Barely over a week ago, I turned in the first draft of Circuit Rider, after a major death-march push to get the thing done somewhere within shouting distance of deadline. The plan was to spend a couple of weeks taking care of everything that got put off to finish the book (laundry, dishes, yardwork, finances), catch up my Dad’s paperwork, do some research reading and planning, maybe take a vacation for the first time in…I think it’s two years, but it could be three or four, and start the next book come July.
So today, I opened a file and typed “????…Chapter 1” and on from there.
Why? Well, for a couple of reasons. First off, I was getting twitchy. I keep telling people that if they want to become professional writers, most of them are going to end up with the daily-slog system (that is, you write a page or two every day, rain or shine, feel like it or not). Oh, there are a few folks who are burst writers – who can set everything up in their heads in advance and then disappear for a month of 12 to 16-hour days, reappearing only when the book is finished. And there are cyclical writers, who do nothing for a week, then splurt out a 30-page chapter in two days, then do nothing, lather, rinse, repeat.
But me, I’m one of the slogging majority. Writing works best for me when it’s a regular habit, like brushing my teeth. Sure, there are nights when I’ve been to a convention and stayed up until the wee hours, and am so tired when I get home that it’s all I can do to get my shoes off before I fall into bed…but when I do that, I wake up with furry teeth, and I don’t like it. I haven’t written anything but blog posts and email for a week, and I’m twitchy (my writing equivalent of furry teeth).
The writing habit, though, is a lot easier to lose than the teeth-brushing one. I know from experience that after a certain point, it gets easier and easier to ignore the twitch, especially if there are lots of other things that need attention (and let’s face it, there are always lots of other things that need attention). And once the habit is lost, it’s twice as hard to recover, because I remember how painfully hard it’s going to be to make myself sit down and work when I really don’t feel like it and it’s just not going well and there are sixteen other really urgent matters that need my attention (some of which, like playing with the cat, are actually not so urgent, and others of which, like dealing with the lawyer about my mother’s estate, really are urgent).
In that state of mind, it’s easy to remember that, when pressed, I can crank out eight to ten manuscript pages a day for several weeks straight…and to decide that sure, I can skip today’s work session; I’ll make up for it tomorrow. Or the next day, or next week. Heck, the schedule says I only have to write a page and a half a day; I could skip six days and catch up on the seventh, couldn’t I?
Except that it doesn’t work. Yes, I can crank out eight to ten manuscript pages per day…but only when I have been writing every single day for weeks already. It’s the difference between a runner who’s warmed up and ready to go after weeks of training runs, and one who’s trying to sprint all-out from a stone cold start after having loafed all week. The first runner is going to be in better shape, less likely to be injured, and far more likely to finish and finish well than the one who hasn’t been exercising.
The other reason I opened that file and started typing today was…well, call it the natural perversity of writers. I’m supposed to be doing research and laundry and paying bills…so of course, I feel like writing. When I really needed to write to make deadline, I felt like researching and doing laundry and so on. The difference is that right now, I can take advantage of the effect to get a jump on the next book…at least until I run out of clean socks.
I don’t expect to get a lot of chapters written between now and July 1, which is my arbitrary official start date. But I’ll be a little bit ahead of the game, and that’s always worthwhile. And besides, I won’t be twitchy.
It’s such a comfort to know that even the best writers feel that natural perversity. I’m not the only one who gets the unbearable desire to scrub the floors when the 50k word doldrums hit.
I just recently settled into the daily slog habit a couple of months ago. I’d always claimed that a daily word count just wouldn’t work for me, I was too quirky (read: inconsistent) to be bound by rules, etc. etc. Then I tried it, and I have to admit, I’ve never been more productive.
Meagan – I joke that you can tell how the book is going by the state of my kitchen floor – the cleaner the floor, the worse the progress!
Alex – Some people’s schedules don’t allow for “daily” even if they need it; the best they can do is “regularly.” That said – even a sentence or two on a coffee break counts. That said, I have to add that I think you’re the first writer I’ve met who wanted to be a slogger and wasn’t – most folks seem to be enamored of burst writing (possibly because they think it’s easier to write all day every day for a week than to write for half an hour or an hour every day for a month).
I keep thinking that I’d like to be a daily slog writer, but between work, spouse and the desire to switch off for a bit each day, I’m much better at bursts two or three times a week.
I really hear you on the question of procrastinating. I’m not even close to published yet (still in process of finding an agent/publisher) but I’m beginning to realize that I NEED to start forcing myself to a schedule or I’m going to be in trouble if things actually start happening in that court.
And, of course, the dual distractions of my sons being home from school doesn’t exactly help this resolution.
Pat – my brain refuses to think about one thing for very long (I can read, play games or format Word documents for hours, but think? 1.5 hours max) so I can’t do all day things. The best I do is 2 to 3 hours on two different projects. You’re right about the sentence or two. I do have time/energy for that every day. I’ll give it a try for a while and see how it goes. If nothing else it will at least cut back that rereading-what-I’ve-written-to-remember-where-I’m-going thing that I do before starting each burst.
Yes, I need to slog as well, or I dry up. But that links into that problem I mentioned the other day – if I slog on with something where the inspiration is really running dry, I’m in danger of writing string-jerking drivel, that moves but does not live. That can poison the whole well of the story for ages.
The discipline I eventually found works something like this:
1) If I’m stuck on one thing and shouldn’t write more of it yet, write something else – if all else fails, a disposable fragment, but done with full force and craft.
2) That out of the way, keep hacking at the problem with the main work, so it doesn’t cool off. If need be, give myself permission to write crappy exploratory draft until I understand the issues properly.
Pressing example: even my current crappy exploratory draft stalled at the weekend, hitting a point where it made insufficient sense, and I wrote exactly 16 mediocre words of it in two days. But I also wrote a demented little riff on Beauty and the Beast’s backstory, and composed all but two lines of a song in between bouts of hacking. That kept the springs flowing, and now the problem is sort-of-solved and I’m heading into closing the chapter.
I used to lose weeks together to the combination of internal editor paralysis, the drying up of the habit, and the cooling off of the main story. This habit’s a more comfortable one.
Deborah – One of the standard mistakes people make when they’re getting started is to write something and then put all their effort into getting that published…and meanwhile, they don’t KEEP writing or start anything new. Kids around all day make it harder, but others have done it, so it’s possible. You just have to find a way to work in the cracks that are available, instead of in larger chunks of time that aren’t. Which is, of course, a lot harder to do than say, but it really is still possible.
Alex – Keeping the pot simmering is half the point of the sentence-a-day trick; if the story is present enough in your head that you can note down another sentence during coffee break, you can get started faster when you do find that hour or two to write. The other half is that daily practice keeps the mental gears looser – and the more they work, the easier it gets. And if you have the kind of brain that CAN’T do an all-day marathon, it’s even more important to get in the every-day-slog habit.
Gray – If you can’t make forward progress, sideways is good. One does need to keep an eye out to be sure one is not just stalling…but as long as it’s pay copy of SOME kind, it will probably keep the brain in gear. For the way you work, it may have to be related pay copy (a side story with the same characters, for instance); for others, a break from the main project to work on some other thing entirely may be what’s indicated. The main thing is NOT to make a habit of stopping!
Sadly, my problem is the opposite. I usually have a story to work on and do in a desultory fashion (despite the small men). But I get into funks over whether or not to move on to the next publisher when the current query goes missing in the wash.
The cracks seem to be late at night, which is where I function anyway, so it’s not all bad. Until I have to get up and feed those things.
Thanks for the encouragement.
I get similarly twitchy if I go more than a week without reading a good book. With the way you write, & the way I read, we’re a perfect match!
Thanks for starting & posting these insightful discussions.
I used to be a burst writer, and not very impressive bursts either. (My all-time record is 8K in a day; normal peaks were 3-5K, and not many days of those either.) Inbetween, long fallow times.
I doubled my productivity by employing a simple rule: every morning when I sit down at my computer, I’d open the current file. And before I go to lunch, I’d do the same. And in the afternoon, the same. Most of the time, I can see either something I can improve, or the next paragraph. Sometimes more than a paragraph. And thus, I write most days, even if it’s only fifty words here, a couple of hundred words there. On most books – not on the WIP, which is different – I can steadily write 1K in a day, sometimes more, with ordinary good days coming in around 2.5K – but there might be one or two in any given week, instead of once a month.
Sadly, this hasn’t helped me much towards publication as I tend to write long (I’m a natural trilogist), and so far, I haven’t hit all the right notes. (‘Great, but I can’t sell this’ is better for the ego than ‘no thanks’ but not by much.) I have more hopes for the WIP, but I’m a quarter through drafting the second volumen, and it will need considerable rewriting before I can even start submitting it.
green-knight – The next thing you will learn is that when you tell people this, they will nod wisely and say that opening the file three or four times a day and doing a paragraph or a sentence at a time sounds like a great idea…and they will then go away and not do it. (The ones who say that they absolutely can’t work that way are a small step up – at least they admit up front that they’re not even going to try.) Seriously, though, everybody has their own tricks for persuading themselves to do the write-a-little-every-day thing, and this sounds like one of the better ones. Habit is a really useful thing, when you can make it work FOR you!
What I like about it is that it’s completely pressure-free. I don’t set myself a target to write every day, or write x words per session – just to look at the file. And there are days and weeks when I don’t do anything else, because the Swamp Thing in particular needs a lot of thinking effort before I can write – but at the same time, I don’t give myself a chance to forget about the story and be distracted.
I’m all for learning to recognise your habits and standing your ground when people reccommend that books ought to have a hero and heroine, or that one finds the secondary characters in the Hero’s Journey, or that one must (outline, write every day, whatever). However, I think it’s a good idea to balance it with reviews- are those just habits habits, or are they habits that work for you?
One reason burst writing didn’t work for me was that I did not stay in touch with the story, and thus needed longer to get into it, and duplicated efforts, and contradicted myself. I still do those things, but not as much.