Final Process Narrative

I flip open my lighter and torch a cigarette, dragging it hard until my lungs fill with smoke. For the next five minutes, I’ll smoke this cigarette as anyone else would, taking indulgent rips on the end of the filter until it is ready to be flicked from my finger tips. I won’t consciously think about each inhalation that I undergo every few dozen seconds anymore than I would of every other breath I take. My doing it just happens naturally in my mind and is implemented through my hands, out into the world. This is my writing process personified. I think about what I will write beforehand as much as I think about smoking that cigarette beforehand. I get a feeling that strikes me and I can’t shake it free. In the case of writing, that thought will be put on the page in the mood with which I found it. In the case of a cigarette, it’ll be smoked in the mood with which I desired it. Both methods are raw and emotion driven. And just like emotion, it cannot be controlled. It may be possible to control how one’s emotions are perceived by others; but, on the inside, no one can eradicate a feeling that’s washed over and hit them like a tidal wave. And as I dive into that emotional pool, a hunger to interpret what I feel creatively almost always appears; and then I write. If I feel raunchy, then it comes out as though my tongue is a whip. If I feel lonely, then it could be a personal arrangement of existential despair. No matter what it is I’m feeling or whatever mood I may be in, my writing reflects it in a way that is both narration and creation brought to life with the subconscious and direction.

For the five years or so that I have been interested in writing, and have essentially enjoyed it, it’s always been about the “doing” and not about planning at all. Any academic piece of writing I do, such as the Literacy Narrative, is essentially the product of flat out procrastination and then, the night before the paper is due, writing the whole thing out from start to finish, encompassing editing in the entire process. There is no prewriting and pre-thought is basically, but not entirely, non-existent.

I will not dismiss the act of thinking before hand with academic writing, because I know it happens sometimes. On some occasions I will think about what I might do with an assignment when it’s being assigned, days before I write it, or even the hours leading up to when I know I’ll have to (usually the day before it’s due). With academic writing, it is written as though I were playing a game of Russian roulette, for I rarely proofread after I have completed it either, as I am just thrilled with the thought that I have finished the wretched thing and don’t have to touch it again. It may not be the best way to write for a grade, but I have been doing it this way for a very long time and can’t complain too much about the results.

I write creatively for personal reasons quite often. I typically keep a notebook on me at all times specifically for making sure I don’t let some idea I have go to waste by relying on my suspect memory. By far, the things I write the most are poem/songs. I lump them together because if I can play music as an accompaniment and recite or sing it, than it is a song. If can’t, then it is a poem. I’d say I will write down some line or a stanza of something about three times a day. I average a piece that I like and go back to or play about once a week. That’s not to say I get good things once a week but rather, some block of days I’ll get as many as three or four things (the extreme) I complete and deem as acceptable and then I will go a month (another extreme) without doing anything worth noting.

The process I go through for poems/songs is the best representation of my writing process as a whole. Around Thanksgiving this past year, I had been drinking lightly and was hanging around the fringes of being drunk. It was late and I sat down in bed and picked up my notebook, for I had a case of “Mama, you’ve been on my mind” for a lovely young lady I had been spending time with. I knew I had to get something out on the page and all of it just came to me fairly quickly. The first thing I wrote stayed as the first line of the piece, followed by the second, then the third, etc. I wrote the rest accordingly, stopping only to get the right word or phrasing here and there. I’d say the whole thing, totaling about 20 lines, took just under ten minutes. I then set my book down and went about the rest of my night. Afterwards, I did ditch the whole last stanza but the rest of the piece remains untouched, except for the last line of the first verse (it made me sound like a giant second grader). With this work, I simply tapped into a mood I felt strongly and interpreted it as poignantly as I could with a pen and paper. Furthermore, I do believe that the slight amount of alcohol in my system did help the process by allowing me to eliminate and self-consciousness that I would have with my own words. It sort of “lubricated” the composition of the piece.

My writing process is no stranger to different substances one would use to seek inspiration. One of the more significant pieces (significant to me that is) I’ve written came along under the influence of relatively popular “vegetable.” I was over a friend’s house well into the morning hours before finally heading home. When I finally arrived I immediately grabbed that same notebook and went to work. Filled with a particular feeling of determination and a desire for self growth, I wrote a very personally powerful piece. It is entirely driven by two things: 1) my need to “turn a corner” as a person and 2) the emotion that had derived from the influence I was under and the thoughts that influence had provoked. Like the aforementioned poem/song piece, “A Transition” was composed in entirely one attempt and, although I have tried to improve upon it since, I have lacked the ability to find anything better to include or replace other lines with. It is as though my ability to feel the way I felt in that moment or perhaps even to be that version of myself that I was died the moment I deemed the piece finished and closed my notebook and walked away from it. Even in the case of revising an already existing piece, my ability to create things I am satisfied with has never been something I can tap into.

Beyond poems/songs, I write short stories here and there. One that really sticks out in my mind was about my father dying five or so years down the road and how I would deal with it. I wrote this about a year ago in two separate sittings (two separate sittings = giant leap forward for my clogging funnel of a writing process) about half a week apart. The piece totals about 5000 words. Overall, I like what the story does but I can’t stand the ending and would love to change it. I’d also like to fill it out more if possible. I’ve tried to do both (especially change that horrific ending) around a dozen times I’d say over the past 12 months. I can’t get anything at all. Everything that I have gone and done to it has been awful. Where the original is so full of that raw emotion and mood I’ve been going on about, every revision has this fake, Disney feel like I’m writing for twelve year olds. I can’t get any of the realness that I sought after and attained in the first take. There is the one segment where I describe my brother picking me up from the train station and how neither of us is talking about what’s actually happened and why I’m home. I’ve tried to put dialogue in it and it just never takes. It’s like oil and water. No matter what I do to the story, I have yet to find anything that gives it some much needed improvement.

It’s hard for me to consciously tap into the mood I need to complete writing I’m proud of. My writing process is driven by what I feel and what is happening around me in that moment. This form of composition is not the most trustworthy or effective in getting results. As one who aspires to write and become more accomplished in it, obviously I’d like to refine the way I do things. Even with this piece, it was composed entirely in order and edited in order. For my academic writing, I am generally satisfied with what I do. There are exceptions. With this piece (and other‘s of a similar nature), I do see the value of me putting all I can into it, but my very rigid process does limit my ability to get everything out. In my own personal writing, I have the ability to put things on paper I like, but can’t clean them up enough. I’d like to develop my writing to a point of where I have more control. I’d like to be able to tap into my capability to “write well” Even now, as I type these very words, there is an air of “not quite doing it,” that I can’t shake. It’s not that the process doesn’t serve me well at all; it just doesn’t every time I need it.

I would definitely like to have a more conscious control of my writing process. I like to write and would be satisfied in doing it in some form or another, as part of a career. I personally don’t feel that I am capable of doing this with the place I am as writer now, though. I need control and drive. It does appear to be somewhat of an advantage to have the roots of my process be subconscious. It allows me to pull in all the things that influence me, no matter how little an influence they are, that are around me without having to deal with too much a filter. It lets me step outside my mind, if only for just a while. But I want a more conscious effort and the ability to change my own words effectively. By reading my classmates’ drafts, I now find that I need to certainly have a more accomplished editing process and maybe dabble in some prewriting; somewhat of a whole writing process rework. Will it happen? Maybe, and I hope so. I’d love to work at it (and work at it consciously) but that hasn’t been my method so far. I’ll need to get some drive, inspiration, and maybe a little liquor. Well, maybe more than just a little.