the opposite of writing
Stop thinking. Stop trying to figure out how you're supposed to write. The write a first draft is to stumble.
I’m a process guy, but even process has its limits. There is no right way to write. Or, rather, the clock starts ticking the minute someone stumbles onto a viable approach: a turn of phrase, a storytelling gambit, a plot twist. That particular path to success gets narrower as soon as someone else makes it across. Why? Now we’ve seen it before.
That’s why you can only learn so much from studying yesterday’s success. Writing isn’t engineering! The arch is eternal, the lever will last forever, but the classic movie Western? It had an expiration date. With art, what starts as genius ends as trope. As creators, we must keep moving forward into the unknown.
In an interview, playwright and actor Eric Bogosian offered his take: “So much of what you do as an artist is outside your control,” he says, “and you think you know what you’re doing, but you often don’t know what you’re doing.” This isn’t a bad thing. This is how it’s supposed to feel. It’s too easy to get caught in the trap of figuring out what you’re doing instead of doing it.
For her latest album, Mayhem, Lady Gaga decided to record a modern take on grunge. How hard could that be? There are a million grunge albums from the 90s. Just listen to a bunch of them and…do what they did, right?
“I started to overthink things sometimes and get nervous,” Lady Gaga told Howard Stern. “[Then] I stopped doing that and I started just feeling and allowing myself to just be free. It’s OK to make mistakes. What does it even mean for music to be perfect?” The grunge idea went out the window. What could be more free than the album Gaga ended up recording? “Abracadabra, amor oo na na.”
Speaking of forging ahead into the unknown: 50 years of musical performance on SNL, and Lady Gaga is the first to actually use the space.
Yesterday’s perfect is tomorrow’s cliché. When we try to fit our work into an established mold, we end up shaving off those elements that would have helped it stand out from everything that’s come before.
Be direct. Be free. Don’t think so much. That way, originality is inevitable.
Alabaster DePlume is a British recording artist who recites poetry and performs improvised sax riffs. He also trains in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. In an interview with the New Yorker, DePlume draws a comparison between art and war: “When you’re rolling with someone [in jiu-jitsu], as soon as you’re trying to do a thing, you’re fucked,” he explains. “It’s like playing music. What’s the opposite of sleep? It’s trying to sleep.”
Doesn’t matter what you’re making. Make it freely. Trust your gut. Worry about the hows and whys later or, better yet, never.
In a documentary, Willem de Kooning is asked his thoughts on Matisse.
“He has no -isms,” he says. “That’s very true. It’s just a painting.”
What’s the opposite of writing? Trying to write.
“Just paint a picture,” de Kooning says. “It’s good for me to remember that.”