All language subtitles for MasterClass Walter Mosley Teaches Fiction and Storytelling - 02. Walter s Process Writing Every Day

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Many times, people
ask me-- they say,

what is my writing process?

Often, I start by telling
them-- by telling you--

what is not my process.

I don't have a special chair,
a special room, a special desk,

special music, special incense,
a special place in town.

I write wherever I am,
and I write whenever

I wake up in the morning.

I had too much to
drink last night,

I may not get up until
11 o'clock and write.

But usually, I wake
up about 5:00 or 6:00,

and I write for three
hours almost every day.

My goal has always been
to write 1,000 words--

not 1,000 perfect
words, just 1,000 words.

I do that on, let's say, Monday.

I wake up, 6 o'clock, write
three hours, 1,000 words.

Next day, I wake
up at 5 o'clock.

I start writing.

The first thing I do is
reread that 1,000 words

I wrote yesterday and make
very small editing on that.

And then I write my
next thousand words.

And that goes on
and on and on and on

until I get to the
end of the novel.

When I tell you that you
should write every day,

I'm speaking to
exactly 99% of you.

Most people get the best work
out of getting up every day

and writing for three hours.

And when I say get up--

a lot of people write in
the middle of the night.

OK, fine.

If that's the best
time you write,

that's what you
should be writing.

You will find, if
you write every day,

that the next day,
ideas have bubbled up

from someplace that you
had no idea were there--

ideas about oh, yeah, that
reminds me of my mother.

Oh, no, a black bird will
be sitting in the window.

Oh, I think that
after this, they're

going to go somewhere else.

The ideas that start
bubbling up are

from these unconscious places.

You've written for three hours,
and then for the next 21 hours,

your unconscious is working
saying, what was that about?

What was that about?

And they're-- and they
reach into different parts

of yourself and bring out
all of these new ideas.

After 100 days, when
you go back and reread

what you've written, which is
the first rewrite, you'll say,

hey, I've been mentioning that
black bird all through here.

I wonder what that means.

Or I've been repeating
this word so many times.

I better get rid of that.

What you're doing is you're
discovering yourself.

You're discovering
yourself as the storyteller

as you're writing the novel, and
that's the unconscious element

of the work.

If you stick to my schedule
of writing for two to three

hours every day, you will
have a completed novel

in a year's time.

You'll write and write and
write and finish a draft.

Maybe it's three months.

Maybe it's four months.

Then you'll start going over
it and over it and over it.

Every time go over
it, it's a draft,

even if you only
change one word.

Then you will maybe you have a
friend read it or somebody else

read it.

Maybe you'll read it out
loud into a tape recorder.

Maybe you'll do a public
reading, you know,

where people do these things,
in coffee houses or something.

But by the end of
that time, you will

have a decent draft of a
short novel-- you know,

60,000, 70,000 words.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

If you've gotten
up in the morning

and you're sitting down in
front of a piece of paper,

in front of a screen, you
start writing and nothing comes

and nothing comes
and nothing comes,

and you look at
the clock and it's

been an hour and 27 minutes
and nothing has come yet,

the answer is to
push through that.

The best way to push to do
that, the most satisfying way,

is to start writing words--

and really, any words.

Just start saying, you
know, I hate monkeys.

I like the zoo.

I hate pizza, but I
love, you know, Italy--

you know, whatever you're
going to start saying.

And hopefully, that's going
to lead you to your character.

And don't ever be
upset with yourself,

as long as you took the
three hours to write.

It's very true in
the modern world

and in education, people want
methods beyond our own humanity

to do things.

How do I do this even
though I can't do this?

And the answer is will.

You just will yourself to do it.

Now, I feel I'm
making a pretty easy--

two, three hours every morning.

So OK, that might
be really torturous.

You sit there for
two or three hours,

and nothing is coming
for 10 days, for 20 days.

But it's going to
come, ultimately.

I promise you, it's going
to come, ultimately.

But it's going to feel bad.

And the only way to
continue is to have the will

to say, OK, I know this
is going to work because I

know there's a novel in me.

I just have to work
at it every day.

Enough days of maybe
writing gibberish

will slowly turn into
something, and you'll be amazed.

Wow, so this is what
my character thinks.

He thinks all
these crazy things.

Well, how do I start
to put them together?

That's on Thursday and Friday
and Saturday and next Saturday.

It will hurt sometimes.

It will feel like you're
not getting anywhere.

It will feel like
you're failing.

But that's OK.

Such a large part
of art is failure

that it's just another day.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Many people-- maybe you--

are frightened by
the blank page.

How do I start?

The reason you do
this is because you've

read some great novel--

you know, "The Idiot" by
Dostoevsky, "Dead Souls"

by Gogol, David Copperfield.

And it starts so
beautifully, and here

you are at the blank page,
and there's no beauty,

there's no sentence, there's
no structure like you've

read in these great novels.

Of course, the
mistake you're making

is these great novels were draft
after draft after draft written

by novelists who had
written for so long

that they knew all
kinds of things

about writing before they
sat down to this blank page.

Their first draft
didn't sound like that.

Their first draft
didn't work like that,

and that's what's great.

The blank page invites anybody.

Come to me.

Start writing.

Say whatever you
want, doesn't matter.

Start writing.

And then you can.

You just start writing.

Maybe you write a
sentence, I want

to tell a story about
a guy named Bob.

Bob was a nice guy until
he killed Joe Smith.

You know, that might be
the story you want to tell.

You don't like it.

That sentence doesn't work well.

But you just keep writing
and writing and writing.

You get to your 1,000 words,
and you leave it alone.

And the next day, you get
up, and you look at it again.

You say, OK, here's what I
really wanted to say, maybe.

And so you start again.

There's a second blank page,
but it's still a blank page.

The idea is that the blank
page makes no judgment on you,

and nobody is going
to read it but you.

It's there in front of you.

And do not be weighed down by
a novel like "War and Peace"

that had 100 drafts
because you're just

writing the first step
of the first draft.

You don't have to
worry about anything.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The concept of re-writing is
worth spending some time on.

I don't even think
about writing.

There's pre-writing,
and there's rewriting.

The pre-writing is the
first draft of your novel.

The re-writing is going over
that novel and saying, OK,

this is working.

This is working.

I'm saying all these amazing
things that I didn't really

know were there.

I'm wasting a lot of time
saying this other stuff.

And you're, you
know, restructuring.

Every time you go
through that novel,

you might read through
the whole 500-page novel

and only change one word.

Well, that's a new
draft of that novel.

That's re-writing.

Sitting in front of
the blank page trying

to understand what your
character is going to say,

that's writing.

You may not write much.

You may not write anything.

But you know,
that's the process.

You might have gotten
to a certain place,

let's say, in your painting.

I'll talk about another medium.

And it's almost perfect,
but it's not exactly what

you're trying to say.

You might have to look at that
painting for, like, weeks.

What is this?

How does this?

I wrote a book
called "John Woman."

It took me 20 years
to finish that book.

I would-- and sometimes
I would just sit,

I'd read everything
that I'd written.

And I'd go, yeah,
it's all right,

but it's not the book I want.

And I'd go, why not?

And I would-- you know, and
I kept coming back to it

and back to it.

And one day, I figured
it out, you know?

There's just a-- it's
just that you need

to have faith in your mind.

I don't want to say heart
here because the heart is

wanting to write now.

But the mind is saying,
this is not working.

This is not working.

This is-- oh, wait a second.

What if-- and then
maybe it starts working.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

A novel is not a
project that you're

doing on a drafting
table in the garage.

A novel is a living
being that you're

creating out of your soul.

It may not be a
perfect creature.

It may have some, you
know, flaws and deficits.

It may not, in the end, work
well enough to get published.

But you have to finish
your novel in order

to know what's right and wrong
with you writing the novel.

And when you come to the end
of that year, you may decide,

at that point, I'm going
to write another novel,

or you may spend the next
year re-writing this one

to make it work.

But you will finish it.

I've been asked many
times by many you know,

beginning writers, but also
more experienced writers.

They say, well, how
do you know when

you're finished with the novel?

And I say, well, you know,
I write the first draft

and then the second then
the third then the fourth

then the 10th then
the 20th then I

read it out loud
into a tape recorder

and then the 21st and 22nd.

And finally, I-- every
time I've read it,

I've seen what's wrong,
and I fixed that thing.

I've seen what's wrong,
and I fixed that thing.

I've seen what's wrong.

But finally, in my last
draft, I read the novel,

I see what's wrong, I have
no idea how to fix it,

so the novel's finished.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I have written very many books.

I think it is 60
that I've published.

I love writing.

I get up every day,
and I start writing.

I start telling stories.

I start trying to
understand and describe

and to plumb the depths.

The reason I tell people that
they should write every day

is the same reason that
Sigmund Freud told people

that they should be
in psychoanalysis

five to seven days a week.

Go see your therapist.

Lie on the couch.

Free associate.

And then the next
day, you realize,

oh, that free
association from the day

before has opened
up new avenues.

And it happens day
after day after day.

And so I've written almost
every day for over 30 years.

In that time, I've gotten
deeper and deeper and deeper

into my own unconscious, and
so my stories have changed,

have grown, have gotten
deeper in many ways.

And so me writing
today is different

than me writing yesterday,
and me writing tomorrow

will be different
than me writing today.

If you make the commitment
to write every day--

every day, every day, every
day, as the children say--

then you will write differently
today than you will tomorrow.

And the day after tomorrow,
you will write differently

than you write tomorrow.

It changes day to day to day.

You will get deeper and
deeper, better and better.

And that is-- it will be
great for your writing,

but it will also be great
for you, as a person,

being able to understand
this incredibly complex world

that we live in.

I've shared with you
my process, and I

hope that you can find your
own within the structure

that I presented.

But if you can't, if you
have to work outside of that,

if you wake up one day and say,
oh, I feel a novel coming on,

and you have to sit down for
the next week and write it,

that's fine.

I have complete
respect for that.

This is a MasterClass.

But inside this
MasterClass, we are equals.