Shaun Groves
How do you write? It’s the question other writers always ask me. Because we’re all hoping someone has come up with an easier better way.
Well, I haven’t.
Step One: Idea
On a good day I have an idea. I write it down in a Word document or a notebook or on the back of a receipt or record it in my voicemail. I don’t filter or edit. There’s no erasing allowed. I just get the idea down. Judgement kills creativity.
Step Two: Wait
Sometimes these ideas don’t make sense. Sometimes they do but I don’t know what to do with them. Are they blog posts? Sermons? Lyrics? So I wait for life experience and God and other ideas to come along and give them their meaning and purpose.
Step Three: Mine
I go back to the pages of ideas and mine them for parts. I search them like I’m sifting through a junkyard in need of a muffler for a specific make and model. Actually, it’s not so much like that because I’m not exactly sure what I’m needing…until I see it. I read the lines and sometimes hear them set to melodies. Or two lines on different pages suddenly seem to fit together.
Step Four: Write
Ideally, I lock the office door and write. Not well. I just write as much as I can as far as I can. It often feels to me like driving without a gas gauge: I’m always a little afraid the idea is going to run out and I’ll be stranded in the middle of a second verse. But I keep writing no matter how badly until I reach the end or run out of gas completely.
Step Five: Rest & Edit
My first draft is rarely any good. With the exception of blog posts, which are just exercises for me, I edit everything I write…again and again and again. But first I let the draft rest. I leave it alone for at least a day before coming back to it with new eyes and my finger hovering over the delete button.
One Page
I had a good day yesterday. In a rush of ideas last night I filled an entire page with parts to be cobbled together into something – I don’t know what yet. Here’s what that page looks like. Maybe you’ll see some of this in a blog post or hear it in a song someday.
My heart got too big for me so I let it go
Crumbs of light
Cathedral of blood, bone and muscle
In the blue of your eyes I feel small
I feel like Sunday
The night is a big man sitting beside her quietly, doing what she tells him to
Footsteps of kings
Back straight, head up, walk with me
Planted a piece of himself inside that moves us toward home
Hold down three jobs to hold up his babies
Soldiers of peace
You’ve got nothing to do but everything
Hope squeezes into narrow spaces
Morals like naps – left behind when someone touches us -Anis Mojgani
Smiling like the table is full
Boys running like dinosaurs are back to play
Let’s tell stories by flashlight
Let’s be a mouth full of chocolate
A fist full of quarters
Let’s disturb the peace and put it back together again but betterShoot straight
Heart full of gasoline in a world full of matches
Sea of forgiveness
Let’s get all the life out of living
Stand between death and the dyingLet’s live between death and the dying
Love all the hate into hiding
Till we’re empty of words
And all out of daysI don’t want to want to but I still do
Debbi Akers says:
“Planted a piece of himself inside that moves us toward home” Can’t wait to hear ya expound upon or sing about this. It is the cry of my heart these days. He truly has planted eternity in our hearts. It is why we are NEVER content and never will be, this side of heaven.
With Eternity being in our hearts, all that this world has to offer me becomes less attractive every day. I stand in the middle of two worlds and live a surreal life. Longing for home, but grieving for those around me and longing to make my time count…so that they too may have their hearts and affections turned toward home.
Good stuff.
emily freeman says:
I love to see how writers write. I think we all do. Love to see the snippets, the steps, the process.
Favorite line? “Let’s be a mouth full of chocolate.” Nice.
Karina says:
That’s my favorite line too. I love chocolate!
JessicaB says:
Way to make the rest of us feel inadequate! 🙂
The part that hurt the most:
“My first draft is rarely any good. With the exception of blog posts…”
Ha! Considering pretty much my only exercises in writing are blog posts, and I edit the crap out of them…that made me feel really small in the shadow of your keyboard.
Expectantly awaiting the cobbling, btw. 🙂
Amy D. says:
I don’t edit blog posts either, but you could probably tell. 🙂
JessicaB says:
The more I thought about it, it’s not the content that I edit so much as the grammar! Lol.
Katie says:
When an idea comes, I find some paper and start writing. I keep going until I can’t go anymore and then I go some more.
When I don’t have an idea but I have some time, I put pen to paper… get black on white… and go until something comes.
Like you said, blog posts are exercises, I way to get my ideas out, and a way to bounce ideas off of others. I do revise and rewrite them but not as often as I do with fiction/ fun writing. That gets revised a million times and then some more.
Katie
Will Norrid says:
I generally harvest ideas from various sources such bits of conversations, lines in books or films, phrases of songs. Then I pull what is best about the source material and hone it done into the simplest terms. Starting with that simple seed, I compose the post, sermon, poem, etc.
I try not to over edit my work. Sometimes I am guilty of leaving out great material just because I thought I needed to cut. I am attempting to improve this flaw.
peace and blessings,
-Will
Karina says:
Very interesting. I usually mull something over in my head until I have it all put together and then I write it. My (edited) first drafts are usually what I post. If I leave it to proof or finish later it usually doesn’t get posted at all. And I often forget ideas along the way as a busy mom of 5. I do occasionally write snippets down but I can rarely find them when I need them, as they are all over the house in 20 different notepads or on scraps that get thrown away.
Thanks for sharing your method. It’s interesting how differently people write. I may try some of our method, but I’ll have to have one specific place to keep notes, you know, so I can find them later!
Amy Nabors says:
I love how you said judgement kills creativity. This is so true. Writing in school and college stifled my creativity because of the pressure of the coming judgements from teachers and professors. It’s also something I see in the children I work with also. I wish teachers would say just write your thoughts. There’s no wrong way.
Tony Alicea says:
Thanks Shaun, this is just what I needed right now. I’ve been feeling like I’ve lost some inspiration for my writing this week and I’m tweaking my way of doing things. This gives me some more to think about.
Oh and “Heart full of gasoline in a world full of matches” LOVE! So many ways to interpret that.
Princess Leia says:
I call it letting things “percolate” in my head. I think about things…ruminate, I think you put it once…over and over for days, weeks, decades…adding info as it comes in, refining my thoughts, sharpening them against others’…..sometimes stuff gets written down (less and less frequently on my blog). Eventually I think I’ll end up with a book of essays.
Although I _did_ write a song or two while overseas. I loved the irony of writing a song about going “into the lion’s den” while sitting in Baghdad, just a short drive north of the actual lion’s den. But that was a special time of zero distractions and quite literally nothing else to do (the other song title: “I Wait”) that will probably not occur again for me for many years to come…if ever…and I’m good with that!
Adam says:
Thank you Shaun, this whole post was very encouraging. It always makes me feel a little more “normal” when I see that others write with some similarities to what I do.
Keep on brother, keep on.
Tj says:
Our blog is just a journal sharing our place with others, so we don’t put as much time into it. I also write children’s stories and articles and I find that I think a lot about my idea before I write, sometimes weeks. Then I sit down and let my first draft just flow out of me like water from the faucet. Next comes the work….. edit, edit, edit.
Of course, I am not so talented, or hard working as you. I just play at it.
Deborah Raney says:
If I came up with that many great lines in a lifetime, I’d feel like a success as a writer. Sheesh! Save some for the rest of us, would ya?
Favorite line: Boys running like dinosaurs are back to play.
We have two little grandsons who love dinosaurs and I know just what that run looks like.
Wonderful post!
christina brown says:
I love the randomness of it all. Your words are real.
“I feel like Sunday”
Funny, there is a wonderful quote by Winnie the Pooh that goes, “It is a very Grand thing to be an Afternoon”
I tend to chew on things too long, i think.
I also write things on small pieces of paper and pray they will end up on my desk 🙂
Jason says:
All that put together and read as if one piece kind of comes of as a beatnik poem.
laura@lifeoverseas says:
I liked reading your version of the process for you.
I tend to “write” in my head, throughout my day. Between taking care of all the little people, I rarely have big chunks of time or the freedom to count on any one space to write. And, so, for me, writing takes place in my brain– oftentimes several different posts at once. And, then, when I do get to a computer at naptime or in the evening, its a rushed free-for-all to get it down.
Because I have learned that the brain doesn’t hold it forever.
Nellie Dee says:
I’ve enjoyed your blog and music. You are a beautiful writer. I was definitely pulled in by your title, “How I Write”. I love how you give the step by step process not just for writing, but the one you did about having quiet time with God. I have never just written a one page list of random ideas and one-liners. Might have to try that. Maybe it will be the catapult I need to launch me into successful writing.
I love the line: planted a piece of himself inside that moves us toward home! My hat’s off to your amazing writing talent.