In the pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Dao,
every day something is dropped.
Laozi, Daodejing, verse 48 (translation Stephen Mitchell)1
Years ago I wrote a Masters dissertation on interpreting between Japanese and English for elite athletes in competitive sporting environments such as the Olympics. In the course of my research I came across an obscure corner of linguistic theory that explores the texture of language through the metaphorical use of physics. Originating from research by Kenneth L Pike, this corner of tagmemics discourse theory looks at how language behaves like particles, waves and fields.2
We can take this into our writing practice by considering how the thing we are writing about – an object, event, person, idea or memory – appears as a particle (we describe it), how it changes over time like a wave (we consider how it got here, and what might happen to it next), and the field it resides in (we consider how it is connected to everything else, its purpose and associations with other things).
We can also use it in when shaping (by which I mean editing and refining) our work. First we consider the particle (each individual word, sentence, paragraph or section, and its meaning, sound and suitability), then we consider the wave (how it changes over time; that is, how the piece itself develops, and the change it might bring about in the reader as a result of reading it), and then the field (the context of the piece in relation to other pieces, such as chapters in a book, and the wider context of the piece in the world, in the context of other writing out there).
Besides this, one of the most important things I learnt from my studies about interpreting and translation was that there are two elements to an effective transfer between languages. One is the accuracy of meaning, and the other is the impact of the language. The first is specific and technical, requiring extensive knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. The other is nuanced and emotional, and I think it’s why so many accomplished translators make extraordinary poets.
The decisions we make when we shape language with the listener or reader in mind impact the way our offerings are received. This work of shaping is what I call ‘solid-state writing’. It’s the creative state we are in when we are revisiting and restructuring, removing, reordering, sculpting and polishing. We start with a piece of our own writing – a paragraph, a page, a whole chapter – and we make it shine. Solid-state writing smooths our words to polished ice, and our work becomes a captivating prism that can refract the truth like light.
This is the territory of most writing courses and books. How to write better sentences. How to work on character and plot. How to structure your work. How to make it do this or that. We can hone our sculpting skills through practice, guidance and reading of other work.
There is much talk among writers about how hard it is to accept our first drafts, allow them to be awful, and carry on. Allowing them to be awful is good advice, but I’m not sure that bashing out a full draft early on then staring at it in despair is a particularly healthy way to write in the first place. Personally, I uncover what I want to write as I write, and it arrives in bursts. I write in fragments so small that I don’t feel compelled to judge them in a way that I might judge a whole messy draft, and I use solid-state writing to hone each one. I later merge these pieces into longer sections, and merge those to create chapters, and a book. Of course not everyone does it this way, but it works for me.
In this sense I rarely have a blank page, because I capture fragments floating in the breeze, pin them to the paper, and begin from there. When I come to weave all the pieces together into a full draft, those carefully shaped fragments feel like a gift from an earlier version of myself.
If you write fiction and feel compelled to spill the whole story in one go and edit later, try this: spill it, then put it away in a drawer and start afresh. Work on fragments for a while: a scene here, a conversation there. Polish the tiny pieces, and then feed them back into the longer piece. See how they lift it.
Of course, there comes a point where all the pieces have to be woven together, with chapter titles and so on. It’s only at this late stage that I have something I might call a draft. Perhaps this is just semantics, but we know how important words can be.
Solid-state writing: Distil. Simplify. Polish.
There are many layers to this kind of writing, from choosing what to take out and what to leave in, to making final decisions about word selection, and reviewing whether you have accurately rendered the picture in your head onto the page. As we do this primarily with the thinking mind, our judgemental thoughts are never too far away, so it can help to have a focused process for assessing our own work. In my book The Way of the Fearless Writer I offer specific questions you can ask yourself to help shape your work without getting overwhelmed by your own self-doubt.
The thing is, the shaping of language is both science and craft. It can be learned, and it tends to improve with age and attention. Shaping might be tricky, but it is not, in and of itself, a scary thing.
The problem comes when we think about sharing our work. I have noticed something curious about our sharing behaviour. We writers often say that we are scared to share our work, and yet we often share it too early, in a kind of blurting out, inviting criticism for a piece that isn’t yet ready. By ‘ready’ I mean shaped in a way that translates both the meaning and experience we want it to offer. I believe that an important way to avoid much of the fear and the criticism is to give time and attention to solid-state writing before we share our work with the world.
I’m not sure why but so many of us have a tendency to trust other people’s opinions of our writing over our own, but we do, and this often leads to us seeking feedback before we have properly reviewed the work ourselves. I encourage you to get out of this habit and build trust in your own solid-state writing skills. You are the only person who can see the image you are trying to render on the page. Learn to feed back on your own work before requesting feedback from anyone else, and you will find that you can share with more confidence when the time comes.
I’ll leave you with this thought - back in the 8th century, Indian scholar Bhavabhuti wrote a wonderful poem about how critics scoffed at his work, but he didn’t care because he wasn’t writing for them. It ends, ‘I write these / poems for a person / who will one day be born / with my sort of heart.’3
If we write what we know to be beautiful, and hope that it is one day shared with people whose hearts appreciate the same kind of beauty, surely that is enough.
Beth X
PS If you want to build your confidence in writing and sharing in a supportive environment, you might just love my private writing community SoulCircle, hosted here on Substack. With weekly writing inspiration, bi-seasonal Live Writing Circles, quarterly Q&As on all aspects of the writing life and twice-yearly virtual writing retreats, as well as access to a gorgeous community of writerly friends from across the world, it’s the loveliest place to spread your writing wings. To join just upgrade to paid or click here and choose Monthly to try it out or Annual to get a lovely discount.
Beth Xx
NOTES:
This is an adapted extract taken from my book The Way of the Fearless Writer. All editions (hardback, ebook and audiobook) come with access to a complementary album of meditations to inspire your own writing. The meditation offered at the beginning of this essay first appeared on that album. May these offerings help many words to flow from deep within.
You can also learn more about how to shape your work in my writing immersions, Ink+Flame, River of Words and Life+Time.
The audio at the top of this essay is a meditation to accompany this essay. It is not a voiceover version of the written text. Please do have a listen and enjoy it.
This essay is part of a series about how understanding the ‘three states of writing’ can help us write fearlessly. You can find Part One here (which includes an introduction to the ‘three states of writing’ and Part Two here.*
Lao Tzu (trans. Mitchell, Stephen), Tao Te Ching (London: Frances Lincoln, 2015), verse 48. No page number available. Note: the original uses ‘Tao’ instead of ‘Dao’, and ‘Lao Tzu’ instead of ‘Laozi’ but I have taken the liberty of changing it for consistency with other references in my book The Way of the Fearless Writer.
Pike, K and Brend, R.M., Language as Particle, Wave, and Field (1972) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/LANGUAGE-AS-PARTICLE%2C-WAVE%2C-AND-FIELD-Pike-Brend/7447b4ba7c2eb974b9eb8be6a4d74c5a0158209b. Retrieved January 15, 2022
Bhavabhuti (trans. Schelling, Andrew), untitled poem in Dropping the Bow: Poems of ancient India, (New York: White Pine Press, 2008)
Image: Holly Bobbins
