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Ever have a manuscript take on a life of its own?
I’ve started writing something that I hope will be long-form. I had a vague idea of where to start, but it quickly started writing itself and going in directions I didn’t anticipate. At this point, I want to keep working on it just to see where it goes. My job as a writer is to get out of its way.
Based on nearly all of the writing instruction I got in K-12, I’m doing it wrong. I was taught that you start with a thesis statement, then you outline (with Roman numerals, preferably) and then you write.
I honestly don’t know how people do that. How do you do an outline if you don’t know where it’s going yet?
Admittedly, this is somewhat genre-specific. The piece is historical and speculative, rather than just explanatory. It’s not a lab report, a summary, a plan or a legal brief. Those rely on a given structure, and that’s fine.
This is one of those “I have to write to figure out what I’m thinking” pieces. But it has that anticipatory feel that suggests there’s something there. It’s circling a thesis, but it hasn’t landed yet.
My method for handling the K-12 (and, shockingly enough, grad school) demands for outlines before finished products was to write drafts of the finished products and then build outlines after the fact. The goal was to make it look like I had intended the paper to go where it wanted to go all along.
I’ve heard musicians say that some songs are like that. When they start writing the song, it wants to go where it wants to go. They have to get out of its way for it to be any good.
Parenting is very much like that. So is managing. You can set broad parameters and provide resources and care, but you have to accept that you can’t control everything. Kids are influenced by their parents, but, ultimately, they are their own people. The Boy’s way of being in the world is distinctly his; The Girl’s talent for observation is uniquely hers. In managing people, you shouldn’t try to clone yourself; it wouldn’t work, and it shouldn’t work. Better to find ways to ensure that people are doing the right things for the right reasons, and to just accept that they’ll do them in their own styles. Observing classes brought that home to me quickly; some people get great results in the classroom using approaches I never would. Best to adopt a pragmatic humility and accept that wins come in many different flavors.
That willingness to give up control requires a certain trust that a good outcome will emerge. That can be difficult in low-trust environments. Insisting on too many concrete details too soon is self-defeating; it requires the future to present itself in the form of the present. I’ve seen far too many people mistake premature pickiness for analytical rigor. Analysis should be in the service of improvement, rather than in the defense of what’s already there. Yes, you can probably spot grammatical errors in the typical sixth-grade essay. Jumping all over them will discourage the student from continuing to write and thereby improving. If the goal is to help the student get better, feedback needs to be oriented around that.
Whether the current piece will land someplace interesting, I don’t know. But I’m excited to find out. The Roman numerals can come later, if they come at all.
