Embrace your Inner Zombie

At a workshop recently the discussion turned, as it does, to our productivity. One participant bemoaned her own output. She needed to be in the right mood. And the work needed to be good. She didn't want to be just zombie writing, she said.

Zombie writing.

That was such a fine phrase that several other people used it. It has a hook, doesn't it? And of course it packs an emotional punch too. It tells us that such writing is bad. It is writing with the brain turned off. It's a moronic outpouring. A dull moaning, disconnected from any meaning (except perhaps a desire to eat living human flesh, but let's not get too literal here).

It was only later in the workshop that someone said, “well actually, I like zombie writing."

And only after she had broken the spell did I realize that I agree her, even though I'd been decrying the practice myself only minutes before. I like zombie writing.

I believe in writing as much as possible as fast as possible, in an attempt to stay one step ahead of that voice. The one that tells you that what you're writing is a complete disaster. I throw words at the wall and see which ones stick.

That dreadful critical voice, the one you actually need when you begin to revise, is often characterized as the Inner Editor, and during initial creation it can kill productivity stone dead.

It's the Inner Editor who has you spend an entire afternoon on a single sentence. A sentence that you begin the next day's work by deleting altogether.

Here's Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo on the topic, in his book No Plot No Problem.

And before you set off on your valiant and overcaffeinated mission, there's one thing I'll need to take from you.

I'll need to confiscate your Inner Editor.

That's right, the Inner Editor. The doubting self-critical voice that we all inherited around puberty as an unfortunate door prize for surviving childhood. The Inner Editor is a busybody and a perfectionist, happiest when it's tsk-tsking our shortcomings and weaving our past blunders into a rich tapestry of personal failure.

For reasons not entirely clear to anyone, we invite this fun-spoiling tyrant along with us on all our artistic endeavors. And from painting to music-making to writing, our endeavors have paid the price of this killjoy's presence. Thanks to our Inner Editor's merciless second-guessing, most of our artistic output ends up tentative and truncated, doomed to be abandoned at the first sign that the results are anything short of brilliant.

Of course once you're freed of critical oversight things can go wrong. In particular there's a danger of writing about writing. Or writing about writing about writing, which is probably even worse. I've been guilty of a certain amount of metawriting. Sentences like “I'm writing this because I need to get started, and it's all wordcount really isn't it?” often crop up at the beginning of sessions.

The good news is that this isn't true zombie writing. No self respecting zombie would get hung up on self-reflection, after all. The real deal flows from somewhere deeper. Robert Olen Butler:

...you've got this self-conscious metavoice going on all the time. I do, and I'm sure a lot of you do too. You sit quietly and your metavoice is talking to you in your head. “Well, here I'm sitting,” it says. And even, “OK, maybe I shouldn't think so much now. That sounds like it's something I probably should try, to see if I can do that.” This is going through your head, right? This is going on all the time; there's all this analytical garbage running through your mind. This self-conscious meta-voice; it's a voice about the voice. It's like talking about my own consciousness....

You have to let go of that comforting, distancing voice, you have to then decscend into that deep dream sapce of yours, and that will result in a kind of superconcentration.

From Where you Dream. (Boot Camp).

Surprisingly though, I've found that after twenty or thirty words of metawriting, something clicks, and I'm back into the story. Whether I'm squarely in Butler's trance state, is another matter. Maybe I'm in some pseudo-trance, some mere ante-chamber to the real zone. Ersatz or not, the zombie's writing story.

Still, there's no getting away from it. Zombie writing leads to wasted words. I am going through an edit right now, and at least 60 percent of the initial work is ending up binned, or stored away in overflow files for later consideration. In a way I prefer this, though. It means that I have choices when I edit. I can pull the best of the writing from a panel of candidates. And because it's rough, I can wade in and make drastic changes without hesitation.

With a close-to-finished first draft, on the other hand, I find that it's harder to make radical choices. Because it seems so neat, and self-sufficient, I feel that I can't pull one element out without undermining the coherence of the whole.

One of the great benefits of the zombie-write-fest is the fact that nothing is written in stone. Of course this is the case with anything you write. But if you're certain that your draft should crafted in the first place, then it can be hard to start at all. I think that's perhaps what people mean when they talk about the tyranny of the blank page.

I think of this state of paralysis as a kind of stage fright. It's like that dream where you're shoved out onto a stage with an expectant audience looking on, and you realize you haven't learned your lines. In fact you're not even sure what the play is supposed to be about. Whatever you say, though, it had better be good. It had better live up to the program notes.

With Zombie writing, though, the script doesn't matter. It's improv. A lot of what you produce might be pure dross, but there's always the chance of the inspired leap. A leap that might not have possible with a more focused approach.

In summary, here are some potentials hazards of zombie writing

• Danger of uninspired meta-writing
• Many wasted words
• You don't come across as a muse-inspired genius (because you create ragged work that needs much editing)
• You stack up work for yourself on the edit

And here's why I do it anyway (note that these bullet points overlap!):

• You're less likely to get blocked
• There's no need to wait for the right mood/time/word/inspiration
• You come across as a muse-inspired genius (you very occasionally come up with good stuff without planning to)
• Your inner editor is temporarily suppressed – which is always a relief. The only other way I know to silence the bastard is by getting drunk. Though that's fun, it does not aid writing.
• Your inevitable over-production provides more choice during the edit phase
• Because you're writing from a less analytical standpoint, there's more possibility of an inspired  leap (otherwise known as 'writing well by accident')

Despite my snark about the muse-inspired genius, there are some strong points on the downside. In particular, the freedom of the zombie write demands serious discipline and attention at the edit stage.

I must admit to not having quite managed this issue. I am many thousands of words ahead of my Inner Editor, who is still sneering at sentences I wrote over a month ago. Still, I believe that there is good stuff to be found admidst the chaff.

Also I left out a final bullet point.

• Zombie writing is fun.