hi! i was going to ask a kind of long, rambling question, but it comes down to this: how do you make your words feel like magic? (happy slightly belated birthday, by the way!)

bettsfic:

sorry for the delay in answering – this one really stumped me. i think i know what you mean by magic, but it’s so hard to nail down. i find myself asking, magic for the reader to read or the writer to write? 

and either way, it’s a hard thing to control. you have no way to know how your writing will touch a given reader. and it’s not like you can do some kind of blood sacrifice to summon your muse. they come and go as they please. 

but, having more of a science background than arts, i think: so these are the uncontrolled variables, so what are the controlled ones? that is to say, what does magic feel like to me while i write it, and what parts of that practice are active and consistent?

i remember when i started writing, nothing felt magic because i was too focused on putting one word after the next in a logical sequence. it’s a lot like picking up any new hobby – you struggle at first, and it feels clunky and awkward. then, with most things, over time (even without marked improvement), you build muscle memory just by doing a thing over and over. playing video games, your fingers learn the keys and motions and timing to control your character. competing in a sport, your limbs and muscles learn their necessary movements. at a new job, you have to learn where all the files go and how to use the systems and the timing of everything. 

to get to the magic, you have to build that muscle memory. you have to know what a good sentence feels like to write (because you’ll want to read it over and over). you have to find a physical space in which to write where you’re comfortable and feel your best. you have to find your writing rhythm, your focus, your voice. the only way to do that, though, is to put words on a page, over and over and over. even if they’re totally illogical words and they don’t make sentences or any sense at all, the act of taking something from your brain onto paper is all that matters. you can learn how to play a piano by putting your fingers on the keys and listening to what sounds good. you can learn to run a marathon by putting one foot forward repeatedly without a destination. with writing, with everything, you have to build the muscle memory.

and even after you’ve done that, sometimes the magic still isn’t there. but here are some things that help me find it:

• doing something you’ve never done before. writing in a voice or style you’ve never attempted. stealing someone else’s aesthetic. combining two authors’ aesthetic. changing up the structure of the piece from what you would naturally do. write on a different size sheet of paper. write sitting on the floor in a corner of your house you’ve never sat in. make a character you would never want to know in person and try to get into their mind to understand them. go somewhere you would never otherwise go just to put it in a story. 
• be uncomfortable. sometimes i think things don’t feel like magic because they bore us. and one way to not be bored is to write something you’re so unfamiliar with it makes you uncomfortable to even consider. i’m a very inquisitive person, and when i find something about the world i don’t understand, i want to find a way to understand it. sometimes that’s by research. sometimes it’s by writing. a habit i’ve learned is to embrace all things that make me want to gag, physically or morally, to constantly push my mental and emotional limits on the page, no matter how hard it is or how much it hurts.
• make a puzzle for yourself. i’m halfway between being a planner and winging everything, which basically means i make very loose plot points. this turns writing into a game. i have to figure out how to get each character from point A to B. if i’m not curious about my story, i lose interest in it. so i have to make it interesting enough for me to want to answer all the questions i’ve posed. 
• focus on objects. when in doubt, empower an object. this seems like a totally bizarre thing to do but it really, really works. give a character a material thing that means so much to them, that symbolizes something great, and give that object some kind of power over the character. let your character externalize all their emotions into that object so they have significance. you don’t have to put magic into words, but you can always put it into objects.
• give every character a goal and a reason they want to achieve it. this way, you have two directions to move in: forward, toward the goal, and outward, toward the reason they want to achieve it. if you care enough about your characters and their plight, you’ll be able to escape your own head and hop into theirs, and they’ll drive the rest of the story for you. 
• BE WEIRD. magic is a function of creativity, and creativity is a means of breaking rules and expectations. force your mind to go against your own expectations. do this not only in a big picture sense but in your prose too. try to put words together in a way you’ve never seen them put together before. don’t worry so much about making sense. learn how to follow the rules you’re given or constraints you put on yourself, and then learn now to break them, or better, bend them to achieve what you intend. 

i hope this helps. thank you for the birthday wishes and for posing such a fun question.