I have chafed all my life at the great writers’ write-every-day dictum. It hurts to write every day. My body, my creativity, my other-than-writing life. And I can’t stand schedules and doing things the same way all the time, so writing, say, M/W/F, doesnt work for me either. And I can’t write well if I don’t have a solid hour+ to sit down. Its been frustrating to feel like this advice is bogus for me — who am I to eschew the time-tested advice of the Greats?
With my latest WIP I’ve found a Way Forward. And interestingly, it’s similar to how I wrote as a kid (39 now).
The best thing for me is to hike and record a rambling exploration of what comes between the ABCs of my plot (I do have one, but I don’t have every single beat worked out). Then I’m excited to sit down, craving it, but on another day when not tired from hiking and dating. Then I write the book from the transcript, and on these days, it feels magical. It feels like I’ve already written it and have only to channel the Hiking Me onto the page.
I think the main thing for me is something like the "why" of it.
If the goal is to be a writer/to be writing, then it feels right and good to do that every day.
When the goal is to something-like "live a good life," and that includes writing, it doesn't feel quite right to me to make myself do it daily.
I haven't noticed much of a difference in the quality or flow of my writing when it's every day versus less frequent than that; I've done sprints like releasing an essay daily or doing NaNoWriMo and for me, from the inside, it feels like the only real difference is sort of tautological. When I write every day, it's like writing every day, and when I do it less, it's the same but less.
I'm grappling with exactly this step right now, and what I know of other daily habits I have formed or kept going, my levers are:
- Make an external commitment to other people to Do The Thing Every Day. I've done this in either time-bounded fashion (e.g. 30 days) or competition format (who can keep up this daily habit the longest?). I'm not sure how to keep other types of daily habits. I brush my teeth every day without anyone telling me, but there is little else on that list.
- Make a touch-the-building-rule-of-admission. I learned this 10 years ago from my much more athletic older sister. I wanted to ask her advice on how to go to the gym regularly like she did. She said to never ask yourself if you feel like working out, just go. But promise yourself that if you find yourself at the gym and it sucks, you can just go home. "All you have to do is touch the building." Turns out most days I'd go in and workout anyway. This works for most actions, I've noticed. Just need an analogue for "touch the building" that translates to "get yourself ready and going with doing The Thing".
What I find myself doing instead is hesitating on the meta-level, looking for the right emotional force to want to make these commitments in the first place. I do believe they are key to making significant progress no matter what the art or craft is that you are pursuing. However, there are so many competing habits I could start. That said, typing that out ... writing is probably the top one I want to convert to daily, together with workouts. [blinks in realization] Thank you <3
I also found freewriting from The Writer's Way completely did not work for me!
I have a writing "chevrusa" a friend who writes with me at the same time each day. We started off 3x a week. Check in, say go! write for 20 min. Give our word count (300-500 on a good day, under 100 on a meh day, "I just edited" on one of those days) and say "see ya next time."
The first few months of this were brutal. It seemed like every day during those 20 minutes someone NEEDED me. I was a little snappy "It's my writing time"
Then I felt guilty for being snappy
But after a few months (years?) the kids got old enough and got used to it and could give me the 20 minutes
It became a joke that if I wrote at 9 or at 9:30 or at 8, suddenly my husband, who had been sitting quietly doing his own thing, had something to tell me
I'M WRITING
gradually, my writing partner and I expanded to every day (except Shabbos). We write for 20 minutes every day together. On days when I'm on fire, I keep going and write more. But those 20 minutes are daily.
> Pants it. Just write, even though you don’t know where you’re going. In some versions of this, a lot of the material will be character sketches or scene sketches that will be thrown away, but that inform the eventual final form.
> I have tremendous internal resistance to doing this and I admit I still have not actually tried it. To me, it feels especially hard to do this at the very beginning of a project, when I know nothing about my characters or my setting or what ideas I’m trying to explore. I can imagine it working better in an established world, but I still haven’t gotten over the visceral disgust I feel about it.
For fiction, what I typically do is pants it once, then go back, work out what outline I *should* have had, and write it again, with better structure. This has the obvious drawback of doubling your wordcount needed to finish the novel - more, actually, because it always grows 20% or more in the rewriting.
For a current story, I'm trying to use that on purpose; write the short version (in maybe 20k words, probably less), and work out which plot beats were important and what personalities felt right, without too much worry for continuity. Then write a _much_ longer version, 3-5x longer, with the short pantsed version establishing outline and who I wanted the characters to end up as. I don't know yet if this will work.
If it works for fiction, though, I think it will work for blog series like this one. Actually my undergrad thesis was similar - write the fast part with the proofs and what felt necessary as explanation, then find the proof mistakes, go back, note what was never explained, and write it all again, longer. That was more externally-motivated, though, not a great comparison.
I have chafed all my life at the great writers’ write-every-day dictum. It hurts to write every day. My body, my creativity, my other-than-writing life. And I can’t stand schedules and doing things the same way all the time, so writing, say, M/W/F, doesnt work for me either. And I can’t write well if I don’t have a solid hour+ to sit down. Its been frustrating to feel like this advice is bogus for me — who am I to eschew the time-tested advice of the Greats?
With my latest WIP I’ve found a Way Forward. And interestingly, it’s similar to how I wrote as a kid (39 now).
The best thing for me is to hike and record a rambling exploration of what comes between the ABCs of my plot (I do have one, but I don’t have every single beat worked out). Then I’m excited to sit down, craving it, but on another day when not tired from hiking and dating. Then I write the book from the transcript, and on these days, it feels magical. It feels like I’ve already written it and have only to channel the Hiking Me onto the page.
thank you for writing this, really enjoyed it!!
I think the main thing for me is something like the "why" of it.
If the goal is to be a writer/to be writing, then it feels right and good to do that every day.
When the goal is to something-like "live a good life," and that includes writing, it doesn't feel quite right to me to make myself do it daily.
I haven't noticed much of a difference in the quality or flow of my writing when it's every day versus less frequent than that; I've done sprints like releasing an essay daily or doing NaNoWriMo and for me, from the inside, it feels like the only real difference is sort of tautological. When I write every day, it's like writing every day, and when I do it less, it's the same but less.
Loved this essay, thank you <3
I'm grappling with exactly this step right now, and what I know of other daily habits I have formed or kept going, my levers are:
- Make an external commitment to other people to Do The Thing Every Day. I've done this in either time-bounded fashion (e.g. 30 days) or competition format (who can keep up this daily habit the longest?). I'm not sure how to keep other types of daily habits. I brush my teeth every day without anyone telling me, but there is little else on that list.
- Make a touch-the-building-rule-of-admission. I learned this 10 years ago from my much more athletic older sister. I wanted to ask her advice on how to go to the gym regularly like she did. She said to never ask yourself if you feel like working out, just go. But promise yourself that if you find yourself at the gym and it sucks, you can just go home. "All you have to do is touch the building." Turns out most days I'd go in and workout anyway. This works for most actions, I've noticed. Just need an analogue for "touch the building" that translates to "get yourself ready and going with doing The Thing".
What I find myself doing instead is hesitating on the meta-level, looking for the right emotional force to want to make these commitments in the first place. I do believe they are key to making significant progress no matter what the art or craft is that you are pursuing. However, there are so many competing habits I could start. That said, typing that out ... writing is probably the top one I want to convert to daily, together with workouts. [blinks in realization] Thank you <3
I also found freewriting from The Writer's Way completely did not work for me!
I have a writing "chevrusa" a friend who writes with me at the same time each day. We started off 3x a week. Check in, say go! write for 20 min. Give our word count (300-500 on a good day, under 100 on a meh day, "I just edited" on one of those days) and say "see ya next time."
The first few months of this were brutal. It seemed like every day during those 20 minutes someone NEEDED me. I was a little snappy "It's my writing time"
Then I felt guilty for being snappy
But after a few months (years?) the kids got old enough and got used to it and could give me the 20 minutes
It became a joke that if I wrote at 9 or at 9:30 or at 8, suddenly my husband, who had been sitting quietly doing his own thing, had something to tell me
I'M WRITING
gradually, my writing partner and I expanded to every day (except Shabbos). We write for 20 minutes every day together. On days when I'm on fire, I keep going and write more. But those 20 minutes are daily.
> Pants it. Just write, even though you don’t know where you’re going. In some versions of this, a lot of the material will be character sketches or scene sketches that will be thrown away, but that inform the eventual final form.
> I have tremendous internal resistance to doing this and I admit I still have not actually tried it. To me, it feels especially hard to do this at the very beginning of a project, when I know nothing about my characters or my setting or what ideas I’m trying to explore. I can imagine it working better in an established world, but I still haven’t gotten over the visceral disgust I feel about it.
For fiction, what I typically do is pants it once, then go back, work out what outline I *should* have had, and write it again, with better structure. This has the obvious drawback of doubling your wordcount needed to finish the novel - more, actually, because it always grows 20% or more in the rewriting.
For a current story, I'm trying to use that on purpose; write the short version (in maybe 20k words, probably less), and work out which plot beats were important and what personalities felt right, without too much worry for continuity. Then write a _much_ longer version, 3-5x longer, with the short pantsed version establishing outline and who I wanted the characters to end up as. I don't know yet if this will work.
If it works for fiction, though, I think it will work for blog series like this one. Actually my undergrad thesis was similar - write the fast part with the proofs and what felt necessary as explanation, then find the proof mistakes, go back, note what was never explained, and write it all again, longer. That was more externally-motivated, though, not a great comparison.