Process Over Product
how aiming for competence gets in the way
I want to amplify an essay from the University of Iowa’s newsletter, my alma mater, this week in which Nikka Singh, a writer and grad student, talks about process over outcome. Right away I am struck by Singh’s openness and how he sits with his discomfort.
We all have been forced to practice sitting in our own discomfort for at least several months if not longer. Instead of ramping up to more dangerous coping mechanisms, we might look to making something (art or writing or anything creative) as a way to manage our discomfort.
I find that by making something (a poem, a story, a play) I am able to dissolve some of my discomfort or even solve it. I can’t do this without asking questions and looking at my process or creating a new process for whatever the challenge is. So being open and aware of process helps me.
The next thing that catches my eye is how Singh talks about learning to write as fast as he can. This technique has helped me so much! (Try the most dangerous writing app.)
Maybe you think it’s counter-intuitive. Maybe you agonize over word after word. Speed helps me create a draft that I can play with, use as clay, get out quickly and out of my own way. Writing fast short-circuits my own doubts. I can see soon enough if there’s anything there to enjoy or anything that surprises me even though it won’t be pretty yet. It’s great practice!
Speed is an easy way to generate text if you can learn to let go of the fear that keeps us writing deliberately slowly keeping every impulse in check. It’s like riding a bike; it’s much harder to go slowly. You need a certain amount of speed to maintain your balance. Once you start to feel the wind in your hair, you’ll use this technique more often, and writing will become a breeze!
The advice from Garth Greenwall to “risk something, don’t just try to seem competent,” is brilliant. I never think about competence. If I approached the screen or the page with some idea of trying to impress or trying to get something “right,” I’m sure I’d fail!
Instead I approach with curiosity—what’s going to fall out of me now? (Remember, I live with traumatic memories, so anything could show up at any time, and yet I do not live in fear. This is because I practice IFS, and if you want to try it, I offer free consults!)
Then Singh says, the lack of rules made him feel he was doing something wrong. THIS is a real creativity issue that should be named. Like going rogue or off-road, to maverick or to jetpack or to make it up as you go along; it’s a skill we can practice and get better at. Like a muscle.
There’s probably a part of him that protects a part that got into a lot of trouble for breaking a rule when he was young. He probably didn’t even know he was breaking a rule back then. When we have internal parts telling us we might get in trouble, it’s hard to free ourselves up to write fast or with ease. Getting to know those parts is the key. Offering them support and updating them (letting them know we’re not 7 years old anymore) can help a lot!
As an autistic child, I broke every rule I couldn’t see, but instead of internalizing punishment and blame, I used my teflon coating, and let it all slide off of me. Rules did not make sense to me. Getting in trouble for breaking them made even less sense. But you may have had a different experience. (Try a free consult!)
I believe that everything we make, including our lives, can benefit from the right rules or constraints. I set out young to invent new rules that would serve me. At 14, my rules were avoid sunlight and cheese fries. Now sunlight, I’ve learned, in small doses, is good for me, but cheese fry avoidance continues.
Make your own rules! By creating your own approach to and constraints for your own projects, you set your own parameters for how to judge what you’re doing. Then the awful cultural crap doesn’t matter. You are making something new!
Our capitalist culture insists that our time be monetized, that process lead to product, but my creativity lives in the moment and barely respects product. I can’t create and consider end results while doing so. I am not inspired by a market. This means I have two minds: the one that creates, and then later one that edits and considers results. I keep them separate.
I am inspired by the breath in my lungs and the fact that our culture is trying to cut me down, the fact that our culture actually thinks that people born female are somehow less human, that queer, disabled, chronically ill and autistic people are somehow less than and other-ized. Our culture gets so much wrong, I want to live as joyfully as possible to spite it! Making makes me happy.
Singh simplifies his process into 3 steps: “Focus on what I’m interested in. Tell it in the way that feels right, not competent or correct, and do it as quickly as possible.” See if that will work for you!
The Prompt:
Make a list of what you’re interested in. What are the stories or poems or plays you want to create? List chronologically from childhood if you start there. Or list by project. Or a list of pets or plants you’ve nurtured. Make a list of issues or themes you want to write about. Or a list of characters you want to get to know. Or list all of your hobbies and passions, or your fears, or stuff you know about. Or stuff you want to get to know about. Make a list of failures that you want to explore. Or a list of successes. Make a list of heroes. And a list of villains. Places or beliefs you hold dear.
When you’ve got your lists, circle the ones that vibrate the most for you. Take one from one list and one from another that don’t necessarily go together and write out a plan for how you might approach this material. Write all the things they have in common and all the ways they are completely different. Write the shape a thing about these might take. The genre or medium. Is it a watercolor or a sculpture? Is it a story or a movie? What makes it what you think it will be? What are those reasons it should be whatever you are going to make of it?
Whether or not you understand what it is (or will be) before you start, leap in! Work as fast as you can to get as much as you can onto the page.
Then step back and make some notes about what fell out of you that feels interesting. What surprised you? What feels alive? As you identify these elements, what can you do to expand or compress them to maintain this excitement? How will working on this project help you be more yourself? How will it start a conversation about something that’s important to you? Move in and out of the project as needed until you’ve completed a Discovery Draft. Try it!
Bull or Self Portrait by Scott Sherman from ScottShermanStudio on instagram.
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Exist Otherwise published my poem, “Lillith Sayeth Clitoris.”
Toyon published Issue 71: Dispatches from the Global Intifada which ends with my poem, “Dear Palestine,” and its translation into Arabic by Dr. Abdulaziz Akila.
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This piece resonated deeply. As a playwright who writes through grief and intimacy, I felt so affirmed by the reminder that process is the point—and that making, in itself, is a way of surviving. Thank you for naming what so often goes unnamed in our rush to be “competent.”
Thanks so much for this Emma. I definitely need the reminder that the outcome doesn't have to be perfect! Great to see more of your poems out there. The link to Exist Otherwise didn't work for me though -- might be worth checking it.