author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

OK, so, here's the thought I've been working my way up to: Fiction writing is not like plumbing. Here's why...

And that's where I get stuck. I don't know how to continue that thought without sounding ridiculously woo. But, y'know, what the hell. I am a firm believer in woo, certain flavors of it anyway. My religion, Wicca, necessarily involves a certain amount of woo. So, OK, I get to talk about writing through the woo lens.

The main thing to make clear before I begin is that this is my woo lens. I am not trying to speak to every writer's experience everywhere. I do think that what I'm going to describe is inherent to all fiction writing, but not everyone will have the same relationship with it. So what follows is my thought about my writing experience. I'll insist that it's a valid experience to have, but I won't assert it to be the experience.

OK? We're all cool? OK.

Let's start over.

*ahem*

Fiction writing is not like plumbing, It's not like making widgets or constructing web pages. Something happens in the writing process that generally doesn't happen on the automobile assembly line, or on the operating table, or while doing dishes, or in whatever job the smug know-it-alls inist that real writers treat their writing like. Writing--and the rest of the creative arts--involves something that those jobs generally don't, and that's this:

The writer has to think it all up.

The writer is responsible for thinking that all up.

The writer is responsible for having thought it all up.

There is all sorts of potential for emotional, psychological mess in there. I mean, everything on the page comes out of my very own brain. No one made it happen but me. For one thing, that may invite judgment on the part of the reader: "What sort of psycho/weirdo/pervert/idiot comes up with that?" While I've entertained the thought, "What was that plumber thinking, cementing the hot water pipes right into the wall?" there was no, like, psychoanalysis involved. There was no cause to question the plumber's fitness as a parent, or their being at liberty rather than committed to the nearest mental health facility. Cementing the hot water pipes into the wall shows a certain lack of foresight, but doesn't inspire homeowners to wonder about the plumber's sanity or childhood or whatever.

For another thing, every story I think up, no one can write it but me. If the plumber bails on snaking your drain, you call someone else in to do it. If I bail on a particular story--well, there are plenty of other writers, so there's no shortage of stories for people to read. But that particular story, the one I was going to write, if I don't write it for whatever reason, it simply never makes it out into the world. That's a huge responsibility! I have to make sure those stories survive to adulthood! No pressure, right?

Again, not every writer is going to feel the way I do about these things. But these things are there. They go with this territory in a way they don't go with, oh, newspaper delivery or new home construction.

And here's where things get woo: The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced there's a sort of shamanic aspect to fiction writing. Which is, I am aware, a problematic thing for me to say, being a white woman with no ties whatsoever to any sort of shamanistic culture. But I just don't know what else to compare it to, this process of going into dream space--into the invisible world of symbols, metaphors, spirits, things that do not exist but should, things that do not exist and that we pray remain nonexistent--and translating what one finds there into a form that the rest of the mundane world is able to experience.

Not every writer is going to think about it that way, of course. But I do, though. And I get a little scared about it. And grateful! Because it's an honor, getting to make that journey. But it's also kind of terrifying.

All that said, I agree one hundred percent that the only way to be a writer is to get on with the writing. But I'd like to register a plea for compassion about those avoidance and resistance cycles that some of us experience, that make getting on with the writing more complicated than the know-it-alls try to make it out to be.

Be patient with us. This can be kind of a heavy gig.

And it's really not like plumbing.