mindset, I guess, to many writers over the years, and many have found it helpful. Last week,

Teresa Powers

emailed me specifically to say she has found this framework helpful, and wanted me to reiterate it, so I figured I’d do it here, where everyone who might need it can benefit.

And with that, I turn to you: what are your processes, habits, frameworks for writing? Who are you as a writer? How have your processes changed? What have you let go of? What has transformed for you in regard to the way you work?

I have found that sharing our processes as writers is at least as valuable as sharing our work with each other … so let’s dive in.

How do you write? Do tell. Let’s learn from each other!

Love,

Jeannine

PS Threads/comments are for paid members, and you can upgrade/manage your membership here any time to join these beautiful conversations. Thank you so much for being here at Writing in the Dark!