That Aha! moment

How do you know when you’ve got it right?

by Dietrich

Like many of us, I’ve never had trouble coming up with stories, and I usually have the next idea in my head before the story I’m working on is complete. At the beginning, I had these stories to tell, but I had to find the best way to get them out and onto paper. At that point, there was a lot of experimenting and second guessing. I would write a scene, and I’d look at it with fresh eyes the next morning — and wonder what I’d been thinking. And I certainly didn’t know when I got it right, but I sure knew when I got it wrong. 

I realized I was learning my chops and that there were some dues to pay. So from there, I’d either pitch what I had been working on in the bin and start over, or I’d go into heavy editing mode, and I’d work until I got it right. At the end of the day, I’d set it aside and look at it again the next morning and go from there. The desire was strong so I kept it up.

Once I stopped tripping over the words and found the flow, the confidence came and that problem of not being sure started to fade. It was either right, or it needed some polish. Either way, I started to recognize when I had it right. Like doing anything well, it just takes the right amount of practice to get there.

Aside from practice and gaining confidence, brushing up on my grammar was certainly a help. It had been a long while since I’d learned about split infinitives and conditional clauses and so on in school, so I did have to brush up on it. Funny thing, after I studied up on it and my style developed, I set aside those grammar rules for story flow, but at least I knew when I was breaking the rules. 

Above all else, I think reading books by authors I admire was and remains a key thing for any writer to do. It’s not only great entertainment, but inspiring as well. I always have a good book on the go, and a stack of others waiting, any genre, it doesn’t matter, as long as I think they’re good. Right now I’m finishing Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell, a brilliant book about the creation and turbulent rise of a make-believe rock band in the mid to latter 60s. Other books which I’ve enjoyed recently which deserve the top shelf: James Salter’s All That Is, a book about life in a changing world; the multi-talented Steve Earle’s I’ll Never Get Out of this World Alive, a marvelous tale of kicking addiction, regret and redemption. And there’s Aldous Huxley’s Mortal Coils, a great short story collection first published in 1916; and Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., first published shortly after his death in 2007; and I revisited the 1927 classic Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. All of them master works by writers who knew when they had it right.