On how to keep going.
Last Sunday, I finished the first draft of what is technically my third novel, although it feels like a first. (My first one I hand wrote, largely in pencil, on college ruled paper when I was thirteen. It was 636 pages long. My second I wrote more recently, and I became a much better writer while writing it. Which made revisions a special kind of torture and I needed a break from it. It’s still in “the drawer.”) This one feels like the first because I have a plan with this one. I have faith in this one—even now, after having started revisions—and this one is going to go somewhere. At least I’ll try and get it there.
Writing it has been—and continues to be—an interesting experience, as my writing group has solidified so much over the years that they were able to really actively help me brainstorm in areas where I was stuck. I also had the basic plot almost entirely thought out in my head, which was new for me. I actually knew how this one was going to end. (More or less.) So for the last six months, every week I’ve been throwing up my 6,000 words.
Just like with writing this blog, there were some weeks where I was inspired and the words just came. I remember those days and I remember knowing that they wouldn’t last, so I rode that high with the full knowledge that it was temporary. And sure enough…
Just like with writing this blog, there were many days where I had absolutely no inspiration. Once I mulched all of the fall leaves from our property to procrastinate sitting down and writing. And there were days where I skipped it. But then it felt worse the next time, so I tried not to let that happen too often.
But you are, in the end, what you do every day. If you run every day, it doesn’t matter how fast you are or how far you go. You are a runner. If you create art every day, it doesn’t matter how ‘crappy’ you think it is or even whether or not you let anyone else see it, you’re an artist. And when you do something every day, you inevitably get better at it. Some people have innate talent, yes, but talent will only take you so far. And everything can always be improved upon. I’ve always liked writing and I wanted to be a better writer, so I started doing it consistently.
I want to emphasize that much of the time it feels like I’m spouting drivel. MUCH of the time. I’m still slightly shocked when someone tells me that anything I’ve written resonated with them. Even more so when someone says something like, ‘you’re a good writer.’ And, with practice, I’ve been able to respond with ‘thank you’ and some kind of conversational follow up rather than expressing my incredulity or how terrible I thought whatever they’re talking about was. (It still happens, but again: practice.)
Just now I went and folded three loads of laundry and cleaned the entire kitchen of an entire weeks’ worth of grime (there’ve been some long workdays this week) because I knew I still had to finish writing this.
I’ve had a couple of friends send me private messages about how inspiring it was that I finished. One suggested that I write about it when I asked in desperation what I should write about this week. I almost didn’t write this for two reasons:
Still really fun to type those two words. I think last time I just did three hashtags. This was more satisfying.
I felt it would be hard to do without coming off as self-aggrandizing. Even posting the picture of ‘The End’ on my social media after I finished felt a little ‘pat yourself on the back’ but I was excited. And I wanted to pat myself on the back.
I work in the publishing industry. I attend writers conferences regularly. I have several friends that are already published. Some multiple times. Finishing a first draft really just feels like a step, rather than anything inspiring.
I decided to write this anyway, because there are people who are still struggling with this step. And who am I to declare what someone else should or shouldn’t be inspired by? I was inspired by my damn cat the other day and you know what? I got through a bit of my day because of it.
So, after the longest disclaimer in the world, here’s my two cents on how to finish your first draft, if that’s what you’re going for, this also applies to almost anything else.
Don’t do it in a vacuum. Writing seems like a solitary exercise. And large chunks of it are, but writing in your own echo chamber will only get you so far. When I look back on it, even that handwritten historical fiction I wrote when I was 13 I read on the phone to my best friend at the time and then we would talk about it. Sometimes we would even talk about the characters while we were playing on her tire swing. I remember she cried at the end. (So gratifying.) There was a long string of writing for online publications later on, which of course I got feedback on. There’s this blog, which is sometimes a vacuum, but more often than not, I get someone to read these over. And then occasionally you guys send me messages, which I always appreciate. Then my next finished manuscript—the one in the drawer—was started in a writing class that I took because I was incredibly depressed and directionless during one of my final years in Chicago. I finished most of it in a vacuum. Then stalled. Out of desperation I went to a writers group in Nashville through MeetUp.com and that’s when I actually started making progress again. A few of the people that I met in that initial group form the group that I’ve been working with for the better part of the last two years. Feedback is essential if you’re trying to get better at anything. The kind of feedback you receive is also crucial. If you’re getting feedback that makes you feel terrible about yourself—been there!—and essentially makes you feel like you should quit, rather than inspiring you, then this is not the correct tribe for you. Everyone will have bad days where they want to quit, but consistently, your feedback people should boost you.
Embrace the suck. One thing that stuck with me when I was learning martial arts—because it was probably the most apparent during this period of learning—is that there are different stages of skill. Unconscious incompetence, Conscious incompetence, Conscious competence, and unconscious competence. Originally, I was going to be lazy about this and just abbreviate them and spout off, but my proofreader told me that it looks rambly and unfocused (feedback) so here we go.
Unconscious Incompetence is when you don’t know anything, but you know so little that you have no idea how much you don’t know, so you kind of trundle around happily doing the thing. This is when you see those writers who are submitting work with obvious flaws, but they don’t know. They’re just learning. So they think this is ready for publication and await their mass adoration.
Conscious Incompetence is where you know enough to be aware of what you don’t know. (This is where I currently am with volleyball, by the way.) Normally in this stage, you give yourself a little grace, because you’re learning, but you’re actively trying to learn and improve.
Then you have Conscious Competence, where you can do the thing, but only when you’re really ‘on’ and your focus is there. You’re also incredibly aware when you screw up. The transition between Conscious Incompetence and Conscious Competence is probably the worst and probably the point at which most people decide this thing isn’t fun anymore and isn’t for them. In martial arts, it was when I saw the punch coming, knew what I needed to do to block it, but didn’t react in time. In writing it’s when you write something to the best of your ability, then when you get feedback, you feel like it’s being ‘torn apart’ and you also feel dumb when your reader is pointing out obvious stuff that you should have caught. This is when you feel like you should quit writing, because obviously you’re never going to get it. It is essential to push past this part, no matter what you’re learning, because it will get better. Focus on the parts that you still do enjoy and remind yourself of where you started.
Unconscious Competence is when you just do the thing without thinking about it. During the height of my competitive martial arts career, I badly injured my ankle. I was going for a new black belt degree at the time, so taking time out wasn’t an option. (This was a very ‘must see you doing the work’ kind of school.) So I had to spar. You would think that I could just not kick with that ankle, but unconscious competence was so ingrained at that point that my brain saw the opening and my foot just went there. I was kicking before I could stop myself from kicking. This is why I always believed it was especially cruel to ask a high level practitioner who was injured to just ‘go in there and do what you can.’ You shouldn’t be sparring with an injury. You can do other workouts or do the bags, but this is a rant for another time. Unconscious Competence is what we strive for. This is when you can just make yourself do the thing, and the thing will pretty much happen on a decent level.
Do it most of the time. I’m not going to say to do it everyday, although that can be a goal, because life happens, and if this is not how you make your money—let’s be real, it isn’t—then sometimes you need to clock off of work and just let your brain melt out of your ears and go to bed. But you have to do it most of the time. And this means doing it when you don’t feel like doing it. A couple of years ago, I started teaching early morning classes. Which meant that if I wanted to get my workout done before work, I needed to get up at 5am every day and do it. This was hard at first. But I learned that the hardest part was just swinging my legs out of bed and letting my feet hit the floor. After that, each step afterward was easier and easier. And now, I like my time between 5am and 6:45am. This is my time and no one else needs me during this time. With writing, the hardest part is still sitting down and opening the document. Sometimes the writing is hard. But just getting to the computer is the first battle.
Write even when you think it’s absolutely terrible. I try—very, very hard—not to put anything terrible out there. I think we all want to do good work, deep down. And there are a few of us assholes that want to do perfect work all the time. I encourage you to embrace this concept occasionally: do B+ work. It’s something I heard on a podcast that I used to listen to rather regularly and it helps. You can’t actually ace everything in your life all the time unless you’re only doing one thing all the time. And let’s face it, most creatives aren’t blessed that way. With this blog for instance, sometimes I have to just throw something up and let it go. The other option is not posting it every week. And if I stopped that, I would go back down to every month. Then just every so often. And then suddenly I’m no longer growing in this area. And there have been—swear on everything that is holy to me—times that I’ve thrown something up and gotten an amazing response on a piece where I thought I was just phoning it in. Case in point; last Sunday, I submitted to my group a bit of my work in progress that I had slogged through for two weeks because we didn’t meet over the Thanksgiving Sunday. Every word had been like pulling teeth and I barely got to our 6000 cut off. I even told them that I struggled through it and that I couldn’t wait for them to tell me how to fix it. Well, they liked it. They thought I did a great job weaving in the backstory of a major character. They couldn’t tell the difference from my other pages. In short, I was so goddamn inspired that I spent the next eight hours writing and finished the entire thing. Now, of course, sometimes you will write what you think is crap and it will, in fact, not be your best, but what’s the other option?
Either you do it, or you don’t. The other option, my friends, is that you don’t do it. If it’s no longer giving anything to your life and spirit, it might be time to let it go, or it might be time to take a break. With this particular project, what got me through those two weeks—which, I cannot stress enough, were some of the hardest pages I ever squeezed out of my soul—was knowing that I couldn’t write the next scene without this scene. And that I wouldn’t get to the end, which I was so close to, without finishing this. No one else was going to do it for me. And what if I got hit by a bus tomorrow and this thing wasn’t on paper? Dead-Me would be so pissed at Previously-Alive-Me.
Doesn’t hurt to check in with Posthumus-You. I’m honestly not trying to be morbid, although my husband says I think about death a lot. I view death as a part of life, in that you cannot have one without the other. And no, I don’t want to die, but I will someday, and I’m more concerned with regretting the things I never did that I wanted to do than ever regretting trying and failing. That being said, there are things you can let go. I talked to my little Meredith-Spirit a while back and asked if it really needed to do theatre again. It’s actually okay if it never does theatre again, although it doesn’t want to close the door on the future possibility. It’s happy that we really went for it for a couple of decades. Meredith-Spirit will be very unhappy if I don’t get this book going somewhere though. They’re not okay with that. So, I have to do it. The worst times of my life have been when my communication in this area has been obscured. And if this is happening to you, I’m sorry. My best advice, as it applies to writing, is to keep going. Most things feel better if you see them through. And if you can’t get in touch with your Posthumus-You, then err on the side of just getting it done.
Music. I’ve made an entire playlist for my book. It’s happened over time. Each character has a song. There are some songs for pairings of characters. I don’t listen to this exclusively when I write, but I listen to different playlists and every now and again, I hear a song that seems to speak to what I’m writing about, and I move it to my special list. Then when I’m doing step number eight, I can listen to it if I feel like it.
Cardio. For writer's block, I’ve found that my best ideas come during runs or walks. The key is for it to be a solitary, moving activity where you don’t have to concentrate on something outside of your brain. So walking in the street where you’re worried about cars isn’t a good idea. Tennis isn’t a good idea. Your body needs to move and your brain needs to be free and safe to wander. Swinging on a swing set used to be my chosen cardio when I was under 13. If you have your own swing set, I say try it out. People just look at you weird when you’re over a certain age and try to swing in the public parks. Hell, I’ve even done this during physical therapy once what I’m doing has become rote. Then just let your brain go nuts within your story. Don’t try and write it down until you get home, just live with it there. You’ll remember. Promise.
Wine/whiskey. Moderation.
With some of my writer’s group friends!
If you’ve read this far, I thank you. And I’d love to hear your suggestions for sticking with things. I’d also love to hear what you think of mine!