Not a waste of time

I’m out of questions for the time being, so we’re back to my random musings on writing in general.

Back when I was a beginning writer, I had a horror of “wasting writing time” by writing stuff that wasn’t actual pay copy. If it wasn’t intended to appear on a page in the book, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it. My first attempt at a plot outline was a skeleton-like sketch of around two paragraphs that made sense to no one but me, because I didn’t see any point in writing a summary when I was going to have to turn around and write a whole book that said the same thing in more detail.

The one thing I was willing to write out was the worldbuilding/backstory—mostly the history, both personal and political—because I knew I couldn’t keep it straight without at least a timeline of the major decisions that affected my major characters. I wrote it out so I could remember it, but I saw having to do that as something of a failure on my part, a waste of valuable writing time. I justified it with the argument that I would eventually turn all those ideas into other books and stories. I wasn’t “wasting time;” I was setting up skeletal outlines for future work.

It was several years before I noticed that having a skeletal outline wasn’t enough. Every book I started that was based on previously-invented bits of backstory ended up needing its own, new and more detailed, backstory. Working out the history in detail was just part of my writing process. It took me even longer to recognize that writing scenes that I know, even as I write them, are not going to end up in a book is not a waste of time.

I bring this up because I’ve been running into writers lately who seem to have a similar issue. In some cases, it’s the reluctance to spend their limited writing time on something they perceive as not actually writing; in others, it’s a desire to see themselves as seat-of-the-pants writers, making everything up as they go along.

It never seems to occur to the would-be pantsers that the cool new plot twist they came up with three-quarters of the way into the manuscript means they are going to have to cut two entire scenes and entirely rewrite a third in the earlier parts of the book, meaning that the time spent writing those scenes was “wasted” by their definition. (Not that there’s any problem with being a pantser; it’s just that using it to justify never writing anything that doesn’t get into the book is…disingenuous, at best, and perilously close to “it has to be perfect on the first try or it’s not worth writing” at worst.)

I have (less frequently, but often enough to be worrisome) also run into would-be writers who consider research to be “wasting precious writing time.” Especially general background research. They’re grudgingly willing to look up a specific fact that they realize in the middle of a scene they need to know, but they don’t want to waste time learning information they aren’t sure they’re going to need. (Except when getting said information involves taking a vacat—er, a research trip to somewhere they want to write off on their taxes. Then suddenly they’re all about needing accurate information they can only get by actually being there for two weeks.)

Again, it never seems to occur to these writers that until they’ve done at least a little general research, they don’t know what they need to know. And while it is true that most writers are never going to be experts in everything they write about (meaning that even with a bunch of research, some things will still be in error), most readers are forgiving as long as it’s clear the author made an effort. Doing no research at all is a recipe for making the kinds of mistakes that cause readers who know better to throw the book across the room.

Time spent on writing scenes that will never go in a story (any story) is not wasted. Most writers have unpublished bits and pieces sitting around somewhere, ranging from the occasional story that didn’t sell through cut scenes to unfinished works and outlines and even a random paragraph, sentence, or phrase that they liked and didn’t want to forget.

Time spent learning about people, places, times, and skills one does not intend to include in the current story (or, again, in any story) is also not wasted. Most writers I know have shelves full of titles (or, nowadays, directories full of e-books) that are relevant to whatever book they’re currently writing (as well as the book they intend to write next, and a couple of books they’re sort of thinking about maybe getting around to someday). And that’s not counting all the random non-fiction books sitting around with titles like “A Mine of Her Own” and “Great Hoaxes and Famous Imposters” and “Technology in the Ancient World,” and of course “Practical Blacksmithing.”

Sometimes, those unfinished bits of writing get finished; sometimes the unsold stories finally find a market. Sometimes a cut scene or a fragment inspires a whole different work. And sometimes, they just sit there whining at you whenever you open the directory you keep them in. The thing is, you can never tell in advance which bits are the ones that will eventually become pay copy somehow, and which ones are permanently dead in the water.

Sometimes—quite often, actually—that random-seeming general research lets a writer stumble across a bit of information that provides just the plot twist they need, or just the right kind of motivation for a character, or just the detail they want to get their protagonist into or out of trouble. The thing is, you can never tell in advance which bits are going to strike sparks and which ones won’t.

And while it is true that one needs to spend much, if not most, of one’s precious writing time actually writing things one intends to finish and put out there for people to read, researching and prewriting and/or revising are part of the writing process sooner or later. They’re not wasted time. They make one’s finished books better, even if the specific words or information never get into any book at all.