Finding Begeisterung

How do you maintain enthusiasm for a project, especially when they drag on for years? I’m in the third or fourth year of my current novel, with at least another year of edits ahead of me (probably two or three if I keep the pace I’m at). At times I despair of ever getting it to a place I’d consider done. But I haven’t stopped working on it yet. 

Sam Delany’s introduction to About Writing is called Emblems of Talent. In it he lists the things that talented writers have over simply good writers. One of the things that has stuck with me most is his description of Begeisterung. The quote is academic, but worth reading in his words because he explains it best:

“The early German Romantics—Shiller (1759-1805), the Schlegel brothers, Wilhelm (1767-1845) and Friedrich (1772-1829), and Ludvig Tieck (1773-1853), that is, the smart Romantics —believed something they called Begisterung was the most important element among the processes that constituted the creative personality. I think they were right.

Begiesterung is usually translated as “inspiration.” Geist is the German word for “spirit,” and Be-geist-erung means literally “be-spiritied-ness,” which is certainly close to “inspiration.” As the word is traditionally used in ordinary German, though, it is even closer to “enthusiasm” —”spirited” in the sense of a “spirited” house or a “spirited” prizefighter.

For the Romantics, Begisterung was not just the initial idea or the talent that one had to realize it. Begeisterung was both intellectual and bodily. A form of spirit, it was also a mode of will. To the Romantics, this enthusiasm/Begeisterung carried the artist through the work’s creation. 

If there were things you didn't know that you needed in order to write your story, your novel, your play, with enough Begeisterung you could always go out and learn them. If your imagination wasn't throwing out the brilliant scenes and moments to make the material dramatic, with Begeisterung you could arrive at such effective material through dogged intelligence, though it might take longer and require more energy. If you lacked the verbal talent that produced vivid descriptive writing, well, there were hard analytic styles that were also impressive, which you could craft through intellectual effort though you would have to attack the work sentence by sentence. But however you employed it, Begeisterung is what carried you through the job. Begeisterung could make up for failures on other creative fronts.

Begeisterung is what artists share over their otherwise endless differences: enthusiasm for a task clearly perceived.” Samuel Delany - About Writing p.9-10 (emphasis mine)

Delany describes something we all need to find — the enthusiasm for our work that will carry us through. What do you love about what you are writing? Why is it important? Working to find that is no easy task. But once identified they can make the work infinitely easier. That thought made me think of Rachel Aaron’s entirely practical answer to finding her enthusiasm for a story, for a single scene, in her description of what she calls “candy bar scenes”:

“As with everything else I’d discovered, the answer was head-slappingly obvious. The days when I broke 10k were the days when I was writing scenes I'd been dying to write since I planned the book. They were the candy bar scenes, the ones I wrote all that other stuff to get to. By contrast, my slow days (days when I was struggling to break 5k) corresponded to the scenes I wasn't that crazy about.

Fortunately, the solution turned out to be, yet again, stupidly simple. Every day, while I was writing out my description of what I was going to write for the knowledge component of the triangle, I would play the scene through in my mind and try to get excited about it. I'd look for all the cool little hooks, the parts that interested me most, and focus on those since they were obviously what made the scene cool. If I couldn't find anything to get excited over, then I would change the scene, or get rid of it entirely. I decided then and there that, no matter how useful a scene might be for my plot, boring scenes had no place in my novels.” Rachel Aaron Bach - 2K to 10K 

Boring has no place in my novels. Duh. And what makes the story not boring is my own enthusiasm for the story. So easy. So agonizingly hard to remember over time. And this is where reading a stupid number of writing books becomes either an asset or a mild insanity because that thought led me to remember a bit from Charlie Jane Anders on imposter syndrome:

“I feel like most of us have no idea what we’re doing most of the time, in life as well as in writing, but we’re supposed to pretend we do. That’s one reason for imposter syndrome, in fact. And for various reasons, it’s sometimes easier to keep up that pretense when you’re in the middle, or better yet the home stretch, of a story that’s holding together somewhat. Starting a new work of fiction is scary precisely because you’re at your most exposed—but you also have nothing to lose, in terms of this particular work at least. Basically? Writing is one of the few areas where getting lost and confused can be liberating as well as terrifying. “No clue” can also mean “no fucks given.” Charlie Jane Anders - Never Say You Can’t Survive p. 41-42

And that of course led me to remember a bit from Chuck Wendig’s Gentle Writing Advice that is basically, to my mind, the same idea Delany is trying to get across with a slightly different tone.

“You have to keep some fucks in your fuckbasket. You must give some number of fucks to continue this thing that you want to do. It is important. It does matter. You matter in pursuit of it. You just can’t keep all the fucks. All those fucks in your fuckbasket, they’re too fucking heavy. There’s too much fuckdensity going on there, which is definitely a scientific term, probably. If you discard all your fucks and your fuckfields lie truely fallow, then nothing will grow there. But if you are too burdened by the weight of such fuckery, you won’t be able to move; you’ll remain paralyzed, neck-deep in fucks. I only want to lighten your load. You must have something in your tank to continue this pursuit.” Chuck Wendig - Gentle Writing Advice p.164

So, how do you keep your tank filled? Find and keep an enthusiasm for a project strong enough to last you for many years? Chances are you already have it (especially if you made it this far in the article, thanks for hanging with me). All you need to do is identify it, and then keep reminding yourself.

Happy writing ~EM

CHALLENGE - Identify and reinforce your Begisterung

• Spend some time identifying your motivating emotions for writing: spite, joy, the delight of having someone else read your words? Get specific, no, even more specific. Spend at least 20 minutes writing so you dig deeper than your surface impressions. 
• Take Rachel Aaron’s advice and identify your “candy bar” scenes for your current project. What makes you excited about them? How can you find that excitement for every scene you work on? 
• Is your field of fucks fallow? Wendig’s advice is ultimately to be kind to yourself. Give yourself some space from this project and find something (anything) that sparks joy and do that for a little while. Take a walk outside, or as Wendig mentions in his afterword, go birdwatching.

Image: Cropped and made black and white. M.C. Escher, Eye (seventh and definitive state), mezzotint, October 1946