I was doing some housework the other day while listening to a Spotify playlist, which is pretty well the only way I can do household chores. I’m in a numb groove, the music plays and I sing along when it takes me, skipping songs every now or then, or pumping up the volume for the good ones, while like an automaton I clean and polish.
An Audioslave song comes on. It’s the late and great Chris Cornell with his smoky, resonant voice urging us to Be Yourself and I pause for a moment to increase the volume. Then back to work, I am, moving to the music, belting it out as I’m wiping down the kitchen bench, and it triggers something me, bang, like that.
I’d been struggling with my writing. I felt uninspired and everything I wrote seemed dull and lifeless. Words on a page. There are musical equivalents to that, but this song wasn’t one of them. It’s vibrant and Cornell’s voice gives it a sinuous grace, even as the bassline drives it along. It’s not the greatest song ever, but it’s vibrant and real – and that’s what you want in your writing, something vibrant and real. And I’m feeling it when the sentiment hits me: be yourself.
God knows that’s something I’ve tried to live by in my life and mostly succeeded, though not always to best effect. In theory, it’s what you want in your writing too – it’s your unique voice and perspective that’s going to sell it. But then writing is a more conscious business. To be yourself truly when you write is to go out on a limb, fearful that it may snap behind you. It’s much safer, much easier, to retreat into writerly habits.
On your bookshelves are your idols, great writers with a diverse range of voices and perspectives, every one of them different, but when pressed you go back to them. How would so-and-so write this, or what’s his name? It becomes an exercise in consciously grinding the prose out, bereft of inspiration. You write how you think you should write, rather write how it feels natural.
And that’s what I realised suddenly as I was wiping down the kitchen bench. I had become a technician churning out words that almost by definition must be dull and lifeless. I may as well have been writing a textbook. I wasn’t writing from what I felt. I was sitting there disengaged from the urge that had led me to write in the first place. The creativity that animated me had been submerged by a conscious mind too busy thinking. My instinct, my voice, had deserted me.
I went back to my work and just about dumped the last weeks’ worth of writing. I returned to the well, letting myself feel the story again and not simply think it. Why was this story important? Where did it come from? What did it mean? Where was I in it? I let it return to me slowly, let it fill me again until I knew it again like fate yet to be written.
There’s a spirit of irreverence in this. This is your story, why concern yourself with the rules imposed by others? Let it go. Let it be. Let it flow through you, let the words come, fresh and with a zip. Tidy it later if you need to (and you certainly will), but give it life by letting it go.
So, I got back inside of the story and let it drive me forward and all I did was use the words given me.
I think it’s very easy to lose your way when writing, particularly when something comes of it. I think that’s one reason some authors struggle so badly writing their second novel. They have become self-conscious with what they have achieved. They try to emulate it. They force it. With a bit of success, they feel as if they have now to measure up to a higher standard, but it was the standard they achieved without a conscious thought that matters.
Everyone has a different opinion and there’s probably no right way or wrong way, except what is right or wrong for you. My two cents worth is that stories come from inside, and it’s from inside you must write. You can’t search for stories outside you and hope for them to be real. You have to own them, have to live them in a way – as real as your own life – just in a different dimension.
I’ll have to remind myself of this, again and again, I’m sure: be yourself. That’s the good stuff.