By Ken Delpit
“Just write.”
It sounds so simple. It seems so wrong, and yet is so right. Planning and preconception have their places, certainly. But it really is OK, and better, to just write. Leave behind the pressures, the impediments, the anxieties. Put aside your doubts, your fears, your insecurities. Just write.
Let it go. Let it flow. Write without knowing what comes next. Let yourself be surprised by yourself. Don’t peek beyond the current thought. Deal with the moments in front of you, around you, within you. Don’t make it happen. Let it happen.
Just write. It sounds so easy. And it can be. When the shackles are discarded, one’s pace can go from stumbling to walking, and from walking to running. The bottleneck can move from its usual place, the mind, to the fingers, which are suddenly unable to keep up.
But “Just write” as a guiding convention is fraught with detours and traps, many of them inconvenient, some of them debilitating. For one, the proper amount and degree of thinking spent during writing is an elusive and changing target.
Bolting forward with absolutely no forethought is good for loosening writing muscles, both physical and mental. Proceeding freely can lead to discovery within, and of, oneself. Arriving at thoughts that one did not realize one had can be unnerving or frightening. But it can also be exhilarating and joyous.
Often, however, a little bit of imagining and conceiving can transform your writing from warmup activity to something with potential to be more than exercise. And therein lies the dilemma. When to plunge ahead. When to pause and think.
Just write. Or, just write, think for a bit now and then, and then just write some more. It’s a tricky balance. Tend too much toward the pensive, and one is right back where one started, at the writer’s-block starting blocks. Cast away too much thought, and one flirts with gibberish.
For myself, I find that pauses are most useful when they do not occur up front. Let it go, to start. Find a stride. Hear a voice. Surprise yourself. See what lurks in your unknown. Then, when you discover something worthy of a lull, welcome the reflection. But don’t linger too long. It’s a fine balance, alright. Be alert for helpful interludes. But mostly, just write.
In his writing, Ken Delpit sometimes contends with voices. Finding “the” voice for a piece can render one immobile before starting. Even finding “a” voice among several can lead to cafeteria-buffet indecision: How to pick when they all could work? In times like these, Ken finds Marlene Cullen’s advice to “Just write” helpful. Then, it’s not a matter of finding just the right voice. More, it’s going with whatever voice you hear now.
