Writing with the doors closed?

The question appears across the arts. I think the answer is to write for yourself. The alternative involves a degree of speculation about what might please others. Pepsi offered a recent example of how difficult this is, despite their spending millions on trying to discern market tastes. Even if you do manage to get it right there's nothing to say you won't find yourself on the wrong side of some future paradigm shift. Also, if you set out trying to please others you risk inviting contrivance into your work, a fundamental artistic failing (in my humble opinion).

 

Writing for yourself, or pursuing any artistic goal solely for personal satisfaction, is a cop out.
If you write fiction, you're a storyteller. A storyteller must engage an audience, and entertain their butts off!

 

Nope. They all support my point. That writing comes from within you and should not be subject to what other people think ...and, as Raymond Carter said ..."It is the writer’s particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes. It is his world and no other." It can't be 'no other' if other people create that world with you, can it?

I don't see any room in these statements for 'I share my ideas with other people and brainstorm my ideas with them.'

Not that there's anything wrong with that method, if you don't feel that way of working holds you back. (It certainly does hold some people back.) But I just wanted to demonstrate that some famous, bestselling modern authors also think writers should come up with their own writing by themselves.

 

They really don't... read them again?

 

Yes. What you're talking about here is the end game, and yes, if you're going to be successful, you have to get an audience on board. But you can choose to get them on board with your own story. Not one you've brainstormed into being with other people's input.

 

What point do you think I was trying to make?

 

That we shouldn't share ideas or seek/accept feedback before an arbitrary stage.

My stories are my stories, no matter who I share them with and at what stage. I'm not sure why that's so hard for you to grasp!

 

@jannert
I feel for your argument. I've read King's On Writing. It's uncanny how sound all his advice seems to me- it could have been me writing that book.

From first hand experience, writing with "open doors" doesn't work. Obviously you feel the same.


However, if even one person here is finishing novels using "open doors", well, there goes our argument :/


It's possible that the endless questions of "should I do this?" "Is this offensive?" "how do I write a pangender minority from Tibet without making them look like a token character?" Are more often symptoms of not being able to finish a novel rather than the causes.

 

Yes, I agree with the first statement. The 'arbitrary stage' I go for is the finish of the first draft of the story. That way the whole story is my own. If it fails in some way, then I'm happy to take on other people's criticism, and adjust accordingly. But I want the original story to be mine and mine alone.

The authors I quoted didn't say when they would share their work, but since they are published authors they obviously do—at some point. Here they are talking about where they think writing comes from, and how authors must dig into themselves to find it. Harper Lee said : It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. Margaret Atwood said that in order to write truth (and she's a fiction author so she doesn't mean non-fiction) you need to write as if nobody else will ever read it. Neither of them sound as if brainstorming story ideas is what they think authors should do while they're writing.

However, my quotes were actually in response to @BayView 's joke about how real authors never generalise. I quoted these pieces as a return joke, to show that yes, sometimes they do!

Regarding your second statement. Yes, of course you will have the final decision (before you take the story to your editor) as to what input you're keeping and what you're discarding. So in that sense, your story is your story and nobody else's unless you formally co-author the book.

However, the ideas that make up the story are not all yours. Instead, some are other people's ideas for your story that you thought were pretty good, so you adopted them, and altered your story accordingly. In my view, that makes the story not quite 'yours' in the same sense as if all the ideas in it came from you.

I've just finished (well, actually shortly before Christmas) two books that might be of interest regarding this topic.

Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors, by Sarah Stodola
and
Page Fright: Foibles and Fetishes of Famous Writers, by Harry Bruce

Both of them deal in detail with how writers work and the writers' philosophies about writing.

The first book (which is VERY interesting to read) has lengthy chapters on some authors from the recent past, but also several who are writing now, and selling well. Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie.

The second book is more anecdotal, focusing mainly on fears, superstitions and rituals authors suffer from or adhere to, but it covers many more authors ...again, from the past through the present day.

I don't recall any of these authors brainstorming ideas before they write them. There may be a few I missed (as I wasn't looking for this issue in particular), but what struck me about the way most authors write is how seriously they expect the writing to come from within themselves.

I'm not saying you shouldn't brainstorm. I'm a great believer in 'do what works.' But although it's a popular notion on this forum in some circles, it does not appear to be what most authors do at the beginning stages of their writing.

 

@jannert True, but there's still the fact that you're the one who was deciding whether or not to use the other person's idea. That makes the advice research rather than co-writing

Imagine a painter who has never seen the color yellow before. He paints a picture with blues and greens and reds and purples and browns and pinks, and somebody sees it half-finished and notices that there isn't any yellow. Should the person keep the existence of the color yellow a secret until after the painting is finished?

 

It might well turn out that the colour yellow isn't needed in that painting at all. But of course if the painter thinks he needs to stick yellow in there—because somebody told him he ought to be using it like everybody else does—then he'll change the painting. Yes, he'll be holding the brush when that happens, but it won't be his original vision. His original painting might have been a lot more elegant and harmonious and unusual. We'll never know.

 

It's not a good analogy. Jannert certainly researched her material behind "closed doors." That's not what she's talking about(I don't think).

 

I think some people do finish novels, using brainstorming. @Tenderiser is certainly one of them. She's finished several books and has an agent ...and may she soon be published as she wants to be. She's worked hard for it, and deserves it, in my opinion. I've read one of her books and part of another, and they are really enjoyable, witty stories that are well-written.

I am concerned that some people who need constant input do get stuck, though ...for whatever reason. But then again, so do some people who write all on their own.

I am more concerned about originality. I think it's good for writers to generate their own ideas and make their own decisions and solve their own problems.

Here is a beta reader giving feedback on what they see as a problem for the reader : I'm not convinced that she would be able to get into the castle by just walking in like that. She would be immediately recognised as a peasant, and thrown out. You, the writer, agree that this part of the finished story needs work, and you go away and figure out some way for your character to get into the building more convincingly. Job done.

But then there is the brainstorming idea exchange that takes place near the beginning of the writing process. What if your main character was a visiting nobleman instead of a peasant woman? That way he could get into that castle without being noticed. Of course that means he won't get pregnant later on, so that whole part of the story would need to change, but that also means he wouldn't fall in love with the prince, so he can inherit the throne himself by simply marrying the old queen.... The writer thinks this is a fabulous idea, and writes the 'brainstormed' version of the story that is much different from the story they meant to write.

It doesn't necessarily make for a bad story, but it won't have come from the heart and head of the writer.

 

I don't think it's black and white like that. I don't think that originality has to only come from one source with no input from other people.

I'll use a personal example:
I go to breakfast every two or three weeks with a friend of mine who also enjoys writing and reading. I look forward to these meetings because he acts as a sort of sounding board for my ideas. During breakfast we talk about story ideas, characters, plots, etc. and I get a chance to talk my way through my own ideas. Just the act of saying things out loud to another person energizes my own creativity. Often, I'll arrive at a new and interesting location without a word from him because I'm saying it out loud rather than just leaving it to sit in my head. I become more creative when I can discuss these things with another person. When he makes suggestions, I bounce off of those suggestions and go somewhere else. He doesn't tell me what to write and I don't tell him what to write. We just talk and our brains seem to be able to synthesize ideas a little better.

Is he writing my stories? Am I no longer the creator of my work? Is my work any less original that someone who prefers solitude?
No. No. No.


As an aside, I wonder if this conversation has any correlation with planners vs pantsers. I've tried planning and it absolutely extinguishes my excitement for a story. Maybe there's something to the concept that some people are more actively creative and others are passively creative. For me, I need to be doing something for my creativity be engaged: talking, writing, etc. Maybe other people can just sit and brainstorm by themselves, but that doesn't work for me.

But to say that my work is any less original or my own is just a little bit silly, no?

 

I can't argue with that, if it brings you success. If brainstorming simply means spurring you on to think of your own ideas and get them on a more solid footing, then I withdraw my argument, and apologise to @Tenderiser as well for picking her up wrongly. I wouldn't brainstorm a story myself, but if others do, that's fine.

If it means taking other people's ideas and making them your own, however, then that grey area becomes a little bit blacker. At what point do you end up writing somebody else's story? You may be very energised to write somebody else's story, but it won't be your own.

 

And if the painter decides for himself that a new vision of his painting that includes yellow is more elegant and harmonious than his original vision obviously, he shouldn't be forced to do so, but being forced not to seems like the same thing to me.

I love collecting information, and I am constantly changing my visions of my stories when I discover new information - regardless of whether it was intended explicitly as a possibility for my story or whether it was self-contained with its own purpose - that I feel creates a more interesting vision than my original. But I'm also constantly rejecting information that I could put in my stories, but which I feel would make the new vision less interesting than the original, rather than more.

The information itself does not come from me, but the information's place in my story does

Maybe she didn't, but I certainly look at suggestions in the same way that I look at research

 

This is a bit of a non-sequitur because if I write it, it's my own story. If someone else wrote it, they would write it differently, probably wildly differently. I can't write something that someone else would have written. Someone else can't write something that I would have written. That can't happen because no two people share the same perceptions about life, prose, sentences, cadence, rhythm.

Are you saying that drawing inspiration from outside of my own brain is writing someone else's story? Like, if my friend says, "wouldn't it be interesting if...(fill in the blank)," and I say, "oh yeah that would be interesting. He could...(fill in the blank)." Is that me writing someone else's story, or is that drawing inspiration from an outside source?

 

I'm loving the Buddhist overtones of this discussion. If you discuss your writing with someone on day 1, or day 100, how much is the writing still "yours"? But then again, how much is any part of our life truly just ours? Is individuality itself an illusion, are what we think of as individual personalities just confluences of external forces that come together for a while, drift apart, then come back in a different configuration? Heavy stuff, maaaaan (he says, on 4/20).

Personally I prefer keeping the doors closed, but I would never suggest that there's a good reason for that. Or even a reason related to my writing. It's mostly because I'm an extremely paranoid person by nature, and have a pathological need to keep secrets from everyone. That's not to say that everyone who is Team Closed Doors is like that! Just that it's a bigger question, sometimes, than just the writing process. We can't ever really separate where our writing-lives end and the rest of our lives begin, you know?

*coughs*

 

I'd say, for me at least, that would never happen. Because I never talk about a story I'm working on until it's done, and certainly never ask for input on it until I've edited it myself at least once. For you ...I dunno. It seems like a grey area. If you're taking on your friend's idea for what might happen in YOUR story ...I'd say you're compromising yourself a bit. That's not a judgement, by the way. Just an observation. You did ask!

 

I just read a writer's quote where Gabriel Garcia Marquez said writing was like being in your underwear. "When I sit down to write, which is the essential moment in my life, I am completely alone. Whenever I write a book, I accumulate a lot of documentation. That background material is the most intimate part of my private life. It's a little embarrassing - like being seen in your underwear. It's like the way magicians never tell others how they make a dove come out of a hat.”

 

There's a difference between my friend saying, "this is the story I'm going to write," and me taking that story and writing it myself - and my friend and I discussing interesting plot ideas that neither of us had laid claim to. The former is morally unacceptable. I wouldn't do that because I'm not an asshole.

But, even if I did pull an asshole move, the story would still be mine. Because I wrote it and it would be different from what he would have written.

It certainly sounds like a judgement when you say I'm compromising myself by having a different creative process from you.

 

Well, I guess I am making a judgement, because I don't agree with the method, and I do see it as compromising your own ability to come up with a storyline by yourself. But it's not a judgement of you, and certainly isn't a moral judgement at all—in fact you've made a good case for your method. I just think you might be selling yourself short.

Like I said several times on this thread ...do whatever works. I do accept that everybody works differently. My opinion is only my opinion. It doesn't carry any particular weight. But it is my opinion.

 

The thing is that it's not about my ability to come up with a storyline. I do that frequently. It's about enhancing my creativity in a way that sometimes works for me, but a way that I also enjoy. You are entitled to your own opinion. But it's just kind of shitty to say your process is real creativity and mine is unoriginal, compromised, etc.