Writing Mantra: “Trust the Process”
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a bunch of what I call ‘writing mantras.’ Aphorisms, quotes, things I’ve come up with, things I’ve read, things people have told me. And so this year, I’ll be posting on a semi-regular basis my favorite writing mantras. To kick off 2010, here’s perhaps the most powerful writing mantra I know:
Trust the process.
As I recall, I first used the phrase in one of my online classes. A feature of those courses is a weekly ‘office hour’ session in which I get online with students for a live-chat. In this particular occasion, a student was caught up in the maelstrom of trying to write their story, discouraged at realizing they had to step back and retool what they had come up with before being able to move forward. And for whatever reason, these words emerged from my keyboard in response to their confusion and anxiety: Trust the process.
I don’t remember what I typed next. Knowing me, I’m pretty sure I went off on one of my ‘sermons’ — about how the creative process is an organic thing and more often than not a messy one, how some times a story just lays out perfectly for us, other times it’s like banging our heads against the proverbial wall to get any traction with our writing, and so on. But the important message from that session was this simple yet profound idea: Trust the process.
What does it mean? This mantra has many layers. Here are a few. In order to find the story, we have to give ourselves over to our creative process, a full and deep immersion. And if we feel the pull toward this character or that, then follow that instinct. If we suddenly see a new plot possibility, go down that road. If we hit a dead end, then trust that this is not a negative, but a plus because now we know we don’t need to come this way again.
Every step of the way is a step forward, even if it seems like a step back — that’s how it looks if we trust the process.
The process can ‘hold’ all the moods and emotions we experience along the way — joy, anger, frustration, giddiness, boredom, loathing, despair, hope — everything.
The process drives us into our Self to find ideas, feelings, and memories which we can bring out in our story, used in new and distinctive ways.
But the hugely critical thing is that we simply need to trust that process, believe that what we are experiencing in the prepping and writing of a story is precisely what must happen to find and articulate that story.
Over the years, I ‘preached’ this idea to my students — and frankly to myself as well in my own writing. Then I stumbled upon this: “Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go”. I bought a copy of the book. Read it. Enjoyed it. Written by Shaun McNiff, the book explores a number of varying aspects of the creative process. Perhaps he sums it up best in the book’s introduction titled “Unpredictable Magic”:
“There have been so many times when I have given up, only to go at it again the next day, or the next year, and over the full course of a life all of the moments appear so purposeful or even necessary.”
Letting go. Giving up. There is a presumption that in order to trust the process, we need to — in some way — give up a certain type or measure of logic. Trusting in our creative process is a conscious decision, one we make over and over again in the course of writing a story, but often it is a choice based on a gut feeling or instinct rather than rationality.
But here’s the bottom line: Every writer is different. Every story is different. And every story’s creative process is different. Whatever the variations are from story to story, the core dynamic remains the same: We need to find a way to trust the process.
That’s the way we find the story.
That’s the way we write the story.
How about you? What’s your relationship with your creative process? Do you find it easy to trust the process? Does it flow naturally? Is it sometimes a struggle?
And if it is a struggle, how do you manage to find a way to trust the process?
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