On NOT Writing Every Day

 Guest Post by Barb Geiger:

In 1998, I went to New York to visit my darling Dvorah. I'd just come back from living in Japan for a couple of years, but New York was a world in itself. I remember sitting on a horse in mid-afternoon workday traffic at a light, because the stables were three blocks away from Central Park and riding a horse through the park had been a lifelong, bucket-list goal. Devo took me to a bookstore that was like the used bookstores in the movies, with bookcases up to the ceiling and one of those push ladders that goes around the perimetre and the smell of old books and dust had permeated every soft surface in the building.

I bought Lawrence Block's Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. They say if cookbooks have one go-to recipe, it's a good book (though they said that before the age of the internet). I think with writing books, if it has one nugget of truth in it, it's worth it too. This one had a line about a chapter is the length it takes for one thing to change in the book and the example he gave was Chapter 15: I'm pregnant.

It made me think that not just every chapter, but every scene needs to have something that changes. Which is why "Just Write" in general and having a daily word count quota in particular bothers me so much.

2000 words is a good length for the average scene. Some will be more, some less, but when I was trying to recapture my passion in my writing, I'd ask that every time I sat down, I'd write a scene from start to finish. Getting it all down in a single sitting gave the scene a cohesiveness in flow, but also, it made sure when the one (or more) things changed, that the scene ended without the character wandering off and filling up the page with unnecessary filler.

But I didn't write every day if I didn't have that thing that the next scene needed to do. Sometimes I'd be brushing my teeth and the next scene would pop out of my skull fully formed like Athena, but sometimes even if I knew exactly what I wanted to happen, I still couldn't write it. Rather than fighting that block and just pushing through, I examined the lack of desire under the microscope. I had three questions I asked myself and worked through them until I had a solution.

1. Why don't I want to write this scene? This could be an outside problem -- exhaustion often crept in, but again I have skittering spiders in my skull instead of brain matter. If I was bored, I couldn't yet make myself do anything yet. Like a good horse trainer, I realized early on that if a section of my story bores me, it's been boring my reader for a while. Upping the stakes, the conflict and the action did a lot to make me more engaged with writing.

2. Is something missing? I can't say how many times I just wanted to write a simple scene where X happened, but it blocks me for three days. And when I finally sit down, a whole new scene emerges that changes everything, or becomes the emotional heartbeat. When I've worked through step 1 and I still don't want to write it, the problem needs more thinking about.

3. So if step 1 and 2 don't work, and I've given step 2 enough time to work through the problem, it makes me think of the story as a whole. If I still don't want to write, I look at the whole piece. I haven't had to do this for a while, but I've cut up to 40k of a novel in a single sitting, just because the path those series of decisions the characters made led to a blind canyon and the only way out is back. I've read too many books where the writer just ploughs that initial problem further into the story with sheer will, and that's just not how I write.

If I met a baby writer who asked me for their opinion, I'd tell them my "write three books" theory of starting out. But if the writer has already turned their writing from their hobby to a chore they dislike doing, recapturing the motivation to write is their problem.

Because between being motivated to write and being disciplined to write, motivation wins every time. I do write every day. I want to write every day and I enjoy writing every day. But I got there by not writing for days and weeks and on two separate occasions, for more than a year. Learning how to write every day is far more important than just writing every day, and I don't care what Stephen King says.

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A later post-script:

And I just want to say I don't think Stephen King is wrong. And it's no concession to say that. But seriously, I do think his take home message is incorrect. When he says pros sit down and do the work it takes to produce at a level to be a professional writer, he's not wrong. But the idea that people should not wait around for inspiration is the bit I have a problem with. I dislike the word "wait" because when you hit that inspiration, you're inspired, and nothing inspires inspiration like inspiration. Amateurs become pros because they stop waiting around for inspiration.

Because no one is waiting with bated breath for work the new writer had to force out. Quality over quantity eventually matters, and too many writers quit trying to write before they ever get there.

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Barb Geiger is an author/editor and is currently finishing up an MFA.

Do You Keep Writing? Three Lessons by Lauren B. Davis

Guest Post. Lauren B.Davis is a critically acclaimed Canadian writer. Her latest novel is The Grimoire of Kensington Market from Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd (ISBN13: 978-1928088707)

Every day I hear from writers who tell me how impossible it is to keep going, how they are broken by this ‘business’ and they see no reason to continue. Often this means they see no reason to continue living, since being a writer/creator/artist is so deeply embedded in the soul as the archetype by which we make meaning in our lives. Without it, the world crumbles.

I understand.

I also understand that hearing these words from someone who has had a modest amount of success as a writer might ring hollow. Easy for me to say, right?

No, not easy. Hard won.

I didn’t publish until I was over forty. So there’s that. All the young people who think if they haven’t published yet, let alone won the Booker or the Pulitzer or the Giller indicates they will never have fulfilling lives as writers are just plain wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

How do I break this down?

I dance. The Bear watches. Maybe that’s not the widest audience, by he is the Bear of my Soul.

First, almost no published writer wins prizes. This has nothing to do with the quality of your work. If that’s what you’re hoping for you are setting yourself up for unending disappointment, based on the entirely unpredictable, arbitrary, often political whims of a tiny group of people you might not even like, or respect. I know people who’ve won these prizes. They had some fun for a while and then, well, life went on. I’ve been on prize committees, and trust me, try as we might vote for the BEST BOOK EVER, it generally doesn’t turn out that way.

Lesson 1) …take care of your LIFE first, for it’s all you’ve got, and your life is not about winning prizes. It’s about where your feet are, at this moment. The writing life is a metaphor for being in co-creation with the Source-Of-All, if you know what I mean. So, right now, jot down five things you value about your life that have nothing to do with prizes… lovers, ice cream, dogs who sleep on the bed, growing tomatoes, making snow angels, creme brulee, the smell of roses after a rain… come on, you can do it.

Second, almost no one publishes, and for those who do, it is as much the luck of timing, relevance, and politics, as it is talent. By which I mean, a lot of really great books never see the light of a bookstore window. How many books (both good and bad) come out in any season? It’s insane. Especially with self-publishing (but that’s another blog). Why am I telling you this? Because it’s true, but also because publishing doesn’t necessarily mean success. Sure it’s nice and I’m glad I’m published, but the truth is that even though I have, for a moment or two, poked my head above the turbulent waves, ultimately I sank out of sight again, while Atwood and Winterson and Franzen and a thousand other writers rose to the tip of the swell. Maybe they’re better writers than I. Fair enough. Might be. So what?

Lesson…2) See lesson 1.

Third…maybe you and I will never publish, let alone win prizes. Maybe we’ll never publish again, let alone win prizes. Maybe we’ll be dumped by a publisher we thought had our backs. that happened to me. Should we keep writing? Should we? Maybe. But maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t please us any longer. Maybe it doesn’t bring us sanity or joy or satisfaction. If those things are true then, hell, I’m done. I’ll save feral cats and abused dogs. I’ll garden. I’ll work for environmental protection and for justice…you know, all the thousand things that make the world better. Not that we can’t do these things while writing, we can and many of us do, but if writing isn’t doing it for us, isn’t filling our souls, isn’t inviting us to surrender to the purpose our souls have for us, then for the love of what-ever-we-find-holy, let’s not do it!

However.

If, when we sit down in front of the computer, or the page, we feel our hearts filling, our spirits settling; if we feel the top of our heads opening and something entering us and wanting to be born, without expectation; if we feel ourselves filled with the wonder of this story’s becoming, this image’s becoming, and if after we have written 500 words or 1,000 for the day we feel elated and elevated and full of satisfaction and peace… then come on, let’s DO that.

Lesson 3… see Lesson 1 and 2 above.

What do you think? Shall we keep creating? Keep writing? Or is there another way you’d like to walk through the world? Tell me.

Reprinted from The Lauren B. Davis blog with permission of the author.

"A doctoral student and their advisor walk into a bar. The advisor orders a draft and they sit in awkward silence for eight months."

—S***T Academics Say, Facebook Page, Dec 3, 2018.

 

These days, one of the things I specialize in is coaching graduate students through the writing process. It's astounding how many folks get caught in blank page syndrome or writer's block for months at a time without seeking help. Or who find themselves overwhelmed by their advisor or committee's feedback, when really, the feedback was (should have been) really helpful, had they been but able to interpret it. And I love helping students maintain their motivation and momentum as thesis-writing angst inevitably sets in.

By the same token, it's sometimes heart-breaking when students seek my help when they've left it too late. I've had a couple of cases where students wanted my help two weeks before the deadline for submissions or the meeting with the Dean about what to do now that they've failed. If they had only approached me five months earlier, they'd be graduating instead.

Or even the successful students who approach me for simple copy editing (APA or Chicago or MLA formatting) two weeks before their submission deadline. It never seems to occur to them that all 400 of the graduating class(es) are going to be seeking copy editing those same two weeks—because no one wants their thesis rejected by Graduate Studies becouse of some simple formatting error—and it's only those who booked their editing weeks or even months in advance who are going to actually have editors available. I'm usually able to work one or two extra theses or dissertations in by working overtime and on weekends, but that means double or triple time charges, so not everyone can afford that. If only they thought to book help earlier.

Of course, people often think of editors like the guy at the copy centre: open to walk-ins 9-9, no appointment necessary, and your work back Wed, Today for a rush job. But editing isn't like that. You need an editor who understands your discipline and maybe a bit about your topic, so that means shopping around: generic copy shop is not the model here. And you need to book ahead because the good editors are already working on large projects weeks if not months in advance, and you may not always want the editor that's free to take on your thesis/dissertation/book today. It's like, if you forgot to book the wedding photographer, you can find one the day of, but um. . .that same day booking explains why some wedding photographers are still in business.

For a free booklet on successful thesis or dissertation writing, go to Writing Strategies for Theses or Dissertations

Impostor syndrome

Many of our clients are students writing theses or dissertations, and many struggle with impostor syndrome, the sense that they have finally reached the limits of their knowledge/skills and are about to be exposed as the impostor they are, because they are struggling writing their thesis or dissertation. What they don't realize, of course, is that everyone struggles with any sustained piece of writing—if one isn't struggling, it's probably not going to be their best work.

High achievers are susceptible to Impostor Syndrome, says psychotherapist and author Dr. Aaron Balick, because they push the bounds of their professional areas, often working at the edge of their area of expertise. "It can be said that the more successful you are, the more likely you are to experience this, since your experience at the top of your field is, by its very nature, unusual."

—from an article by Bonnie Burton.

Grad students writing a thesis or dissertation are by definition out at the edges of their disciplines, creating new knowledge. A thesis or dissertation is usually the largest, highest-stakes project they've undertaken yet, so struggle and angst are pretty much inevitable. That one bumps up against staring at the blank page or having to rethink one's approach multiple times or not having the pieces all fall into place instantly is all perfectly normal because the processes of creation and writing are both complex and difficult—for everyone.

Which is where, of course, writing coaches come in. A little moral support can go a long way, starting by reassuring the writer that the angst they are feeling is normal and healthy. If writing were easy, everyone would do it. To do it well, is to put in effort, and effort requires struggle.

To help grad students with their struggles, Essential Edits has commissioned a 32 page guide by Dr. Runté on Thesis Writing Strategies which addresses the issues of dealing with the angst of writing (and more specifically, of rewriting) a thesis or dissertation, available FREE from the EssentialEdits.ca website.