In my experience, having a good list is the best reminder of what I’m aiming to do. I especially like lists that help my writing life. Remember back in school the letter “D” on a test returned from your teacher signified far less than stellar work? For fun, let’s turn that on its head and say “D” can stand for good things, too.
Good D words
For instance, ideas symbolized by words that start with “D” can drive your writing like a powerful motor under the hood. The following list includes such words in a “D List.” Let’s keep it by our side to fuel our creative writing endeavors—or any project. The items on this list are not in order of importance, and the order in which they appear could be, and likely will be, shuffled around during the course of our creative lives.
D for Desire
First, when you want to write something other than a grocery or to-do list, ask yourself how much desire do you bring to this idea or project. Do you love the core idea, or does it feel ho-hum? Are you passionate about writing this story, this novel, or this particular poem or screenplay? If not, do you think you should proceed hoping your feelings will change? If the idea makes you feel wishy washy or worse—down-in-the-dumps—why bother? If your heart is not in it, your negativity will likely cast shadows over the writing. You may even sabotage the work.
Desire, on the other hand, is a really-wanting-to feeling. It’s a flame, small at first, that can leap into a raging fire as you feed it what it needs. You feel pulled towards the page, to get the sentences down, the descriptions on the page. Desire’s positive yearning moves you along. It’s a sensation of being compelled from deep down in your bones to write the story only you can write, i.e., the one about the drowning Persian cat whose friend, a St. Bernard dog, drags it out of the fast-moving river just in the nick of time. Like the dog, who, out of love, is driven to save his kitty cat friend, you have the desire to save the story from drowning, to capture it, to bring it safely to the page.
D for Deleting Distractions
To fully enter another reality made of sentences, writers must temporarily disengage from the ongoing-ness of the world. Does this take effort? You bet! Herculean effort, sometimes. Oh, for a “Delete” key to shut out distractions, right? For the sake of focusing on your work, what are you willing to sacrifice? You may have to miss the popular movie, the latest Webinar, the happy hour Zoom call with friends. Or maybe not. Let’s say you can arrange your sessions of disengagement-with-the-world by creating a realistic schedule and closing the door. Other times, watch out. Writing may gain the upper hand and insist you scrap the schedule (like a needy child you cannot ignore) and get to the page.
D for Determination
Determination seems entwined with Deleting Distractions. Your determination to write the story despite your circumstances—good or distressing, especially during our current COVID-19 crisis—will propel you to eliminate distracting activities, people, thoughts, and feelings. Breathe. Stretch. Open your imagination. Stay on task and bring to life the story you desired to write in the first place.
Tell yourself you will create one sentence after another to carry the drama, to describe the river, to portray lively details of the dog and cat in the water wrestling with the near-death experience. The story matters to you. Make it matter to readers. Keep writing against the stream of doubts from your inner critic or from people who inadvertently or on-purpose demean your attempts out of jealousy, from underestimating your ability, or other likely reasons. Prove them wrong. Consider this from Andre Dubus, “But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious …”
D for Discipline
Discipline is a close cousin of Determination. Exercising Discipline—in body and mind—makes it possible for you to finish the work. You sit down and write. You go for a morning walk and in your mind the work continues, a new idea comes through. With each step, your thoughts are patterned with the scene of the river, the cat flailing in grey water, the dog paddling to save her. In the kitchen making dinner, you imagine how to simplify the text, add a detail. While brushing your teeth, you meditate on the story, consider new metaphors. This extra layer of ongoing-ness in your mind, invisible to others, is normal for a disciplined writer.
For easy reference, lying around my writing room is J. Ruth Gendler’s, The Book of Qualities. Here’s a delightful gem about Discipline:
“Discipline does not disappear forever, but she does take vacations from time to time. By nature she is a conservative person, and yet she lives a radical life. Guided by a sense of inner necessity, she works hard and takes many risks. When Discipline was a teenager too poor to afford dance classes, she skipped lunch to pay for her lessons.”
Keep this D List handy, if not on paper, then in your mind. Add to it. Change it to suit your needs. No matter how your list develops, keep on writing. As the author Brenda Ueland says in If You Want to Write, “It’s good for the writer’s soul.”
