My #2 Piece of Writing Advice
My favorite pieces of writing advice are all fresh in my mind and heart because last week, we hosted the Pastors, Priests and Guides retreat here in New York.
It was fantastic on all sorts of levels, and one of the things we do on the last morning of the retreat are Circle Conversations—informal conversations focused on moving out of the retreat space back into our real lives with a renewed imagination for what’s next. And the conversation I facilitate every time, unsurprisingly, is about writing and storytelling and life as a creative person—I love it. Writing is one of my favorite things to do and one of my favorite things to talk about, so the time flies by every time.
I always start with my #1 piece of writing advice—all about our senses and the importance of noticing. And the second one works in partnership with the first: first you notice, & you write absolutely every last thought and image and detail, and then you let it marinate…
My #2 Piece of Writing Advice: Let it Marinate.
This is something I learned from a brilliant creative person I worked with many years ago: good work needs time to marinate—that time makes the work better, and it protects both our own selves and our readers in healthy ways.
In cooking terms, marinating is a technique you use on a tough cut of meat. You add acid and time to something nearly unpalatable, and as the time and acid do their work, that tough cut becomes flavorful and tender.
Marinating is the second step to great writing. The first step is getting it all out, raw and messy, with tons of sense details, and the second step is giving it time to become flavorful and tender.
Especially in terms of writing on social media, I feel like we’ve all had that ick feeling when someone’s sharing something too soon, too close, too raw. We intuitively have that sense that this isn’t something we should be hearing about yet, that it needs more time to marinate…and here’s an important aspect of all this: the tougher the cut, the longer it needs to marinate.
What I mean is that the more difficult, the more personal, the more emotional…then the more time required before you share it—the hardest stuff needs the most time to marinate. And that’s true for at least three reasons: first, we let our work marinate because good creative work, especially if it’s difficult or challenging in some way, takes time to morph and reshuffle and settle into itself.
Second, we let our work marinate because it isn’t healthy for own own souls and hearts to share widely from unhealed places. In clinical/therapeutic circles, you often hear the phrase “Share from your scars, not your wounds,” and that’s exactly right. Of course writing about our losses and heartbreaks can be healing for us as writers, but not until there’s been a level of healing—not until it’s a scar instead of an open wound.
Third, we let our work marinate because it’s not healthy for readers to be exposed to our unprocessed pain or our jumbled attempts at making sense of our emotions in real time. If you want to offer something meaningful to your readers, practice letting your work marinate—the deeper the emotion, the longer the marinating time. And I practice this rule: if I’m feeling churned up about sharing it, it definitely needs more time.
Writing is a spiritual process—also a physical one and a relational one, a tool for transformation and a way to heal. Creative work is sacred work, and it can change us--both the writer and the reader. And it’s important to respect the enormity of that.
Letting your work marinate is a way of respecting what creative work can do in us, a way of acknowledging the depths we’re dipping down to in our best work, and how important it is to take time as we surface. Letting your work marinate honors the work, the writer, and the reader, and it helps you create something truly nourishing.
Here's to flavor and tenderness that develop over time, in all sorts of brave and creative ways. Happy writing!
XO--S