Charmian Clift said: ‘To accomplish anything it is obvious that a talent is not enough. You need a motive, an aim, an incentive, an overwhelming interest – be it ambition or fear or curiosity or only the necessity to fill your belly. You need a star to steer by, a cause, a creed, an idea, a passionate attachment. Something must beckon you or nothing is done – something about which you ask no questions.’

Why are you writing this story? What is driving you to spend hours alone at a desk, or in musty archives, in the company of people and characters you might normally run a mile from if they confronted you in the street? It’s important to identify your motives as early and as closely as you can. For no better reason than this: at numerous times in the next year, two years, five years, you will need to remind yourself that indeed, there is a very good reason you are missing that party, ignoring your friends, seeing no movies, missing meals.

Why are you writing this story? Write the answer down now, quickly, before its gossamer threads disappear. If you don’t know, write that down too. Write whatever vague, lofty, outrageous, boring, electric thoughts come to you. Somewhere in there will be the germ of your commitment to this endeavour. Print up this piece of writing and tuck it into a drawer. When doubts assail you, when energy and inspiration desert you, when you’ve thrown the last ball of paper across the room and gone to the movies, dammit, you will come back to this and remind yourself of what you are doing. Then, in the months that follow, you will refine it, probably. You may scratch out a word or two and add a word or two to reflect the growth you’ve experienced, the knowledge you now have. After a year or so, perhaps, you may have it down pat. Then it is time to take it out of the drawer, print it up again in its new form, and pin it over your desk. It will beam down at you at those glorious times when the writing flows and you have no doubts about your sanity in this task; it will glare at you when you skulk off to the pub and it will be there, like an old friend, to remind you over and over that you are alive, that you have a star to steer by, that you have a purpose.

Something about which you ask no questions.

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issue 08:09 | archive by category | archive by author