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Inventing a process.
I saw this short post on Galleycat today about blogger Will Leitch that involves his own writing schedule and how he was able to work a full time blogging job (he writes for Deadspin, a sports blog on the Gawker network) and still manage to finish his novel, God Save the Fan, in a period of five months.
Unfortunately I don’t have a super fancy exclusive account with Mediabistro (though I wish I did), so I don’t have access to the article referenced in the post, but the there’s enough content to warrant a blog entry of my own.
I suppose this could fall under the category of “writing habits,” which is fine. As another working-class Joe who’s trying to break into this odd, complex arena of writing for one’s bread, I’m eager to read any and all methods, secrets, and voodoo rituals of other folks who’ve managed to garner some kind of success. Some might find that boring, but as a writer, I do not. And if you’re still reading this, I can only surmise that you don’t either.
From the post:
“One of the nice things things about Deadspin is that because it spawned its own culture of sports blogs, my job is essentially to write about my mail… I dig through everything, figure out what I’m going to do and plan out my day and write like crazy, until the late afternoon. Then I would go to the gym… come back, shower and straighten up. Then I would check and make sure [Roger] Clemens hadn’t shot somebody, or there was no breaking Deadspin stuff, and then I would write the book.”
I’m sure the three or four writers who bother to read what I write here every few days or so are rolling their eyes right now. They’ve seen a million and one “establish a process to defeat writer’s block” blogs, articles, posts, testimonials, and so on. So have I. They all sort of say the same thing: find your process. Write every day. Write only in the evenings/mornings/afternoons/when Saturn is in full ascension beyond the Northeast passage or some other nonsense. The trend I’ve found in all of them is this: you should be writing every day.
And I agree with that—to an extent, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
I’ve found, through my own personal experiences, that “writer’s block” happens when I become apathetic toward my own work. I’m either busy with other things or I’m just too damn tired and can’t be bothered. That type of mentality is highly communicable, and can spread quickly, so one day becomes aweek, and before you know it, it’s been three months and you’ve not written a single word. It’s the worst feeling for any writer, I think, to wake up and realize you don’t give a damn about “what’s next.”
Anyway, believe it or not, I didn’t start this post with the intent of ranting on and on about writer’s block. Instead it’s about the process one creates when constructing The Next Big Thing, though I suppose the process is a means to an end, not just for completing a project, but for also keeping apathy at bay.
Like I previously mentioned, I agree with the notion of writing every day, but only to an extent. Don’t get me wrong, though. Writers should write. That’s a fact. I’ve known too many “writers” who were in love with the idea of writing, but when it came down to it, they couldn’t squeeze out a single word. But should you work continuously on the same project every day, without fail, five or seven days a week without a break?
Long and short answer: I don’t think so. Why? I’ve got a good example why, and I’ll tell you. This was my process during the writing of A Life Transparent:
I would wake up between 7:30am and 8:00am, leave for work by 8:30, and arrive around 9:00. At the time I worked for a law firm, and the nature of my job left me to my own devices, though I rarely had a chance to sit down except for lunch, and I was constantly doing something. I kept a writing journal (which I highly recommend), and from 9:00am to 1:00pm, during very, very short breaks or slow periods, I would jot down notes as they came to me. Then, for my allotted hour of lunch, I would do the actual writing. Then it was back to another four hours of toil and note-taking (if any ideas came about), then home by 7:00pm, dinner, and a few more hours of typing what I’d written that day (which always led to even more writing while I was at it).
I did this for five days a week for two and a half months. On the weekends, even if I didn’t actually write, I was still working on it in my head. There were no breaks. By the end of the book, I was mentally and physically exhausted. The original ending of ALT was so terrible that I had to go back and rewrite it the next day. That was a final burst of momentum I really didn’t have. That first draft was sloppy—way sloppier than it should’ve been for a first draft.
Had I taken a break, even to work on something else, something entirely different, or perhaps even something that had nothing to do with writing at all, I believe the book would’ve turned out better, sharper, less sloppy. Instead I caused more work for myself in the long run. I’m slowly learning this now I as re-read the first draft of imagiNATION. I lived and breathed that story for 9 months and didn’t work on anything else. I had plenty of ideas, but I was too afraid of stopping the work on the novel at hand. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to start up again; in hindsight, I realize that that’s exactly what I should’ve done. I over-thought the book, and missed my own goal by a huge margin. Now I have to rewrite the whole thing because the initial attempt simply wasn’t focused.
The point of this huge diatribe is that, in my opinion, I think a writer should allow him or herself to detach from a big project regularly, that it should be a part of one’s process. Don’t be afraid to work on something else in the meantime. That’s the hardest lesson of all for myself—I’ve written two pieces of flash fiction during the editing process of imagiNATION, and it was such a relief to step out of that world, if only for a couple of hours, and you know what? I found that world waiting for me when I got back just as I’d left it. In fact, by being away from it, I had a better sense of it.
Nowadays my process involves reading about 10 or so pages a day and taking notes during my lunch break. In the evenings, if there aren’t more pressing things to do, I’ll work for an hour or two on organizing my notes into the Wiki (which is going quite well, by the way). Being able to slow down and step away helps me to stay focused, if that makes any sense.
And this is just me and my own process. Each writer must invent their own process.
For now, I’m going to go partake of my own, and read a bit of Chip Kidd’s new novel which just arrived in the mail today.
I’d love to hear about your own personal writing process, your habits and the like. That is, if you feel like writing them down.
TK
Comments
4 Responses to “Inventing a process.”
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My writing process is probably different from most as the bulk of what I’m writing is flash fiction. Flash pieces fit quite nicely in my head, so I can spend the day or days writing it in my head while I’m driving, showering, eating lunch - anything, fine tuning the story until I’m happy that it works, and then when it feels like I can get it out intact in one sitting, I sit down and do so. All the time I’m having these ideas and turning out these stories (3 a month is my hard target), I’m also working out the logistics of several longer pieces. My methodology is similar, however very little of the is being dumped into text files, most of it is being formed as a plot and collection of characters in my head. For me, at this stage, that’s working. We’ll see when it gels and becomes a complete story how my process adapts so that I can get it out into tangible bits.
I do agree that you need to be creating multiple things, however I don’t think they all need to be writing. Sometimes I teach myself something new on the piano, sometimes I immerse myself in krafting in code, sometimes it’s writing, but each creative endeavour satisfies my desire to make things, and each success in doing so help me move forward. If you’re stuck doing one thing, you get bored, and boredom leads to frustration, which sticks you further. Do anything else, succeed and that success motivates you, which likely will unstick you.
If all else fails, I chop wood. There’s nothing like smashing the crap out of something inanimate with a sharpened weapon. Zen and the art of brute force and mindlessness. Of course, that’s just me.
“Do anything else, succeed and that success motivates you, which likely will unstick you.”
Yeap. I went for a run the yesterday (blogged about today) and succeeding in running around the block a couple times, even though I’m incredibly out of shape, motivated me to get more stuff done at uni. And the successes build upon each other until you get a good rhythm going.
That’s the theory, anyway.
If there’s an important verb I’ve learned today it will be ‘detach’.
Thanks, Todd.
Good advice. The longest thing I’ve written up to this point is ~3000 words, so when I start writing longer stuff (NaNoWriMo?) I’ll keep this advice in mind. Thanks.