Becoming a Writer

Dorothea Brande published Becoming a Writer in 1934. In it, she does not offer instruction on the writer's craft or tools of the trade but instead discusses the writer's inner life - their mind and heart. Her theory is that so many aspiring writers look to published authors as having cracked some sort of code or found a magic elixir and that is how they can call themselves a writer and work as one. She says this is codswallop, there is no magic ingredient, all you need is the discipline and focus to write every day and then you can go on to learn plotting, dialogue etc and be able to make use of the skills you learn. To do this, she says a writer must live as two people, splitting the self into the creative, unconscious-driven part and the out-in-the-world business-like part - the part that edits, rewrites and promotes the fruit of the creative's labours.

Her first task in order to "live as a writer" is to write every morning for as long as you can, preferably while still in bed. I am familiar with Julia Cameron's Morning Pages (writing three pages of unedited longhand after rising) from The Artist's Way and I am supposing that Cameron has lifted it from Brande. This proves that it must have some merit and use. I have attempted Morning Pages (as I will call them from now on) for so many years. I think the longest I stayed with them was two months or so. I have experienced benefit from them, but having not set out a time in the day to formally write I have not fully integrated the practice into my life. This I must do.

The first time I read Brande's book I was pleased with the familiar task and wrote upon waking for a good few weeks. But I didn't keep it up, and I didn't designate a set time of day to work on my "official" writing. I was pregnant at the time and other things took precedence eventually (namely sleep). But Brande gives a warning at the end of Chapter 6 that stops my heart and chills my blood!

'Right here I should like to sound the solemnest word of warning that you will find in this book: If you fail repeatedly at this exercise, give up writing. Your resistance is greater than your desire to write, and you may as well find some other outlet for your energy as of late.' -p79

While I agree that the resistance in the past was great than the desire, I have overcome these and now am locked-in, booted-up and ready to go. The thought of never writing, even though my writing life up to this point has been rather skeletal and dry, fills me with such panic, horror and dread for the future and it's all I can do not to throw the book across the room and howl in despair.

I love proving people wrong. I love doing the opposite of expectation. So Dorothea Brande can go whistle, because I can do as she asks and I will, one day, write fluently on demand as she promises.

The reason why I listen to this woman is because in the proceeding chapters before this heartless warning she writes lovingly of me. Me and my soul. Of the writer immobilised by fear, by self-consciousness, by embarrassment that one could perfect this craft and take on that lofty title of "writer". She knows what's in writers' hearts and yearning souls, and she offers reassurance and guidance.

So, Job One. Morning Pages. I'm on it.