 | 23 Oct 08 |
One of the questions I’ve been asked that I tend to both thoroughly enjoy but used to completely dread at the same time is the, “What is your writing schedule like?” question. I enjoy hearing about others’ methods, their daily habits, because I’m always interested in how people do this crazy thing we call writing. I mean seriously, we sit in a room and make up stories and hope that somewhere along the line, people will pay their hard-earned money to hear about things that we totally made up. Is that not nuts?
The dread part of that equation, however, was because for a long time, I kept looking around, waiting for the writing fraud police to come along and say, “Now look here, missy, you’re supposed to be doing that writing this this way, on a schedule, X number of words a day.”
One day, along about the time I was working on the first book in the Bobbie Faye series, I came across the quote that ended up freeing me. I printed it out and taped it to the top of my monitor, where I would see it every day. It’s attributed to W. Somerset Maugham, and the quote is, “There are only three ways to write the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
For me, the moment I tried to tell myself that I had to write a certain number of words a day or a certain number of pages, I might as well decide to also become a fighter pilot or an NBA basketball player or a Sherpa. Forcing myself into a certain number of pages or words a day was about as likely as any of those possibilities.
That doesn’t mean, however, that setting word-count or page count schedules won’t work for others. It just wouldn’t work for me, and that was okay.
For my process, I needed flexibility. I needed to allow for the freedom to have days–maybe longer–where I just daydreamed. Or binge-read. Or watched movies until I could feel them humming beneath my skin. I would be writing along, having a good idea of the story and the structure, of what came next, and then I would find myself suddenly stopped and craving reading. It would be weird, because I’d race through book after book, and I’d revisit old favorites and I wouldn’t know why. Why these books, why now, when I have to get the project done? Sometimes I have to take a break and get out of the office for other activities (and sometimes, there’s no choice, I must leave the office to participate in the world) and all of those times of stopping and starting have the potential to look like a writer isn’t writing and could look negative… when they’re not. They’re just the opposite. They are the recharging moments, the places where we’ll witness the friction of lives rubbing together in all its permutations, the time to step outside how we see the world and research how others see it. Sometimes I break just because I know there are certain facts necessary and it’s time now for research because that information is going to inform the rest of the story, and possibly shape it in a way I hadn’t predicted. So for my process, I have a general story (characters, conflict, goals, desires, structure), but I also depend on the magic of the combination that I’ll find when I give myself those breaks to read something I may not have normally read right them.
It took me a little while to not feel embarrassed over the time taken to have fun with my family or sit and daydream or read, or cram in movies in a weekend. [It is difficult to convince the kids that you really are writing when you're reading a book, because you were just reading another book yesterday and when are you going to be done?] And finally, I acknowledged my subconscious was looking to try to tell me something. It was looking for a way to communicate, and sometimes it would be the simple look of a character on screen to another, or the phrase in someone’s book and the epiphany would thunder over me, lightening striking, illuminating whatever it was in my own story that I was groping toward. Suddenly, the moment of what it was my subconscious was trying to communicate would be clear, and so very different from whatever it was I’d been reading and watching, it was hard to see the connection. I couldn’t have actively, consciously, moved from point A in my story to point B, if I hadn’t given myself that flexibility. There was some combination of practice, skill, and openness that gave me that moment. If I’d been clamping down on the schedule, I’m not sure I’d have been open to that moment. I’m not sure I’d e able to be a writer with any other system.
Deadlines, however, don’t go away just because a writer doesn’t like to schedule a certain number of pages a day, and they still have to be met. In order to accomplish that, I look more at setting goals for myself, rather than schedules. (My husband laughs every time I run shrieking from the word “outline” and yet put up a “structure” of my story on my whiteboard. He stands there looking at it and says, “This sure does look an awful lot like an outline, to which I say, “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU.” I am mature that way.)
It probably sounds like splitting hairs, then, but that’s precisely the point. As a writer, I get to characterize what works for me and define it however I want, and no one gets to say, “That’s not how it’s done.” I set goals: write the conflict between X and Y today. I don’t know how many pages that might be–could be two, could end up being ten. With practice, I have a pretty decent idea going into a scene just how complex it is, and, knowing that, about how long that scene ought to take, but I don’t try to pre-determine that length. If that particular conflict is simple, I’ll set another goal for the next conflict, the next scene and at some point, I’ll feel jazzed, and thoroughly sated.
I do try to keep in mind how long I have to write the whole thing. I’m aware that if I read a lot somewhere in the middle, I’m chewing up days I need for writing and I don’t want to miss those deadlines, so I’ll set bigger goals for subsequent days. The key is, I need to give myself permission for flexibility, or I freeze up.
Life is just never all that simple, anyway–schedules are almost always interrupted, and I think writers can inadvertently throw themselves into a tailspin (i.e., writer’s block) by being too self-critical about their own creative process. If you’re the kind of person who thrives on having 500 (or 5000) words a day, and that gets your creative juices flowing? That’s wonderful. If you’re the kind of person who’s more sporadic, and you give yourself permission to be, and you get your goals done? That’s wonderful, too.
Pursuing writing is giving yourself permission to dream, and dreams die if we put them in a choke hold.
So how about you? There’s no wrong answer, and this applies to any sort of dream you’re pursuing… do you prefer concrete schedules or are you more creative with flexibility? Do those schedules feel reassuring? Does flexibility feel like an abyss from which you’d never escape or where you’d never make progress? I’m curious, what works for you?
Toni McGee Causey lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She and her husband, Carl, are licensed general contractors and, in order to support her writing addition, they run their own company, specializing in civil construction.
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What a great story, Toni! You are absolutely right. The process of pursuing any goal does work differently to some degree for everyone. For me, it’s different with the writing than it was when I had a “normal” day job. Flexibility is way important to the writing. When I feel over stressed the words don’t come. Let me give up and go to bed and suddenly the ideas start flowing. I’ve learned to just let go and let it come. If I try to stick to a rigid schedule–ha! I can forget about it.
by Debra Webb October 23rd, 2008 at 5:12 amGreat post, Toni. I’m so there. With my first book, I didn’t think about any of the ‘rules’. Hell, I didn’t even know there were any. After that, I started to hear about rules, and I wanted to apply them to my writing. I wanted to have an outline, and sit down to write x-number of words every day (because someone somewhere said that’s what ‘real’ writers do). The only thing it resulted in was my creativity hitting a brick wall.
Since then, I found I’m a lot more productive when I just do my own thing, and if that means taking a few days off to binge read, so be it. The only rule that survived the whole episode was: Do something writerly every day. As long as I can do that, I feel like I’m on track.
by B.E. Sanderson October 23rd, 2008 at 5:24 amAs an unpub, I wish that I DID have a deadline to adhere to, because when I know I have to finish something I take care of business. Oh, I can say that I’ll finish by X day or enter it in the GH, but if I don’t have a chunk of money bet on it, then I’ll find ways of dawdling.
by Margaret A. Golla October 23rd, 2008 at 5:39 amOn daily goals, I try to write a set # of words, but I tend to get bogged down in the details. For example, I’m writing a scene that takes place in St. Louis, and I spent over 3 hours on the internet trying to find out the name of a particular building. Turns out, I should have called my 87-year-old mother who has the mind of a steel trap. She set me straight about the buildings, architecture, and what she used to do as a young girl in the 20′s and 30′s! The human resource factor trumps the internet any day!
I’m all for goals and all for flexibility. I set a word count goal, but if I don’t make it, it’s not the end of the earth, and I don’t feel guilt as long as I’ve spent time working on writing in some fashion. Sometimes, I’ll wander about dealing with why my characters are doing what they’re doing, or how I’m going to get them from point A to point C. Sometimes, like Margaret, I get bogged down in research. I don’t have an outline; I work from scene to scene.
I consider working out what’s going to happen as part of the writing process. I call it my ‘head writing.’ Putting the words on the page is only one phase. If all I have is a word count goal, then I’m afraid I’ll write crap just to up the count. Of course, a lot of the time I write crap anyway, and my first writing task of the day is always re-reading what I wrote the day before. More often than not, my word count after that is less than when I went to bed. Ive got the mixed feelings about deadlines. So far, I haven’t had to create a manuscript by a certain date. I like to believe I could, and that I have the discipline to get the job done. But I could never be someone who HAS TO write from ten to two every day, or writes a specific number of pages. I keep a spreadsheet, and I can see when I’m slacking, but as long as I understand why, I’m okay with it. And it seems to average out if I look at weekly, rather than daily, production.
I’m so glad there’s no one right way to do this, or I’d never have written my books. (And we won’t talk about the shoebox full of different colored sticky notes or the science-project board stuck behind the couch. Been there, done that, and it doesn’t work for me.)
by Terry Odell October 23rd, 2008 at 6:20 amI try to stick to a certain word count a day, five days a week. Since I work full time, often doing that, and not editing as I write the first draft, helped me to finally finish the first book in my series, then the second and a couple of novellas. I also do a road map, okay, outline, sentence per chapter of where I want to be at the end of the chapter. But, when life throws me curves, I try to give myself grace.
Carol
by carol shenold October 23rd, 2008 at 6:47 amThanks for the insight, Toni, on what works for you. As a fan of Bobbie Faye I’m very glad your method works for you.
With 5 kids, a husband, and pets I need flexibility. I need the days of reading for fun. I also have days where I have to write.
I’m with Margaret, as an unpublished writer, I dream for the day I have deadlines.
by HollyD October 23rd, 2008 at 7:14 amI love this topic. Love, love, love it. Could discuss it to death. When I’m writing, I shoot for a scene a day. That’s been my pattern, and I find that it’s usually all I have in me – an opening, a build up, a crescendo, a hook. That might take an hour to write or six. (Sometimes it takes days and days and days, then I end up deleting the whole scene because that is my muse telling me the scene is WRONG.) But that’s only PART of writing a book. The research, planning, thinking, reading, character development….that’s all part of it, too.
The thing I struggle with is editing that scene before moving on. (And by editing, I generally mean rewriting because everything I write actually gets written four or five times, at least, until it’s even close to submittable.)
I would love to skip that step, and write straight through to the end, then go back and edit for a month, scene by scene, with the knowledge of how the book ends. I keep trying that with each book, and every time, I stay with my same clumsy process.
Can this process be changed? That’s what I want to know.
Great blog.
by Roxanne St. Claire October 23rd, 2008 at 7:33 amDebra–that’s it! Exactly–I have been trying to explain for years to the family that napping = writing. (They are in some doubt that I may be conning them.)
Hot hot baths work, too.
by toni mcgee causey October 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 amB.E.–that’s it, “do something writerly every day.” Perfect way to describe it.
And it’s hard to figure out for oneself, I think, where the line is between doing something writerly and procrastinating because of fear (whether we recognize it as fear or not). I guess this is where long term goals come in to help.
by toni mcgee causey October 23rd, 2008 at 9:47 amMargaret–that’s exactly why I ended up joining a crit group back when I was first writing screenplays–it was too easy to get lost in the research and the contests dates were all clustered in the spring (well, the big contests were). I would end up dwelling on one section for months. The crit group I joined was very strictly run, and to stay a part of it, you had o turn in a minimum of ten pages a month, and then crit three other people’s work. If you wanted more than ten pages read (this was screenplays, where the overall length was 105-130 pages), then you doubled up on the number of others you reviewed.
Crit groups aren’t for everyone, but this ended up helping me get into the habit of having to produce a certain quantity a month (that overall goal).
by toni mcgee causey October 23rd, 2008 at 9:54 amHeh. Terry, at least you’re organized enough to keep an Excel spreadsheet! That’s another word I run shrieking from.
“Head writing” is probably the most critical part of the job–at least, for me it is. I start thinking about the story months in advance, really, and the big emotional scenes will come to me, and then I’ll wonder how on earth I’m supposed to get to that sort of scene, starting off from whatever point I’m at, which then makes me muse on the connective issues, which then… etc. And I wish that meant I had it all figured out when I sat down, but it’s more like reaching critical mass, rolling down the hill like an avalanche and at some point, I’m going to have built up enough mass and momentum that I just roll right off that cliff.
Wow, that doesn’t exactly sound fun, does it?
by toni mcgee causey October 23rd, 2008 at 9:59 amCarol, that is a great reminder, that we have to give ourselves grace when life throws us curves. Or hairpin turns.
by toni mcgee causey October 23rd, 2008 at 10:00 amThank you, Holly! If I had five kids, a husband and pets, I’d be sitting drooling in a corner, utterly overwhelmed, so I am in awe that you do so much! And you will get there–as a person who’s seen how well you write, you’ll be having those deadlines before you know it.
by toni mcgee causey October 23rd, 2008 at 10:02 amWell, Rocki, for what it’s worth, I think your writing is brilliant and like I said at national, I had to practically tape my mouth shut to keep from going all fangirl, so whatever you’re doing, it’s working.
I tend to do what I think of as suicides (old basketball practice terminology). I’ll race forward to a point and then sort of re-read (edit only a little), then race forward again, and go back and re-read (editing only a little), rinse, repeat, until I hit the end. At which point I am usually winded and sick of it and ready to throw up and go wander off to investigate an exciting career in growing grass or something, and then it’s time to re-read the whole damned thing and edit. Again. At some point, I start thinking, “hey, this is working,” and “maybe I don’t have to go be a rock quarry supervisor.” Hopefully that last stage lasts until I’ve turned it in.
by toni mcgee causey October 23rd, 2008 at 10:07 amToni, I have a schedule, but my characters don’t care. Some days they tell me their story, some days they screw with me by telling me the WRONG story and sending me in the WRONG direction. Other days, nothing. What I can never figure out is WHY some days the story unfolds faster than I can type, and other days it doesn’t.
Does anyone know?
by Jennifer Lyon October 23rd, 2008 at 10:19 amThe “suicides” description is EXACTLY how I write, Toni. Perfect description. And while I appreciate (what an understatement!!) the compliments to my final product, I STILL want to change the painful process, if I possibly can.
I love revising and editing. I can do rewrite (and I mean new villain, entirely new scenes, new story arc) in a matter of days on a full 100,000 word book, but the first draft takes forever, and is painful because I keep perfecting as I go, and second-guessing. What I want to do is just write through to the end, then spend the same amount of time, if not more, rewriting.
That is easier said than done, although I know many great authors can do it.
by Roxanne St. Claire October 23rd, 2008 at 12:35 pmGive me the pressure of a deadline and I am a happy camper. Leave to my own devices, I’m as flexible as a wet noodle and as about as worthless.
by Karin Tabke October 23rd, 2008 at 3:46 pmI’m a true Virgo. Give me a deadline, even self-imposed and I will work my fanny off. (I wish I could work my fanny off.) But, with no incentive I’ll just meander along like walking beside the stream in the forest, looking at flowers and listening to birds. I have to outline. I have to spreadsheet. I have to be organized or I panic. LOL
by Amanda October 23rd, 2008 at 4:42 pmToni, what a great post! And isn’t that the truth! I like Karin’s theory about writing. Put your butt in the chair and right. I’m working on it!
by Natalie October 23rd, 2008 at 5:08 pmUm. That would be WRITE, not right. Sheesh. I am loopy when I’m tired.
by Natalie October 23rd, 2008 at 5:10 pmBefore I sold, I had to have a schedule. I didn’t have much writing time–it started at 9 pm after the kids were all asleep. If I didn’t write then–or research or edit or something positive toward publication–it would be easier not to write the next day and the next and the next . . .
Now, I need deadlines, and I’m always cutting it close. Too close. So close I panic in the last two weeks before a book is due and think I’ll never get it done, it’s crap . . . and sometimes it is, and I delete everything and start from scratch, like with SUDDEN DEATH which I write the first draft (after deleting 140 pages) in the three weeks between Thrillerfest and RWA.
I do believe in daily writing, but sometimes the writing doesn’t necessarily have to be on the WIP. (Though for me, it should be because I’m so behind . . . ) like last week I was stuck and so I wrote out a one-pager on my next trilogy idea. (Hmmm, maybe I should finishing writing the books for THIS contract before worrying about the NEXT contract???)
I do procrastinate, I do waste time, and I do write every day. But it could be one page or forty pages, and I never know at the beginning of the day how many.
by Allison Brennan October 23rd, 2008 at 10:38 pm