Monthly Archives: February 2014

Turtle Soup or Rabbit Stew: the tortoise and the hare revisited

22 Saturday Feb 2014

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Alright, we’ve discussed the writing habit, or muscle if you prefer. Now I want to talk about something that is closely related to “the habit” and “your process”: output.

BA-BA-BUUUUUM!

As writers, as people really, we like to see what we have to show for our work. Being able to look at a screen/notebook/printed pages and say, “wow, this is what I got done today,” is a key part to our esteem as workers, as writers, as creators. Eventually this question might also cross your mind: “How much should I be writing?”

In his memoir of craft On Writing (2000, Pocket Books) Stephen King mentions that he does ten thousand words a day. For those of you who can’t do the conversion from words to pages in your head that’s forty (OMG!) pages a day. Author of The Phedre’s Trilogy Jacqueline Carey, in an interview with Writer’s Market, mentioned that while writing the first book in the series she made a deal with herself that she couldn’t shower until she got at least a paragraph…and some weeks she went days without one.

Recently I overheard two of my colleagues in my writers’ group talking about writing. One of them asked the other how long it takes them to write. Of course I perked up and listened doubly hard. The other one answered: “I take about three to four hours,” and I thought this was reasonable, “per page.” My mind was blown. I couldn’t believe the person takes that long for each page.

For me, if I’ve spent 3 to 4 hours on a page it’s a bad day. I’m not feeling it; I know I have to admit I’m beat and take a break. The project I’m working on with my writers’ group I wrote over the summer. I wrote it in full lit-jock mode so not only was I hitting my five page quota easily I was averaging between 12 and 20 pages most days.

There are two very different amounts of output associated with working like this. I want to stress that my colleague’s pages have beautiful language (they better), but this is a stylistic choice that wouldn’t necessarily change if he worked faster. In the writers’ group we usually deal with a couple people each week with no more than a maximum of thirty pages. The last time we looked at this colleague’s pages he turned in 10 and those were a couple days late. My pages don’t have beautiful language, but then I didn’t write that type of story, and I’m done with the whole novel, in fact I finished in the summer, I turn in 30 pages every time I’m up for the group.

Now before you think I’ve thrown down the gauntlet, or I’m condemning my colleague, I want to clarify a few things. First, I’m a 10 on the personality scale (my scale only goes up to 10) so every story I write I’m excited about. Second, I have a crazy work ethic and if I don’t get at least five pages a day I feel like I’ve wasted my time. Third, I believe in the power of editing. One of my favorite things to say is: Editing lets you craft the story you thought you wrote the first time around.

Some of you might be thinking that taking 3 to 4 hours per page means you can cut down on the editing process. Well, that’s a false premise, because the 3 to 4 hours per page factors into that. Obviously my colleague is taking the time to make each sentence perfect (or near enough) before moving on. So there’s still editing, it’s just built into the writing process. Secondly, it cuts down on the editing on a basic, sentence level, but not necessarily when it comes to the story itself. Do you know that old military saying? “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Well, no manuscript survives intact after first contact with readers (agents/editors/focus groups/what-have-you). So you still might have to change the story multiple times to clarify things or flesh things out.

Again, I’m not drawing a line in the sand and saying writing slowly is bad. I’m not even saying it’s less or more work, taking less or more time. What I want to make clear is if you write fast or you write slowly it’s roughly the same amount of work either way. I want everyone to be aware of that.

The point I want to make with this post is this: all progress is positive. It doesn’t matter if after 4 hours you have three pages or twenty, you’ve done a good job. If you’re only getting a few pages after hours of writing it doesn’t matter. Seriously, your process, your style, your output will change, should change, as you mature as a writer. The important thing is you’re writing.

And to put it simply: if you want to write more, write more.

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If You’re Reading This You Should Be Writing

02 Sunday Feb 2014

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“If you only write when you’re inspired you may be a fairly decent poet, but you’ll never be a novelist because you’re going to have to make your word count today and those words aren’t going to wait for you whether you’re inspired or not.
You have to write when you’re not inspired. And you have to write the scenes that don’t inspire you. And the weird thing is that six months later, a year later, you’ll look back at them and you can’t remember which scenes you wrote when you were inspired and which scenes you just wrote because they had to be written next.
The process of writing can be magical. Mostly it’s a process of putting one word after another.”
Neil Gaiman, talking with Chris Hardwick

People always ask me: how do I go about writing the actual act. Neil Gaiman’s words sum it up. I sit down and I write. That’s what you have to do if you want to be a writer.

This is for all you beginners out there. For those of you who “have a great idea but I’m just never in the mood to write” people. The act of writing isn’t some divine rite. The stars don’t need to align in just the right way for you to sit down and write. The physical act of writing is like any other hobby or skill, you have to make the time to do it.

You need to carve out a time that you decide is time for you to write. Even if it’s just an hour on Sunday afternoon, that’s fine. When Sunday rolls around you grab your laptop/computer/paper and pen, go somewhere and sit with it. For the next hour that’s all you do.

Seriously, for the next hour do nothing but stare at the blank page or computer screen and thinking about your writing (whatever it is your writing). You may even write something, but don’t be discouraged if you don’t. And don’t do anything else.

Just you.

And the computer/paper.

And the story.

At the end of the hour you’re free to go. When the next Sunday rolls around grab your laptop/computer/pen and paper and go somewhere for an hour. Again you sit there with your computer/paper and you think about your writing.

Again, if you write something, that’s great. But don’t be surprised if you don’t. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t write anything (or if you write only a paragraph or two). This isn’t to gauge yourself as a writer, and it’s not about developing the process by which you write. It’s much more basic than that, it’s about developing the mindset, the habit, of writing.

When I started writing my first novel, Superiority Complex, I would get up in the morning, eat breakfast, and then sit down in front of my computer to write. Up until this point I’d only written short stories; these are relatively simple, I could sit down for a couple hours (up to six) and pound them out. The task of the novel is a different animal. I would sit in front of my blank screen staring at the blinking cursor. I’d type a sentence. Delete the sentence. Type another. Delete that one too. Sit in frustration hating the white screen. I wouldn’t move though. I wouldn’t play computer games. I’d cheat every forty-five minutes or so and check my e-mail, but then go right back to the blank document.

It was the most frustrating thing in the world. I had all these ideas about what I wanted to say and what I wanted my characters to be like but it was all stuck in my head. Eventually I’d attack the keyboard and write out of pure frustration. I was frustrated that I was wasting time I could have been working to help my wife support us. I was frustrated that a blank screen was defeating me. I was frustrated that my awesome ideas weren’t out there for everyone to enjoy.

Most of what I wrote like that I ditched. It wasn’t as awesome as I hoped, but some of it was good and I kept that. My point is two-fold: frustration is part of the writing process (especially at the beginning), and you have to develop the habit of writing so you can write. It got to the point where I was writing every day and I felt great.

Once you’re writing consistently every Sunday for that hour, you can work on finding more time to write and even on finding your process. First and foremost though, you have to get in the habit of writing.