The following conversation took place over the dinner table while I was home visiting my parents for the holidays:
Dad: “I saved this article that I want you to read. It’s about this thing people have been doing the past few years. They get together online in November and…”
Me: “You mean NaNoWriMo?”
Dad: (sounding somewhat surprised) “You’ve heard about it?”
Me: (sighs) “Yes, I know all about it. Why?”
Dad: “I thought I’d do it next year. I can write a novel in a month.”
Me: (thinking next November is very far away, but then again, my father doesn’t even have internet access) Er… okay. Have fun.
My father seems to think he has a date with destiny. Despite the fact that he is in his seventies, retired, and has all the time in the world to write a novel, he wants to wait until next November in order to participate in a group effort to write a book in thirty days. While I don’t intend to discourage him from this plan, I can’t help but wonder why he doesn’t just do it right now. He’s never finished a novel, but he used to write for a living — first as a journalist and then as a marketing writer — so he’s certainly familiar with the discipline of sitting down and pounding out the pages. And yet, he is more interested in that knowledge that he is one of thousands making a similar attempt over a specific time period. The event-like nature of it appeals to him.
All too often, I listen to novice writers as they explain why they haven’t finished their novels yet. The reasons are endless. As soon as their child starts school, they’ll have more time to write; they just need to finish decorating the new house; a parent has been ill and required a great deal of time and attention. And so on. Are these valid reasons? Of course they are. From the small and seemingly trivial, to the large and serious, there are always going to be things going on in your life that keep you from writing. Sometimes it requires making writing a special celebration just to give yourself permission to put in the time. But then what?
Successful writers work in different ways, and not every writer can work under the same set of conditions. However, most writers agree that writing every day at the same time is a vital part of conditioning your brain to produce. If you show up at your desk at the same time, reliably, eventually your creative side will understand what is expected of it, and the words will flow. Maybe they’ll come more easily on some days, maybe some days you’ll feel the need to throw out every word your typed the day before, but a steady schedule of writing will, ultimately, lead to output. If you suddenly sit down on November first, and expect a gush of words to fill the page, you might be sadly disappointed.
However, if you sit down tomorrow and write one page — just one page of about 250 words — that will be one page you didn’t have written today. Do that every day, and you’ll have a 70,000 word novel by the start of November, or 365 pages in a year. So set aside an hour or two. Steal it, beg for it, demand it. Make it your time, and write your page. Or if you already write one, try for two. Writing is not a date with destiny, it’s a daily date with yourself. Write because you want to, because it’s important, because it gives you a sense of accomplishment — even on the days it doesn’t. And eventually progress will become a habit that’s difficult to break.
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most writers agree that writing every day at the same time is a vital part of conditioning your brain to produce
No matter how many times I hear this, I’m still not convinced. I know way too many writers–myself among them–that are of the “snatch time when you can” variety of writer, or the “monsoon and drought†type.
I don’t have the kind of lifestyle that allows me to sit down in the same place at the same time every day to write. If I allowed myself to believe that this was a necessity, I’d NEVER have finished my first book.
No matter how many times I hear this, I’m still not convinced. I know way too many writers–myself among them–that are of the “snatch time when you can†variety of writer, or the “monsoon and drought†type
I spent too many years like this, so I totally agree.
Getting on schedule will work for some. For others, it may not. The thing is, if you’re a writer, you have to write so you’ll make the time when you’re ready. If you’re not ready, nothing is going to make you ready.
But sometimes, a person just has to quit saying someday i’m going to try to write a book and just do it.
The other problem with always writing at a certain place and time is that IME it can become a crutch. If outside factors force you to change your schedule, it can throw your writing off more than it should.
For the first 18 months after my daughter was born, I was a SAHM. My daughter took a reliable two-hour afternoon nap (don’t hate me, other mothers–I was in labor for FOUR DAYS, so I think I earned everything that was easy about my daughter as a baby), and that was when I wrote. It worked perfectly, because I tend to reach my peak of energy early to mid-afternoon.
But then finances drove me to go back to work, and suddenly 1:00-3:00 p.m. was no longer Sacred Writing Time. I tried to write for two hours at night after my daughter was in bed, but by then my energy was starting to flag, and, besides, my husband seemed to think we should occasionally talk to each other.
So I floundered for six months, barely writing at all, before I gave myself a stern talking-to and ordered myself to stop being a diva and start acting like a professional. Since then I’ve learned to write in snatches. Unless it’s an unusually hectic day at work I can write anywhere from 2-4 pages during quiet moments at the office–I do it in a gmail draft email and paste the results into my manuscript each night. I can write for 10-20 minutes while my husband is giving our daughter a bath or my daughter is watching Backyardigans. I keep a little notebook with me so I can write in doctors’ waiting rooms or while waiting for a bus.
My first drafts are a bit sloppier than they were when I had that perfect afternoon writing time–I’m more prone to repetition, and I tend to write very bare narration and dialogue, without a lot of emotion or descriptive detail. But that just means I have to work harder on the editing side, and I’d rather write crappy first drafts in odd snatches of time than not write at all.
Great post, Nephele!
So…will you be taking your dad on as a client?:wink:
Of course there will always be things that crop in life that change your schedule. A new baby might force you to take time off writing, or switch your writing time from your lunch hour to its nap time. I’m not saying there are never glitches in real life. But overall, the only way to get any writing done is still to plant one’s butt in the chair (or bed with laptop, or however you do it) and write.
Kimber An-
If you’re a publishing author, you have deadlines driving you, so at that point I sincerely hope a writer would sit their butt down and do the work. I’m talking mostly about aspiring writers or, as you put it, writers polishing their voice, who are still developing their writing habits along with their writing styles. If you don’t physically do the writing, however often, or however little you have time for, the writing won’t improve. The product is the end result of the process, so a writer who doesn’t make time to write won’t end up of that product, whether it’s a novel they hope to publish or a writing exercise they’re using to hone their skills.
Kristen-
Thanks! As for my father, his work needs to be just as good as anyone else’s, so we’ll see. His only advantage is that I’m pretty much guaranteed to at least give him a read.
Good point, Susan.
For years I wrote (after getting our youngest up and delivered to school) between about 7:45 and 11:45. Then I would be off to my community support job (12-5) grab a bite for dinner and hit my community college teaching job (6-9).
That changed about six months ago. We’re down to one car, so I have to get my wife to her job by 6:30, then deal with the young’un then work my new 8-4 desk job, then pick up from school, make dinner, and get my wife. Saturdays and Sunday afternoons– which used to be time off — are now marathon writing sessions and I’ve had to give up watching TV with my wife in the evenings to find a couple of more hours.
All together, this adds up to the same number of hours a week overall. But guess what? It is much harder for me to write now. My per-hour word count is just over half what it was on my old schedule. (5k/20hrs as opposed to 8k/20hrs) I do not adapt well.
This loss of productivity is about to be severely tested — and hopefully overcome. Friday I accepted a gig to deliver a 80-90k novel by March 26. Doable with my old schedule and rate of production — a real challenge now. (I see a lot of fast food and all-nighters in my future.)
IF I were good at the catch-as-catch-can school of writing time and if I was not such a creature of habit this transition would not be so frightening. Or difficult.
“But overall, the only way to get any writing done is still to plant one’s butt in the chair (or bed with laptop, or however you do it) and write.”
Agreed–I’m just saying it doesn’t have to be a set place and time, and that getting too attached to a routine can be counterproductive.
A writers’ group helped me when I was first starting–sometimes the one thing that would get my butt in the chair was knowing that my critique partners were expecting me to show up on Monday with ten more pages!
I think we’ve all been terribly conditioned by our years as students. Amazing what having an “assignment” with a deadline will do to encourage productivity!
Kimber An, I get exactly what you’re saying about needing to find your voice and figure out what you’re doing before seeking publication. For a very long time I felt like I was just spinning my wheels because I was writing these novels but I knew they weren’t ready. Each one got a bit better than the last one, but I wasn’t ready to send it out into the world.
It wasn’t really the rejection that bothered me, I’ve gotten rejected on short stories and such, but I felt the novels weren’t ready. I’m now revising and polishing my fifth novel and I believe I’m finally ready to take that step and send something out there.
In the last year I’ve gotten a lot more serious about the writing. It’s like something clicked over and I was like “what are you waiting for, this is who you are, do it!” I have to write. I want to eventually be published. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out my next step.
‘Write every day’ is wonderful advice, and I can only urge everyone to heed it.
I used to be a burst writer (not *that* successful, either – 2-3K a day, with a personal height of 8K – but I’d write when I felt the urge and do other things when I didn’t. Which meant that things took… time to be finished.
I still write at maximum 2-3K a day. But now that I try to write every day, I write, on a good run, 1-2K *every day* which improves my productivity tremendously. And you don’t have to sit down in the same place at the same time if that doesn’t work for you – but try and make more time for your book. When you get up, open the last thing you wrote and glance at it. Think about it under the shower. Scribble a few lines during breakfast. Take a few minutes during your coffee break, at lunch, in the afternoon, when you sit in the car before your journey home and write a sentence or two. Type them up on your computer before you check your e-mail, and glance at the file before you go to bed. That way, even if you don’t have time to sit down and write, if the ideas don’t quite flow, you’ll still have fifty words today that you didn’t have yesterday – and very often more.
And if you can’t even find the next sentence, the next remark your characters would make – that’s the time to stand back and look why you are stuck and find out what the problem is, because if your last sentence/action/piece of dialogue *doesn’t* lead to something else, that’s already stuckness, even if it will take you a few weeks to admit it.
“I think we’ve all been terribly conditioned by our years as students. Amazing what having an “assignment†with a deadline will do to encourage productivity! ”
Very true!
I’ve never missed a tie-in deadline, which is set by an editor who will be paying me for the work. Personal deadlines on original fiction I’m writing on spec? My writing calendar is filled with “adjusted” target dates. I do respond to a deadline.
Writing is not a date with destiny, it’s a daily date with yourself.
———
Really love this, and even if it’s not daily, the principle holds. I used to write every day, but now I know that even if I don’t, I’ll get the job done. I write most days, but if I take days off here and there, which is also necessary, it can make me more productive on days when I do work. I’ve also never missed a deadline, and actually, I’m usually early. But even after we sell we hit situations where we have to complete books that don’t have an external deadline, breaking into new markets, etc., so we have to be able to write just for the sake of it, not always just for the deadline…
Sam
So very true. I hear a lot about lack of time and you know, you can use that ten minutes you just spent complaining about not having time and write half a scene. Or edit. Or plot. Whatever.
If you don’t do it, it’ll never happen. And that’s a basic fact that you can’t escape.
I had to laugh at your post. My Dad is going to learn to play the piano in March. He’s got a whole month blocked out for it. He’d start now but he’s in Florida getting his sport pilot license so he can pilot his para-plane.
I’m thinking his midlife crisis is continuing into his Medicaid years!
As to the writing, your post was right on. I write everyday after the kids go to bed for two hours (unless Survivor’s on and then it’s only one hour because a gal’s gotta have her priorities in order!). I started this schedule when my husband worked nights. Now that he’s on dayshift, I’ve had to get creative (read sneaky) to get to the computer in the evenings. Okay, I confess, I bought the man a Playstation for his birthday. He thought I was just being super nice, but I admit to having an agenda.
Thanks for the great post!
[...] Nephele Tempest wrote an entry at RTB this week that had me clapping while thinking on the general theme. [...]
[...] When I think or talk about writing, I generally put little emphasis on inspiration. I don’t mean to devalue it; those moments of sudden new vision are necessary and wondrous. But persistence, skill, and conscious effort are also necessary, and I’m leery of any view of writing that celebrates inspiration rather than hard work. See the New Yorker article on the genesis of “writer’s block,” which I may have linked here before and probably will again. You can’t underestimate the importance of ass-in-chair to the writing process (also see Nephele Tempest’s recent post at Romancing the Blog). [...]
What works for some won’t for others. There’s a different way for everyone. Hard and fast schedule, grab-what-you-can, whatever. But it has to be regular enough and often enough that it actually moves the story forward, adds word count, otherwise, it’s just BS about “my muse this, and my muse that”.
Writers *write* dammit. They don’t talk about it, they do it.
Me, if I don’t write regularly, as in every freakin’ day there’s electricity in the house to work the computer, I get bloated and cranky. Nobody in my household wants that.
Speaking of which, I have to get back to my present manuscript and make a spaceship explode. Today is a good day!