The First Key: Clarity
In school, our English teachers told us to have a beginning, a middle and an end and to write out our points in advance. This is clarity imposed from the outside.
The creative writer, of fiction or non-fiction, clarifies a piece of writing in a different, more organic, way.
First, we let a first draft emerge. It comes from where? We’re not quite sure. We’re part of it but only a part. We are open, receptive. We let our imagination flow through the words, and the words flow through us.
When we’re first-drafting, we are like night drivers, headlights shining into the dark. We may know our ultimate destination, or we may not, and such notes as we may have are like occasional signs flashing up. All we can see is a few yards ahead.
It is enough.
This is very different to writing to a set, pre-ordained outline. This first draft is for us. It is what gives us clarity. Through it we come to know what we are writing about.
After we have written it, finished it completely, then we must draft again, and redraft, and edit, and polish — all as many times as is necessary for the reader to get just as clear as we are.
And in that exercise, in the opening ourselves to others, to how they will receive our words, we gain more clarity. More insight.
Sometimes as writers, we may need to to tease our readers, or puzzle them, or even keep our meaning obscure — but we have done the work, the drafting and redrafting, and so we are clear about our purpose.
In our finished work, we know what we are doing, and why, in every paragraph and every sentence.
3 Responses to “The First Key: Clarity”
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April 28th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Orna, Anytime I find confirmation that a detailed outline isn’t necessarily the only way to start writing, it lifts me up.
I learned the same rule in school; never followed it, only to win perhaps too much praise when I submitted what I wrote for a given assignment.
Yet, I still need to know I’m not writing everything incorrectly.
April 29th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Orna, I had a great teacher, many moons ago who likened the story to a skeleton. This was the bare bones (idea) but then we gave it shape and padded it out with muscles, then added the limbs. The final polish was the head and features.
Mary A. Ryan.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Kathleen: I know what you mean. Not knowing is always so disconcerting. I think the more we do it, go with it, and see it work out, the easier it gets… (sometimes!)
Mary: Nothing like a good teacher, is there? We remember them all our lives. I have a theory that all writers had a good English teacher somewhere along the way. I like this metaphor - embodied writing! At the moment I feel like I’m down at the ankle bones of my new novel…working my way up.