Often, when I sit down and begin tapping away at the keyboard, I don't know where my initial thoughts will lead me. This approach, likened to throat clearing before making a speech, is an exercise recommended in a writing course I once took.
After a while, ideas take shape and, following several re-writes, they firm up and I understand the purpose or reason for writing the piece. If they don't, well it was just an exercise and is consigned to the wastebasket.
On other occasions, I plot and plan and storyboard and outline and then write. That usually happens for longer, or more complex works of fiction or non-fiction.
Knowing the intended purpose of the piece, its market if for publication and the target audience then helps me when in the self-editing mode.
When we pick up the New Yorker or National Enquirer, we know what to expect and how to receive it.
Describing the purpose of your work, whether intended for publication or not, and presented without the benefit of hardcover or magazine masthead, helps those reviewing or critiquing it to offer comments in an appropriate context.
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1 comment:
You are more of a freestyle artist than I am - or perhaps you write more fiction.
In the non-fiction world it's pretty clear by the time I start to write where I am going. By then I usually have 4-6 interviews transcribed that add flesh to the bones of whatever angle I agreed with the editor. When I first started writing non-fiction, I used to "clear my throat" in the first paragraph and save something pithy until the end. After a couple of occasions when editors literally took my last paragraph and made it the opening, I learned to take a hard look at that first paragraph after I had written the article but before I submitted it.
Fiction is different, of course. But even there I tend not to start until I have already cleared my throat. It helps if you are picking up the threads in a long project like my novel. In the last few days, thoughts I have had about what I might tackle next have crystallized into what could be the opening scene of at least a short story, if not another book. But I didn't put pen to paper (figuratively speaking) until I had turned over a lot of possibilities in my mind. Once I started, though, it became very clear this might lead to an exorcism of some old fantasies from rough times I encountered when I worked in the financial markets.
The adage to write about what you know may be an old saw, but it has more than a grain of truth in it.
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