What Did I Learn?
Last week I wrote about spending two weeks working on a Christmas picture book and coming up at the end with a story that didn't work, even though I loved much about it.
Carol Brendler wrote with a question. She said, "I typically chalk up those weeks of writing that yield nothing to a learning experience. It doesn’t feel quite so wasted then. I wonder if you feel you learned anything from that Xmas story, even though you have proven again and again that you’re a master storyteller."
It's a wise question. What did I learn from my failed attempt? Everything I write, beyond grocery lists, is a learning experience, of course. We all learn to write by writing. In my early years before I turned to stories for young people I honed my words, my sentences, my paragraphs in letters and journals and poems. I learned day after day just by putting words on paper … often in the guilty cracks of time when I knew I should have been studying or grading my students' papers or getting dinner on the table, depending on which stage of life I was in.
When a piece—any piece—doesn't come out right, the first step, obviously, is to figure out where it went wrong. Once I can put my finger on what's missing I'm usually off and flying, ready to go again. That's just part of the process, and a good part. What is much harder is that grinding feeling that comes with understanding that what I've invested my heart's energy in isn't working and not being able to understand why. It's like knowing that I don't work, that there's something fundamentally wrong in my being. But usually the moment I know what's missing, my energy returns, my confidence in myself and my work is back, and I return to my piece as though the smooth flow had never been interrupted.
Sometimes, though, and this picture book was such an example, what I discover is that the core of my piece doesn't work, that the concept itself is flawed. And the deepest flaw that can inhabit any piece is a lack of genuine heart. Lack of heart is fatal to all stories, but especially to a picture book.
If I had made that discovery in a longer piece I would, perhaps, have had room to maneuver, to grab onto what moved me in the idea I'd begun with and to go deeper to find more. But picture books are such fragile things. They have to be on target from the first word. There is no room to discover what you truly wanted to say once you've begun writing.
And so I've set that one aside. I still love the title, Happy Christmouse to All, and perhaps one day I'll find a story as good as the title.
What did I learn from this failed attempt? It's something I'll admit I've learned before—perhaps even taught—but something I clearly needed to learn again. I must begin, every time, with a story I can feel, not just one that bounces amusingly in my head.
Nothing we write is ever lost, not when we're just starting out, not when we've been writing for a hundred years. It is the process itself that matters. The very act of writing feeds us and teaches us every step of the way.
Success is only a happy byproduct, not the reason for our effort.
Do you have a question about writing for Marion?