Keep the Drama on the Page
Tension and Stress Should Happen in Your Writing - Not to You
From Julia Cameron's The Right to Write: Learning to focus and avoid the energy-draining, time-consuming foil of real life drama can be an invaluable tool to any writer.
Julia Cameron is the well-respected author of The Artist’s Way and other writer’s guides and tools. In The Right to Write, she suggests that writers limit the drama they engage in – the gossip, arguments between friends, or unnecessary stress - so they can “keep the drama on the page.”
This advice may seem extreme to some; writing is a career or a pastime, after all, not a commitment to meditating! But keeping drama on the page and out of the way of your pen may be an invaluable piece of advice for aspiring authors.
“Keep the Drama on the Page”
What does that mean? In The Right to Write, Julia Cameron discusses Virgina Woolf’s notion of “a room of her own” but suggests the reason a writer needs one is “so that we [can] put aside the needs and agendas and dramas of others and concentrate on the actual feat of writing."
“This deal," she writes, "simple in the statement, is the key to all serenity and accomplishment as a writer. It’s a habit of saying, when drama rears its head, ‘I’ll think about that later – after I write.’”
Why?
There are several reasons – all of which can be summarized by the potential that life drama has to disconnect us from the thing that matters – the writing.
1. Drama is an Energy Drain
Anyone who has ever been in an argument knows that once the rush of adrenaline is gone, whether you won or lost the fight, exhaustion sets in.
How much energy does it take to be angry, to struggle, to fight, to beat yourself up for doing things wrong? Wouldn't you rather put that energy onto the page, into your characters, and into your writing career?
2. Drama is Time-Consuming
If you’re criticizing your daughter-in-law, or playing go-between for two arguing friends, you’re wasting minutes (or hours) of your life that you’ll never get back. Consider how much time you spend gossiping or complaining about office politics – time-devouring drama at its worst. Only by turning away from the drama can you get back to your notebook or your computer to write.
3. If Life Gives You Drama - Use It!
In every life some rain must fall. If you find yourself involved in dramatic (or traumatic, which is almost synonymous) situations – in other words, if you must have an interesting life – use it! Writing can be an invaluable tool for lancing anger, frustration, sadness, or grief, and readers will usually feel more resonance with a story if it means something to you. Turning drama in your life into drama on the page is a way to process and digest your life and at the same time “keep the drama on the page."
