Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Good or Maybe Not So Good Writing Ideas

By Laurie Epps
The Grand Canyon—there's just something about the vastness and the magnificent majesty of it that keeps drawing me back. So when I was asked to write a non-fiction essay about nature for class, it seemed an obvious choice for me.

Today, I want to share my story, about how good story ideas go bad, and about my hardest lesson as a writer.

This was an essay that I was so excited to write. I was overjoyed to write about something that I had so much passion about. I made it a habit to go to the Grand Canyon yearly from 1989-1993. Then, I went every three years till 2000. That was my last trip to the Grand Canyon, and I hope to go there as a regular thing again.

But truthfully, I got too cocky. I thought that because all my essays so far had been well received that would continue. And I fell in love with my idea.

When I got my paper back, I cornered my poor, unsuspecting professor in his office. I didn't like his comments in red scrawled all over the margins of the text submitted to the school online. He was wrong! I felt that vehemently. My first husband, and even my girlfriend the engineer loved it! Surely, it couldn't be all that bad.....

Yes, my ideas were good, but they were half baked at best. To quote my professor, "You have about five essays here....." and "you need to pick one of these outlined topics and stick with it."

His comments floored me. Surely, it wasn't as bad as all that. I had outlined, and researched everything from meditative practices, to the natural history of the Grand Canyon. I covered my vast array of pictures of my trips there and included everything from feeding the squirrels with my first husband, to watching fireworks with my kids over the Grand Canyon Railway. I even managed to stuff in how to get a Zen like monkey mind during meditation, and that places like the Grand Canyon foster this fellowship with God and Nature.... I was on fire when I wrote it. I loved every syllable.


That particular semester we wear reading a book entitled On Writing Well by William Zinseer. I devoured that book and began to see myself as a writer for the first time. I thought because I had applied concepts like: "Writing is thinking on paper," that I was beginning to cultivate the natural writer that I just knew was in me someplace.

Wrong! The hardest lesson of all was uncovered in a meeting in Dr. Cox's office that fine spring day. My professor quite cautiously told me, "Not everything you write is going to be any good." And he went on to tell me that, "just because you have a good idea, or even a few good ideas, means you're going to write a masterpiece..."

Sufficient to say, I cried for a week. I felt like I was betrayed by the good intentions that led me down this path. Where did my work go terribly wrong? 

I think Ernest Hemingway put it best when he said, "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, s#*@ detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it."

The hardest lesson I have learned as a writer is that sometimes you have to know when to walk away from your writing. This is so hard for me because I feel like I am abandoning my baby. How can I just leave my work there, and in that state?


Share with us when this has happened to you. When did you just write something that wasn't any good? Or better yet, when did you have a surge of good ideas, and still end up with nothing at the end of the day?


Join the conversation...The Write Conversation.


Blessings.




Laurie Epps is a non-fiction author, essayist, editor, and poet living in Anderson, South Carolina. A seeker of beauty, her is dream is to travel the world one day and tell their many stories. To read more of Laurie's stories visit her Monday Morning Book Club column dedicated to writers everywhere, or her Thoughtful Thursday column dedicated to the art of Poetry at: http://1writerlaurieepps.blogspot.com

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6 comments:

  1. Entering fiction contests provided my moment of reckoning. After wining several contests, I became over confident and it didn't take long for severe judges to cut me down to size. I've quickly realized that reader preference is subjective. I've quit entering contests now, but I didn't quit writing. Writing is a calling, and like Hemingway says, you have use your inner voice to guide you. Ideas come and go. You never know when an idea, even with bad writing, will stick with a reader. I say Write On.

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    1. Thank you Judythe. It is so true. What makes you a writer is that you write. So mental block or no, just write. Like the Nike slogan, just do it. I am becoming a firm believer in this ideal. What makes you a writer isn't the product, but instead, it's the process.
      Blessings,
      Laurie

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  2. Oh, goodness, I have two manuscripts that will never, ever see the light of day. And I thought they were brilliant when I wrote them. I have taken bits and pieces and put in other books.

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    1. Wow, Patricia, maybe they can share cubby space with my Grand Canyon essay along with that book I wrote in middle school! All kidding aside, thanks for stopping by.
      Blessings,
      Laurie

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  3. I feel like this happens every single day as I work on my blog, liveloveleave.com. Each piece of writing is so much smaller than the piece of writing it was when it started. Lines I fall in love with, like "This morning the field where the cranes stood all winter is starting to go green" get cut, because they have absolutely nothing to do with the essay I'm writing about riding my bike in the wind. Sometimes they find a new home, but most of the time, I just need to get over myself and hit the delete key. Thanks for the reminder that I'm not alone!

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    1. Hi Eileen, this is so true. Sometimes we are so connected to our work that we feel like it's not just words on a page, but instead an apparition of our inner selves. PLEASE. We might want to get over our ego's.
      Blessings,
      Laurie

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