✍️ The “Magic Formula” for Writers

Or, Why You Can’t Use Science to Create Art

Rod Carley (left), Heidi Von Palleske, Hilton the Cat, and Terry Fallis on stage at the St. Lawrence Writers Festival for the launch of Rod’s (cat’s…) book, The Great Catsby.

Somerset Maugham said, “There are three rules of writing. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.”

I’ve used this quote in some of my workshops before, but I was reminded of it last weekend at the St. Lawrence Writers Festival in Brockville, Ontario.*

As I often find during discussion on writing, something clicked: You can’t use science to create art. It seems obvious, right? Art is art; science is science.

There is some crossover. Pottery glazes involve chemical reactions. Similarly, paints need to be mixed in certain ways with certain ingredients. I’m typing this on a laptop that is 99% thanks to science.

But art – art is magic. At the very, very least, metaphorically. I talked to a reader at the festival who was amazed at the writing process. He said that it seems to him to be a “mystical” pursuit – and I told him most writers feel that way, too. The question, “Where do your ideas come from?” is raised all the time to writers. Some make up stories after years of trying to tell the truth. “I don’t know,” is the most true answer, but it never satisfies.

My theory is that new writers want to learn the “magic formula” to writing. But right there is the problem. “Magic” is art. “Formula” is science. There isn’t any magic formula because the two words are diametrically opposed.

Even the writing process, which in theory could be quantified (e.g., “I write for three hours a day”, “I get up at 6am every morning before other people are up”, “I write in the bathtub with my cat”) and therefore edges on the scientific, is different for every single writer. There are clear paths for engineers to build a bridge, for surgeons to remove a tumour. There are right ways and wrong ways.

That’s not as true for writing.

In fact, I would argue that arbitrary, formula-based constraints are counter-productive, such as forcing yourself to write three hours when the last two and a half are pure torture causing you to produce mostly drivel. Trying to science-fy writing drains the magic like a spike in your transmission pan.

Instead, we need to pull ourselves away from the scientific world. Let’s explore those nooks and crannies where faeries live and leprechauns hide gold and the mind can wander where it wants without a care about time or space or what is empirically “right”.

Letting go and just writing – that’s the magic. But there isn’t a formula.

To contradict myself (because Art does that, too…), here’s a formula I wrote about several years ago** to help you find your own magical faerie writing place, which I call a “writing thin place”:

These are more like signposts than guided steps to help you find your own way, not a map to a single, common path. Plus, it includes a neat little analogy I forgot about!

If you do find your way to your writing thin place, let us know in the comments below. I don’t need to know the way – we all have our own magic trails to follow – but I am interested in hearing how you found yours, and what saw when you got there!

Until next time, keep writing with wild abandon!

~Graham

*(Great festival, btw! I hear next year’s is already in the works… I highly recommend it for the sheer socialization aspect of meeting other writers alone!)

**So long ago, in fact, that I have since read “Bird by Bird” twice.

email me if you get lost.