Three Levels of Writing

LEVEL ONE

First level is writing for business communication, academic or scientific communication, or cash. Take me, for example. I’m a technical writer. I write for money because that’s the main source of income for my family. I’d never write a user’s manual or a system admin guide if I were not paid for. Would you?

When you write a memo, a conference brief, an annual report, or a press release, when you write the rules and regulations for your department, when we write an email to answer someone, they all fall into this first category of non-personal cerebral writing mixed up with a lot of procedural explanations and directions. It’s writing from the head.

This type of writing does not have "fire juice," however it’s still necessary that we produce this kind of prose. All dishes don’t have pepper in them but we need our morning cereal to start the day. We need to have well-written traffic signs to get to where we’re going.

LEVEL TWO

The second level gets personal in a hurry. I call this “Hurt Locker” Writing. This is where all the hurt comes out. If you don’t have that kind of hurt in your basement, you’ll never be attracted to writing as an art form and obsession anyways. The fact that you are reading this is proof enough that you’ve got some of that hurt in you.

It could be your parents, something from your childhood, teenage years, something to do with your siblings, spouse, a great loss, love spurned and rebuffed, a great injustice done to you or those you love, or a self-imposed limitation that’s commonly referred to as “low self-esteem”… It could be a terrible physical ailment… It’s an endless list. It’s the Three-Act Dramatic Conflict territory. Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman."

James Patterson

This kind of hurt is high-octane fuel for our writing. I have this too of course. If I could store my hurt feelings in a suitcase, I’d probably need an airplane hangar to store all my luggage. 

At its best, this is the kind of writing that produces a Charles Bukowski, a Dostoevsky,  a Stephen King, or a Kafka.

Most top-notch comedians write at this level. They just dish it out and get back even with their demons.

Consider yourself lucky if you can sit down and write 5 minutes a day, every day, at this level. Put your hurt on paper and soon enough the trickle will become a raging river and you’ll be on your way, flying over the rapids of your soul, trying to relive and recover the innocence of a childhood lost. It’s the classic writer’s journey to redemption through  licking your own wounds.

Yet this level is still very ego-centered. It’s still all about me, me, and still ME! The Beatles had a song called “I  Me Mine,” remember that one?

LEVEL THREE

Leo Buscaglia

The third level is for those who are a bit sick and tired of raging day and night at the second level. It’s the dawn of compassion and forgiveness. It’s realizing that the bastards who gave you so much pain and grief were in pain too. It’s realizing that perhaps, just perhaps, the words can bring light and defy gravity in addition to dressing your wounds and evening out the score.

At this level we see Leo Buscaglia’s of this world. We see Dalai Lama, Kabir, and Rumi. We see John Steinbeck of “Of Mice and Men”. At this level we are graced with Yann Martel's astonishing “Life of Pi.”

We have goose bumps at this new orbit of compassion and eventually tears start to flow. We pick up that phone and call our mother or father or a sibling to say “how are you?”, to say “forgive me, I’ve forgiven you and I love you.” This is the level of deep unconditional true love. This is where we recover our lost humanity and start on our journey towards true redemption and spiritual freedom.

THE SECRET

But here is the secret: without spending time at level one you probably will never make it to the second level. And without years of struggling at the second level, you’ll probably never make it to the third level.

As I write these lines I’m struggling hard to make my way from the second to the third level even though from a commercial point of view I’m firmly established at the first level as a technical writer. But I’ve got tons of poems, short stories, essays, thousands of blog posts and ezine letters, and a couple feature screenplays, none produced, none paid for, but all written with a lot of guts and blood, fear and anger. Pure second level output.

Now I feel drawn by a current invisible towards that third level of writing. This very piece you’re reading is part of this urge to share love at a higher level with all those who can appreciate it. I’m drawn towards oxygen and heaven. Something in me says that’s the only kind of writing that really matters from now on. I love to read a quick James Patterson thriller. It’s instant fun. It’s a quick fix for a three hour flight to anywhere. But it’s pure second level writing that I’m slowly losing interest in.

So take inventory of your writing today. At which level are you? At least get a foothold at the first level then push that heavy door into the second level (by just writing 5 minutes day, every day) so that one day you may grow wings and lift off towards other levels of writing and serving our wounded world.