Some Process Thoughts to Keep You Focused and Motivated as You Write
Lesson 8 of "How to Finally Get Started on that Novel"
So, how's this all going to happen?
At this point, we’ve gone through a lot of the craft topics that come up when first starting to put together a novel. But to be perfectly honest, a lot of the time when I work with stuck novelists, what’s keeping them stuck is not a craft issue. Frequently, writers just can’t figure out how to fold into their busy lives the enormous project that is writing a novel.
Who has the time?
The truth is that everyone has the time. Sorry!
Really all you need is an hour a day. Or 15 minutes a day. Writers make it happen.
Let me just say that sometimes people are somehow under the impression that all novelists do is write all day, but this has never been true for me personally and I am hard-pressed to think of a single novelist for whom this is in fact true. Maybe there are a few out there who are financially solvent enough – via independent wealth, rich spouses, or some fabulous streaming/movie/amusement park ride deal or something? – but almost every novelist you can think of has a day job or other responsibilities. Too bad, kinda, although I also think it’s the rare writer who can actually physically write for more than a few hours at a stretch. And besides, if we didn’t have work, and to be in the world, wouldn’t our writing material become awfully rarified? (I’m happy to try though, if any patrons out there are looking to fund a nice lady novelist…? DM me!)
I wrote my first novel in the mornings before work, waking up at 5am to tap out a few pages every day. I wrote my second book while I was home with a baby, trading babysitting hours with other writer-moms I knew. I wrote my most recent book, Dear Edna Sloane, on lunch breaks when I worked in an office. So like, I’m not the most sympathetic to the “I don’t have any time” excuse. You have time, you’re just using it for something else.
Now, maybe that something else is something that is more important to you right now than writing the book – Exercise? Friends? Recreation? That’s all very valid and very fair.
And maybe, just maybe, what you’re lacking isn’t really the time so much as the space, or the energy. Also, very valid and very fair! I get it!
As we’ve said a couple of different times in a couple of different ways in these lessons, so much of figuring out how to write a novel is figuring out what actually works for you, in your actual life. Set up a system that works for you, and the idea you have, and the space in which you write. Try not to be precious about it. Yes, a lot of writing a novel is a near-mystical creative-conduit experience, but in order to get there, you have to be somewhat practical.
Here are some things to figure out as you get started:
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1)Where will your writing take place?
Setting is important, remember? Think about what’s practical for where you will write.
If you do have a room of your own, mazel tov! Put your desk or writing table where it needs to be (I just last week moved my desk over by a window and I think it changed my whole current novel, probably). Do you have totems or visual inspirations that are important to this novel? Do you think it will be useful to have a big board or area of the wall where you can map out scenes with individual index cards, or draw out a big old map of the setting? Go for it.
Maybe you don’t have a space like that. I almost never have. So, you work around it. For example, my second book (The Mermaid of Brooklyn) was written almost entirely in coffee shops, laptop balanced on tiny tables. As much as I love the idea of massive cork boards full of index cards and visual inspirations, I didn’t have the space for something like that in my tiny apartment (the baby had taken my little writing closet as her room! Babies!). So I outlined in a Google Doc – not ideal, but oh so portable – and gathered images that helped me imagine the characters and settings in Pinterest.
If your writing space is not serving you, think about what you can adjust. Maybe you really need a quiet room away from home in order to create. Can you rent a desk in a coworking space, or scope out a carrel at your local library? Maybe you write best when you have to work to block out distractions – I have a friend who writes at our local bar a few nights a week, using the chatter of other patrons as white noise. Maybe you find that every time you sit down to write at your kitchen table, you’re totally psyched out by the undone chores all around you, but you know that if you do all the dishes and clean everything properly, boom, your writing time will have vanished? Pro tip: face the other way.
2)When will your writing take place?
I know you’re busy. I really do. But what time in the day is yours? And when does your brain work best? Be realistic here. Can you steal some time in the mornings? Is it more realistic to carve out one solid weekend a month? I know an incredibly resourceful group of women who organize DIY writing retreat weekends quarterly, and just write write write for those set aside weekends in borrowed spaces or shared AirBnbs.
Find a time that you think will maybe work, and put it on your calendar. Block off the time. Protect it. Remember, this isn’t your new life forever and forever. It’s just for now, to see if it works for this one project.
Oh, and just to say – I have heard tell that there are people who have plenty of time (!!), and/or for whatever reason do better with a word count than with a set-aside writing hour or two. If you work best this way, or think you might, challenge yourself to a daily (or weekly) word count. 500 words, 1000 words, whatever it is. But I suspect even this works best when put on the calendar.
3) How can you project manage yourself?
We often have this kind of odd idea about writing a book that the muse just strikes and then we feel like writing and we’re so inspired and it’s great. And then when people don’t feel this inspiration strike them, they feel like this means they aren’t real writers or that something is wrong with them. Respectfully, that’s nonsense. I mean sure you have to have an idea or two, but who ever feels like writing?
Approach it like you would a big project at work: make a plan. The good news is that no one is breathing down your neck, probably, for these deliverables, so the deadlines can shift. But a loose plan will help. I once adapted a plan from a friend who works in tech and it went beautifully: We divided the year into quarters, and assigned each quarter a goal of three chapters. By the end of the year, I had a (very rough!) draft of a 12 chapter book. Math! You can even sketch out the plan on a scrum board to feel like a real #girlboss.
4) Where can you find some accountability?
Maybe you have a kooky brain like mine that would never think to let you off the hook. Yay? But many, many writers struggle with accountability, because so much of the time writing a book is a time-consuming, difficult, lonely project that no one is invested in but you. It’s easy to stop when there’s no true deadline.
But there are so many ways to bolster yourself with accountability, the way you might sign up for a run club with a friend, or check in with a colleague at work. Team up with a writer pal who will be your accountability buddy – maybe you check in once a week and tell each other how much progress you’ve made. I’ve had lots of students from writing workshops who stay in touch and form a writing group, in which they trade drafts and share feedback. There are also virtual options – Writing Co-Lab offers a donation-based Write In zoom, when writers can work together, cameras off, in quiet solidarity. Many people find this to be a great way to carve out the time, and appreciate knowing there are other writers working away alongside them (or on the other end of the zoom).
5) How can you keep feeding yourself creatively?
I know this has all been very “butt in the chair,” but I do think it’s important to acknowledge that the writing life is not all about output. Read widely. Take in other forms of art. Make like Julia Cameron and take yourself on an artist’s date now and then. If you find yourself staring at the blank page and coming up empty, step away, take a walk, try some other way in. Dictate a note into your phone. Freewrite in a journal.
If you find yourself really, really unable to stick with it, I also think it’s always fair to simply take a break, and try again next month. Or the next month. As much as I believe in a grind-it-out mentality, I also know that sometimes life really just is too complicated, or tiring. Sometimes there is simply too much going on. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Just rest up, and try again later.
And hey, you know what? I happen to write a monthly newsletter about how writers can get and stay unstuck. Subscribe, and join the thousands of writers in the Get Unstuck community. Together, we’ll make beautiful things.
Up Next → You, writing a novel.
Go.
Goodbye.
Amy Shearn is the author of five novels, including the forthcoming Animal Instinct, a queer exploration of divorce, sex, and surviving the pandemic. She works 1:1 with writers, teaches for the educational cooperative Writing Co-Lab and elsewhere, and writes a monthly newsletter called How to Get Unstuck.
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