Editor’s Note:
Today, Zack Grafman starts off the week by providing a key insight to how P3 operates. While it would be difficult to articulate our entire philosophy in 1,000 words, Zack’s manifesto highlights what I originally coined two years ago in my own essay as The Pulp Work Ethic.
Curious? Then read on.
- Frank Theodat
Alright, let's start from the real difficult news and move on from there.
This manifesto is not intended to give you classic writing advice that will make you feel good. It's not intended to tell everyone that they can or should write, nor will you walk away necessarily feeling empowered or whatever. The intent of this rapid-fire, off-the-dome, hastily-composed screed is to serve up to you the ethos that has absolutely revolutionized my approach to writing in the last two years. That ethos, that spirit, animates the authors here and powers us forward. It also happens to be almost anathema to the typical wisdom that you will encounter online and in books regarding writing as a craft and as a career.
So be it. If I can save even a couple of you from what, to me, has turned out to be a multi-decade dead-end that I've only recently floundered my way out of, I'll have accomplished my goal. Let's get right to it.
Not everyone can or should write. God doesn't dispense talent equally, and his giftings are often idiosyncratic and unevenly distributed. If you think that that's a statement of hubris, given that I'm writing this and style myself an author, let's get a little perspective. Someone who watches Tom Brady disarticulate a world-class defensive secondary, or Michael Phelps perform feats not naturally capable for land-dwelling beasts, and comes away thinking “I could do that too if I tried,” has some serious disappointment in their future. In my view, there are two things that made men like that great: an innate capacity beyond that of a normal human being, and hard work. You can't get by on one of the two.
Everybody has some sort of God-given natural ability or talent beyond the norm. Some people have an innate capacity beyond that of a normal human being to string words together and make meaning. If you're one of those people, and you rely on your innate capacity, and don't do the hard work, you've got hard times coming. Right now, I want to talk to the people that think they may be one of the people with the innate talent, but have been fed a line of dysfunctional and muddled thinking from year after year of writing tutors, creative writing professors, online coaches, Twitter gurus, and pretty much anybody but consistently publishing authors. That line of thinking goes something like this.
Anybody can be an incredible writer. All it takes is painstakingly, piece by piece, assembling a thing of beauty, giving your work as much time and loving effort as it needs to emerge from the marble as the beautiful statue that you know it should be. The only problem with this approach is that it's fantasy. In my experience, in our experience, this is not how the creative writing process occurs. I have tried this method over and over and over. It only served to completely stymie my efforts as I became locked in endless loops of creative indecision, never able to truly realize the greatness I thought lurked unexpressed within. The challenge is the classic taste-skill gap articulated by so many excellent craftsmen. If you are beginning as a writer and trying to seek out where your ultimate level of skill could be, you will only discover it through dint of repetition, not iterating on one work. Repetition of the entire creative process end-to-end, from idea to formation to execution to publication, over and over and over again. This is how you get better. Anything else is not a substitute.
You cannot get better at conceiving stories without repeating this process. You cannot get better at writing stories without this process. You cannot get better at finalizing stories without this process. The entire thing hangs together. This realization completely unbound my creativity. Once the kind gentlemen who share this masthead laid out the pulp ethos of creativity for me, I recognized something that I had suspected all along but been too hesitant to articulate. The vast majority of writers’ first drafts are as good as the piece will ever be. No amount of editing can push your craft beyond its current level. Imagine you're a bodybuilder. You can try as hard as you want to cut and tone and define your muscles, but if you don't have the mass to begin with, you will not look bigger. In fact, you will appear to go backwards the harder and harder you try and edit your musculature into shape. You must gain mass. You have to do the dirty, hard work of putting in protein and repping heavy. Once that's done, you have material which you can actually work on. But until that time, any efforts other than putting on mass are futile.
This system has many benefits. It frees you from the misplaced belief that you can edit your way to a higher level of writing craft than you've earned by your production experience. It frees you from believing that every idea has to be perfect at every stage of this process. Many ideas never will be. Instead, it lets you focus on the task at hand. Thinking of a cool, fun, exciting idea. Getting that idea down with a spirit of intensity, movement, and life. Fashioning it into a state that's ready for the light of day as quickly as possible. Refusing to second guess or bog yourself down. And finally, letting it see the light of day, whether you feel it's ready or not. The beauty of this process is that most of us are truly the worst judges of whether our work is ready for the light of day. This is why you have to create in community. Allowing others to see your work, realistically compare it to what came before, and encourage you with the reality that just like every other skill, your repetitions are building quality.
When I let go of the idea that the way forward was to sit still, I suddenly began producing more creative work in a year than I had done in the previous ten. None of these individual pieces are even close to perfect. Many of them have glaring deficiencies that I recognized almost immediately during this process. But each subsequent piece improves my ability, hones my craft, arms me with additional tools, and bolsters my confidence. It also gives me the subconscious mastery that all true craftsmen are seeking to attain. At some point, no amount of formulas, editing rubrics, story paths, character bibles, world building outlines, or whatever can truly replace the creative power of writing something you genuinely feel and allowing the artistic muscle memory of tens or even hundreds of repetitions to guide your mind and fingertips.
If you're skeptical as you read this, do me a favor. Pick the shortest attainable format of your chosen craft. Not albums, not novels, not fully realized paintings or detailed sculptures. Set yourself a deadline that you feel is too fast and then create ten finished pieces; ten short stories, or ten sketches, or ten songs, in one draft each. If you can't find one piece out of those ten that truly surprises you with its cohesiveness, its quality, that goes past anything you’ve done before, then you have my sincere apology and permission to go on refining each piece until you feel it's ready. But if you haven't tried the experiment before, how do you know?
Full speed ahead.
This short essay was dictated in fifteen minutes using Vienna Scribe. The piece was then edited for spelling and grammar, and a sentence or two added or removed to ensure proper flow of thought. We attempt to practice what we preach.
A) Beautiful
B) I still can barely believe you wrote this with dictation. You are the only person I know who speaks like he writes. "Write like you talk" is horrible advice for everyone but you apparently.
Full speed ahead, indeed
I've been sort of slowing down lately, more concerned with editing what I have instead of writing something new, so this article is a much needed slap in the face for me.
For real, I might take up your challenge.