Category Archives: writing

Routine…

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From what I’ve been able to gather from my, admittedly, limited experience, writing is as much a force of habit as anything. Whether it’s blogging, the great American novel, or a run of the mill short story, the only secret I’ve discovered is that the the only way to get words on the page is to sit down and hammer at the keyboard as part of your routine. I’m sure there are methods that work for others, but that’s what works for me. Well, it’s what works all-work-and-no-playfor me until it doesn’t work. If I can be frank, the since Thanksgiving, I’ve had an appalling track record of sitting down and making any more than a cursory effort.

It might not show so much here, but my daily world count is in the pits after months and months of hitting at least 1000 words a day. I don’t know if it’s just the lull between the holidays, some kind of creativity burn out, running out of things to say, or just too much time doing other stuff, but whatever switch turns on when you’re really hitting your stride is nowhere to be found at the moment. That’s not to say that the juice couldn’t magically start flowing tomorrow, but for now it’s missing without a trace.

Tonight I’m going to struggle to get to half of my usual word count. If I happen to hit 600 words, that’s practically a cause for celebration. I’ve often thought that the best writers, the prolific ones, must be creatures of habit – that the must have some kind of internal disipline to churn out words even when they’re not feeling it. The more I write, and the more seriously I take it as a craft, I learn that no two days at the keyboard are alike. There are high points and there are slumps. I know that if I stay with it long enough, I’m going to find my swing again… but for now, I’m going to just try being pleased that I’m hitting 500 words instead of 300 on a regular basis.

A look behind the curtain…

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As a fresh college graduate back in about 2001, I remember having a series of conversations with a few other newly minted professionals wondering why nothing we learned in college actually prepared us for working in a “real world” professional environment. As I recall, the group consensus was that some kind of handbook for new graduates would have been incredibly helpful in making from the transition from full time student to productive member of society. None of us took up the banner at the time. I think we lumped it into same category of conversations that ended up with us wanting to open a brew pub, build a working trebuchet, and buy a rental cottage on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Of our brilliant ideas, the only one that ever came close to seeing the light of day was building the treb – even though we never did manage to figure out how to attach the sling mechanism to the throwing arm, we managed to put together a respectable first effort at medieval siege weaponry.

Those first random conversations about the idea of a snarky little field guide for new grads has kept popping back into my head from time to time. After going to work for Uncle, there seemed to be a limitless supply of cautionary tales I wish someone would have told me before I showed up for my first day. I don’t know that it’s anything that would have changed my career trajectory, but it’s a stack of information that would have fit well into that “nice to know” category before needing to learn some of those life lessons the hard way. I have a few insights that might be useful for those coming up behind me and I like to think I give it enough misanthropic twist to keep the narrative interesting even if you’re not well on your way to a career as a office drone.

For the last few months, one of the projects I’ve been working on behind the curtain has been a first draft of what I suspect is becoming the handbook we first talked about more than a decade ago. I’ve said it here before, but it’s worth saying again: Serious writing is damned hard work, but it’s some of the most personally rewarding work I’ve ever done. That’s probably because it’s one of the few things I’ve ever written purely for my own purposes. Hard as it is to believe, spitting out well-crafted information papers and memos just doesn’t leave me with the same warm glow of self-satisfaction.

If I had to give it a SWAG, I’d say that at 13,000 words I’m probably halfway to having a very rough first draft. I’m shooting for a 25,000 word first draft with the vague hope of polishing that up to about 30,000 words in its final version. Maybe it’ll be ready by summer, maybe it won’t, but Summer 2013 is where I’m really hoping to land this thing as a well dressed ebook on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I’m feeling pretty good about hitting my “half draft” mark yesterday, so if there’s any interest, maybe I’ll post up a sample chapter so you can see how I’ve been misspending a big chunk of my evenings and weekends.

Blank…

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If you read any books about writing, they’re chalk full of good ideas about what to do when the ideas aren’t flowing like “just sit down and write anything, it doesn’t matter if it’s just the same word over and over again.” Those books are clearly written by jerkoffs. Sometimes no matter how hard you smash your fingers against the keyboard, absolutely nothing useful ends up on the screen. Given that most evenings I’m usually more or less successful at stringing at least a few words together into a coherent thought, I should probably just accept a few days like this as one of the costs of doing business. It’s also an incredibly helpful reminder about why I never seriously consider one of these batshit crazy writing projects where you take a deep and personal oath to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. Even if I could manage it, I have a sinking feeling that the last 20,000 words might come out like ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKE JEFF A DULL BOY. And honest to God, for me writing is supposed to be a stress free, relaxing hobby. I just don’t need that level of self-generated pressure.

Begin rant…

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The problem with wanting to think of yourself as a writer, or a blogger for that matter, is that you actually at some point need to do some writing. You have to write when you don’t feel like it. You have to write when you have nothing particularly interesting to say. You know to write when you’re tired or have a dozen other things that need to get done. You have to write when it snows, when it rains, and when it’s sunny. You can’t be full of excuses about why you’ll get to it tomorrow or the next day or the next week. That might be why writing in its many forms is, is a hobby. There are nights when all I want to do is bash my fists against the keyboard because words just will not come out of the tips of my fingers no matter how many times they smack the keys. If it weren’t for then needing to replace the computer, there are days I’m sorely tempted to find out of this four year old laptop will blend. But I don’t. I walk away. I leave it sit. I stew about a problematic passage for a day or two and then I come back. All the how-to-be-a-writer books say write. Write every day. Write no matter what. You know what? Some days I just dont have it in me… not three hundred words or a dozen. They’re just not there. Sometimes they come out so fast that my modified version of typing just can’t keep up. That’s the way it goes. Well, it’s the way it goes for me at least. Maybe someone out there is having good luck with the write every day no matter what approach, but I can guaran-damn-tee that it’s not doing a thing for me. Some days, some week, some months are just going to have to be better than others. And if some fancy pants wrote-a-book-about-writing expert on the subject, well, he can just suck it.

/rant

Zip…

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There are a host of things that have popped into my head as potential topics for tonight’s post – the upcoming debate, the fact that Comcast stopped by my blog today to offer assistance, the general batshit craziness that has been the office this week, or the fact that tomorrow is both a day off and also another trip to the vet. Talk about your conflicting emotions on that one. The truth is, I’m just not feeling all that motivated by any of those topics… or by any topic, really. Like so many things in life, sometimes no matter how long you sit here and strain yourself, nothing productive is going to come out. Usually it’s not worth blowing out a blood vessel in your eye trying to make it happen. On days like this, you pretty much just need to accept that you’ve got zip and move on to a more productive use of what’s left of our limited evening. I don’t like to think of it as being a quitter, so much as knowing when it’s time to defer any additional beating of a horse that’s already gone to the hereafter.

The best thing…

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The best thing about running your own blog is that when you don’t want to write, no one is standing over your shoulder forcing you to do it. Sure, there’s that nagging voice in the back of your head telling you what you “should” do, but listening to him is pretty much an optional exercise.

Since I’m basically vamping this whole post and have no idea why or what it’s going to be about, how long it will last, or what I really want to say, here are some fun facts for you to consider. Since September 2011, I’ve written and published somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 words for books that I’m secretly selling on Amazon under an assumed name (and that are doing respectably well since they’ve had basically no marketing at all, thank you very much). In the same 8 months, I’d estimate I’ve written another 40,000 words here for your reading pleasure. That 40,000 number assumes I post 20 times a month and each post is 250 words, so it’s a lowball to be sure. Add in the few other odds and ends I’ve written for other blogs, and the endless stream of memos that come off my desk at work, and I’d I’m somewhere well north of 300,000 written words in the last eight months.

You’re just going to have to take my word for it that 300,000 is a metric shit ton of words, ok? But you know what? For the last month I feel lucky when I can string a sentence or two together without drooling all over the front of my shirt. I love writing and the sheer power of the written word, but I feel like I’ve poured alot out of my brain and need to take some time and let the well refill. I don’t know if it’s possible to run out of words, but it feels like it is right now. So yeah, I’m officially in recovery mode from a great spurt of fantastically productive creativity. I like to imagine that I’m going to take a month and not do any more writing than is required to keep a fresh face on the blog, but really that’ll probably last all of three days before I have some other slightly warped idea that I can throw at unsuspecting consumers thanks to the wonder of electronic publishing.

My incredible shrinking attention span…

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No one reading this is going to be surprised to hear me say that I’m a creature of habit. That’s one of the problems I’ve always had with writing. As long as I make a conscious effort to carve out time to do it every day, all is right with the world. Unfortunately, it’s perilously easy to quickly slide into the habit of not writing. For the record, being a not writer is far, far easier than being a writer. Because I’m fundamentally hardwired to seek the path of least resistance, not writing anything on Saturday quickly turned into letting it slide for the next two days as well. It would be a simple thing to let it slide for the rest of the week, for another month, a year maybe, all because it stopped being part of my routine for a few days. Whether it’s blogging, churning out pulp fiction, or the great American novel, writing is an act of self discipline, which is another skill I have yet to fully realize.

When the sun’s out, a few dozen odds and ends need doing, the television, a list of books you’ve been meaning to read, and rum punch on the deck rear their heads, it’s hard to overcome the sheer number of things competing for your time and attention. For me at least, it’s easy to write in the winter. It’s gray and cold and frankly there’s not nearly as much competing for attention. With a cold rain falling, it’s nothing to churn out a couple thousand words in an afternoon. Once the weather turns, I’m lucky to muddle through two or three hundred, before my incredible shrinking attention span hurls me off in another direction. At least I can admit I have a problem. That’s the first step, right?

Monday…

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It’s Monday. That means I should write something even if all I want to do is ignore this whole writing thing and vege out in front of the television. It occurs to me that writing is a lot like exercise that way. No matter how much you know you should do it, you head concocts all sorts of new and interesting reasons why you should really put it off until tomorrow. After all, tomorrow you’ll be sure to have plenty of motivation and time and energy to spare, right? You see that’s the catch. It’s always easy to start something, but seeing it through the nowhere land between the beginning and the end is something else entirely. Still, writing is way more interesting than peddling away on that damnable stationary bike I have sitting in the basement. It’s possible that I may have stumbled upon a way to keep myself motivated on these many nights I don’t feel like I can churn out another word. All I have to do is remember that my other option is spending quality time spinning my wheel and going nowhere. Maybe it’s not the most healthy kind of motivation, but on Monday night, I’ll take what I can get.

Decimating whole forests…

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I can’t imagine how this process would work back in the olden days when books were written and published on paper. Every time I turn around, there something I want to change, an error that needs fixed, and a new draft version number going up on the big board. If I were trying to do this even ten years ago, I would have slaughtered entire forests single handedly… and that would have still been with the help of a good solid word processor. The thought of what it might be like using a typewriter is just too sad for me to contemplate.

I think I could do nothing but edit every day for a month and still find things that aren’t quite right. As it is, I’m hungry, my eyes are sore, and my fingers hurt. And in the back of my head I know there are still mistakes out there that I missed, but will be sure to find next time I read through a draft. It’s infuriating, really, but at the moment, I can barely focus on the screen so the chances of anything productive happening for the rest of the night are between slim and none. Clearly, Hemingway drank because his editorial staff was not nearly large enough to get the job done. What hope does someone way fewer editors and much, much, much much less talent have at getting it done right?

Morning…

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I try to block off weekend mornings to sit down and really focus on writing. It’s pretty much the only time of the week when I can get three or four hours uninterrupted to focus on a section that’s complicated or requires a lot of detail. Usually I can manage a couple of thousand words a day on Saturday and Sunday. Through the week, I’m lucky if I can squeeze in 500 somewhere between getting home from work, making dinner, and getting to bed at something like a reasonable hour. So yeah, I put a premium on my weekends not because I’m running off to some exciting locale, but because it’s when I feel like I’m doing my best work. In college, I did my best work in the dead of night. That’s when the words flowed best. Now that I’ve conditioned myself into a morning person, I guess the sweet spot has shifted too. That’s really not the point, though.

Today is Saturday and what I really want to be doing is sitting here taking a stab at the next chapter. Unfortunately, what I’m really doing is sitting here paying bills, cleaning up the balls of dirt, dust, and dog hair that are large enough to qualify as a third dog, and installing a new toilet seat (don’t ask). Today is pretty much catching up on all the stuff a normal person would have kept up with during the week. Me, not so much. I’m determined to pretend that I have a second full time career as a writer… and time slips away accordingly. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the basement and rummage around for a crescent wrench. Either this bolt’s coming off or the whole damned thing will shatter. Maybe I should go ahead and turn the water off while I’m down there.

If I don’t flood the house in the next hour and I can manage to get the grass cut in a reasonable amount of time, maybe, just maybe, I can salvage some quality time to write this afternoon… Just in time to get interrupted by dinner. Lord, no wonder people never finish writing their great American novel.