How Writers Journey to Comfort and Fluency: A Psychological Adventure

Boice, Robert. "Chapter 1: Motivation." How Writers Journey to Comfort and Fluency: A Psychological Adventure. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994. Print.

I seldom adhere to, or even promote, reading "How-to-Write" books or articles. However, while preparing for an upcoming Ph.D class on bibliography and research methods, I came across a chapter in Robert Boice's How Writers Journey to Comfort and Fluency: A Psychological Adventure on motivation that had me saying to self, "Self, that's you." Not only does Boice attack the simple everyday distractions we writers employ to procrastinate, he focuses on healing ways to reduce the stress and anxiety which often confronts the angst-ridden author: what Harold Bloom calls the anxiety of influence.

Boice first outlines the four most common reasons we as writers fail to self-motivate or lend ourselves to poor writing conditions which lead to self-predicated failure or inferior writing. He breaks these categories down to: 1. Waiting; 2. Ambivalence; 3. disaffection with writing; and 4. paradoxical reasons. As I worked my way through the first twenty pages of the chapter that pertained to the reasons that lead us to the actual writing process, he delivered them with anecdotes from other writers and the tensions that arise in their writing that made me feel at home with the other writers' plights. Boice delivers us to an interesting and self-reflecting environment, which allows us to explore our own writing habits-good and bad-through the prism of others locked irrevocably to the Shakespeare Squad.

After outlining our most common pratfalls, Boice offers techniques that will move us from the anxious, neurotic, procrastinating messes of caffeine and fatigue we most often experience during writing binges to a healthy conglomeration of social and well-adjusted writers wrought with a healthy social and united writing circle. To do so, he calmly, which appears as his mantra through the entire writing process, offers four stages promised to change your writing habits and production. As I waded into the four stages, I dipped a timid toe first, and thought, "Here we go: another hokey attempt to make my writing process a more touchy-feely holistic approach that will leave me feeling good, not only about myself, but the world around me." But he didn't. I didn't feel the normal wow sense I feel when I read a "how-to-write" book that leaves me sorely wishing for more thought-provoking suggestions.

No, Boice's system is common-sensical, approachable, and actually, daresay, useable outline. He suggests writers, even professionals, should: Stage 1. learn about tacit knowledge from experts; Stage 2. build a calm focus; Stage 3. establish a regular habit of writing; and Stage 4. combat special forms of impatience. The stages, within themselves, offer sets of rules for the various types of writers. Boice offers a substantial amount of writing types to which we can all find a little bit of ourselves to relate to some level of the stage and their rules.

This short review, I must admit, is the first time I've ever taken the suggestions of a how-to book and applied them to actual practice. Boice sells me on his method when he introduces a relaxation exercise called the tongue-check. If you don't know what it is, don't worry, I didn't either. But the tongue check works and will now become an integral part of my writing routine. I do suggest, highly suggest, at least piece-mealing Boice's book. At least give it a chance, I did, and my writing, and the mood around the house as I peck away, is better for doing so.