How The Matrix can teach us what we need to know about writing

What if there is no spoon?

This week, I read two inspiring pieces of writing advice and wanted to share.

Both bits come from experienced novel writers and teachers (you can subscribe to their newsletters, if you like, where I cribbed these from). 

Mastery in fiction-writing might just involve really believing in and accepting the impossibility of a permanent, enduring method. - George Saunders

and

The antidote to self-doubt is not steeling oneself against it, but simply writing through it. Make friends with it. Inquire into its nature. If I am scared, I can ask myself where this particular fear lives in the world of my story. The fear is there for a reason. When we begin to work with our doubts and fears, we grow as storytellers, recognizing that our circumstances are not overcome through force of will but by acceptance. - Alan Watt

What these snippets are trying to teach is that the harder we try to force something or to figure it out in our heads, the less likely it is to happen the way we want it to. Though these quotations are from fiction writers about fiction, I think the approach could be applied to nonfiction too. 

In other words, there is no spoon. 

Do not try and bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth... There is no spoon... Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself. ― Spoon Boy to Neo, The Matrix, 1999

I am the type of person (Type A, Enneagram 1, left-brained, you name it) who deeply believes, even though life has proven it to be mostly untrue, that there is one right way to do things and all it takes is figuring out the formula. Especially when it comes to writing. 

These days, I’m taking less of a “write for X minutes” or “write Y words” or “figure out what happens here” approach. I’m using my writing time to be open to the work, to what it needs to tell me.

Could you believe for just a minute, maybe even just when you sit down to write this week, that the book you want to write is waiting for you to ask it what it needs from you? What it wants you to know about it?