I'm diving headfirst into editing the first Emerson novel. I've taken forever to go through the hard copy and mark the hell out of it, and now it's time to dig into the digital version and start actually making the changes.
I've been lazy. Sick. Sleeping a lot, or not sleeping enough. Thinking a lot. Sometimes thinking too much. And all of it's good for my writing--the thinking especially, but even the sick and tired, because some of my best brainstorms have come when I'm a little fuzzy in the head.
But goddamn it, now it's time to get down to business. And my business is writing.
I started up again today with the early o'clock wake-up time. It makes me happy to tackle the most important thing in my day first. It's what I need to do, and I started doing it today. And I'll do it tomorrow too, and the next day, and so on and so forth. I'm getting other shit done too--work, freelance, life in general, cooking delicious gluten-free noms, etc--but writing must be my number one thing. And I must treat it as such.
Treating it as my top priority boils down to asking myself a few simple questions when something comes up. And "something" could be anything--being distracted by cats on the internet or a Sephora sale, catching up on Person of Interest, taking a nap, writing something else, doing something that could take me out of "writerbrain" mode, etc. But in the case of any kind of something, I'm training myself to ask:
1. Is this really necessary?
2. Is it useful to someone I care about helping?
3. Will this help me with my Emerson-related goals?
If the answer is not yes to one or several of those questions, then I need to think very carefully about whether or not I do the thing that I'm asking myself about. This line of thinking is making me cognizant of the many barriers (whether meaningful or frivolous) to writing and how I can handle them well so they don't derail me from my goals.
And with that, it's nearly 11 PM. I need to be up in 7 hours, and in that time I need to get a good night's sleep, so off I go...
Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts
Monday, October 7, 2013
Sunday, August 4, 2013
What I learned while completing my first draft
So the other day (7/30, to be exact), something amazing happened...
I FINISHED MY FIRST DRAFT!!!!!
It came in at over 115,000 words, which is longer than I expected it to be. Some of it will be cut during the revising/rewriting process, which I'll start at the beginning of September. But I'm thrilled that I have that much material to work with, that this first draft is less shitty than the first draft of a different manuscript I wrote a few years ago, and that in the last month of writing, I made some pretty significant progress.
At the beginning of writing this book, I would sit down to write with no plan whatsoever, and somehow I was able to write. But it was slow-going, and I was just slogging along. But then I gradually began reworking my process. I outlined the rest of the story using flashcards. I started writing every day, no matter what. Then I started giving myself a word count quota every week--and I met it every time. Then, in the last third of the book, I noted the major plot points that needed to happen in each chapter. And then I started assigning dates for writing each chapter. I met (and sometimes exceeded) all my goals--and meeting those goals made me feel successful and accomplished, which helped motivate me to keep on writing.
On that note, here are a few things I learned while writing this draft:
I FINISHED MY FIRST DRAFT!!!!!
It came in at over 115,000 words, which is longer than I expected it to be. Some of it will be cut during the revising/rewriting process, which I'll start at the beginning of September. But I'm thrilled that I have that much material to work with, that this first draft is less shitty than the first draft of a different manuscript I wrote a few years ago, and that in the last month of writing, I made some pretty significant progress.
At the beginning of writing this book, I would sit down to write with no plan whatsoever, and somehow I was able to write. But it was slow-going, and I was just slogging along. But then I gradually began reworking my process. I outlined the rest of the story using flashcards. I started writing every day, no matter what. Then I started giving myself a word count quota every week--and I met it every time. Then, in the last third of the book, I noted the major plot points that needed to happen in each chapter. And then I started assigning dates for writing each chapter. I met (and sometimes exceeded) all my goals--and meeting those goals made me feel successful and accomplished, which helped motivate me to keep on writing.
On that note, here are a few things I learned while writing this draft:
- Getting organized can work wonders. When I first started writing, I'd pooh-poohed organization and outlining, but by the end of this draft, one thing's for certain: for me, it's totally necessary. It changed not just how I write, but what I wrote. (Seriously, the last third of the draft is worlds better than the first two-thirds.)
- Yes, I can make the characters in my head talk. When I figured out the plot points for a chapter in advance, I was confident when I sat down to write. Finally, I wasn't sitting there staring at the screen wondering what the hell to write about. When I cleared that nonsense out of my head, all of a sudden the characters were coming through. They did and said things I didn't expect, and I went with it. They carried the story, and they made the chapters shine. I wasn't writing them anymore--they were writing themselves. And that's when the magic happens.
- Making writing the top priority sets the tone for the day. I'm a night owl. I always preferred writing at night. But then work and life got stressful, and I was often too tired to write at night. So I started writing in the morning--specifically, getting up at 5:30 AM to write. I made it the first thing I did every day. Getting my top priority done first thing in the morning not just helped me write more consistently, it also got the creative juices flowing early and kept me excited about the story all day.
- Getting sick can actually be beneficial. As a writer, I have a very active imagination. When I get sick, I always envision the worst-case scenario, and every cough or cold has the potential to lead to death. Nothing makes a writer speed up her writing than wondering if she's going to die.
- Be okay with having a shitty first draft. All the cool kids are doing it. And by "all the cool kids," I mean every author, like, ever. It's a rite of passage. Embrace it.
- Your friends aren't going to get it...and that's OK. I can't tell you how many times my non-writing friends looked like they were going to conk out if I said one more word about my story, my characters, my process, etc. Seriously, don't attempt to tell your non-writing friends more than a sentence or two about anything writing-related you're doing. They're trying to be polite listening to write babble because they care about you, but do them a favor and either blog about it or find fellow writer friends to talk about it with.
- [insert thing here] Don't be afraid to do this. If finding just the right thing (in my case, the perfect New York hotel for Emerson to kill someone at, or the perfect New York eatery for her to meet Mirabella for a drink) is going to take you away from the actual act of writing, just do [insert thing here], highlight it, and come back to it later. Keep the flow of writing going, details be damned.
- Pinterest breaks are good if they're kept short. I swear, I write more than I pin, though you'd never know it from the amount of pins on my "Writing" board. That being said, some days I got a great deal of good inspiration, words of wisdom, or helpful information from some of these pins...so it's actually a pretty good way to procrastinate.
- I can actually write something substantial during baseball season. This was shocking. Seriously. I also have no idea how I finished the first draft the night before the trade deadline. I did, however, chew through an entire box of Tic-Tacs fretting over whether my Michael Young Phillies shirt would be obsolete in July (thankfully, it wasn't...oh, and I still taste minty fresh).
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Taking it easier on myself.
So I’ve been reading this book, The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer's Block, by Hillary Rettig, about writer productivity. Much of the first part of it deals with perfectionism. Now, I’ve always known I was somewhat of a perfectionist, but I never knew how much until reading this book.
I mean, holy CRAP, I’m a perfectionist. Wow. All the self-destructive behaviors the author mentions and chalks up to perfectionism? Yeah, I recognize those. But I didn’t know just how much they were holding me back until I read the book, nor did I know how much procrastination is linked to perfectionism. All the little tricks I was doing that were, I thought, making me more productive…were actually doing the exact opposite. Things like:
• Giving myself daily or weekly word counts to meet (and then mentally berating myself if I didn’t meet them)
• Taking full days off with the expectation that I would write TONS OF PAGES during that time (forgetting, of course, that since I work a day job I do need legitimate time off, and that plowing through writing does not give me the mental/physical vacation I need)
• Being absolutely nuts about what I could do in a given time period (“you can totally write 10,000 words in a day!”)
I was doing all of those things (and more), and they were doing nothing good for me. They were setting me up for failure, and the failure was discouraging me from writing. My actions were completely counterproductive—I just didn’t know it at the time. They were actually blocking me from doing the kind of writing I need to be doing—hell, many days, they were blocking me from doing any writing at all.
The author suggested that blocked writers start small. She suggested what amounts to interval training for writing—take a timer, set it for something small (like 5, 8, or 10 minutes), and write for that amount of time. If you can’t write your story, then write notes, outline, etc—just physically write SOMETHING that can push your story forward. I was skeptical (“Really, how much decent stuff can I write in 10 minutes?”), but I tried it. About 6 minutes into writing, my brain was like, “Hey Nikki, go check out your awesome new website again. Or go work on your Goodreads page. Or check Facebook. Or, or, or…” I didn’t listen to that voice. I knew I could do all of those things later, and that right now, all I had to do was write.
So I wrote. 10 minutes turned into 40 minutes of solid, un-distracted writing time. And at the end of it, I had 991 words.
I didn’t ask myself to write that much, or for that long. I just asked myself to write for 10 minutes and do whatever I could do in that time. I didn’t put pressure on myself to do more. And when I didn’t have that pressure, I actually became productive. When I got on a roll, I just kept going. You know when you’ve hit your stride, and there’s no reason to stop just because the 10 minutes you allotted yourself have run out. Go, baby, go! And go, I did.
Who knew that taking the anti-pressure, anti-perfectionist route would end up making me have my most productive writing morning in weeks? I’m gonna try it again tomorrow. Just 10 minutes. I’m excited to see what comes of it.
In the meantime, I’m going to read more of The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer's Block. I’m only on chapter 3, but already this is proving to be a very helpful read. I’ll already recommend it to any other writers struggling with productivity and/or perfection—even if you read nothing but the first two chapters, it’ll still be a valuable resource for you.
I mean, holy CRAP, I’m a perfectionist. Wow. All the self-destructive behaviors the author mentions and chalks up to perfectionism? Yeah, I recognize those. But I didn’t know just how much they were holding me back until I read the book, nor did I know how much procrastination is linked to perfectionism. All the little tricks I was doing that were, I thought, making me more productive…were actually doing the exact opposite. Things like:
• Giving myself daily or weekly word counts to meet (and then mentally berating myself if I didn’t meet them)
• Taking full days off with the expectation that I would write TONS OF PAGES during that time (forgetting, of course, that since I work a day job I do need legitimate time off, and that plowing through writing does not give me the mental/physical vacation I need)
• Being absolutely nuts about what I could do in a given time period (“you can totally write 10,000 words in a day!”)
I was doing all of those things (and more), and they were doing nothing good for me. They were setting me up for failure, and the failure was discouraging me from writing. My actions were completely counterproductive—I just didn’t know it at the time. They were actually blocking me from doing the kind of writing I need to be doing—hell, many days, they were blocking me from doing any writing at all.
The author suggested that blocked writers start small. She suggested what amounts to interval training for writing—take a timer, set it for something small (like 5, 8, or 10 minutes), and write for that amount of time. If you can’t write your story, then write notes, outline, etc—just physically write SOMETHING that can push your story forward. I was skeptical (“Really, how much decent stuff can I write in 10 minutes?”), but I tried it. About 6 minutes into writing, my brain was like, “Hey Nikki, go check out your awesome new website again. Or go work on your Goodreads page. Or check Facebook. Or, or, or…” I didn’t listen to that voice. I knew I could do all of those things later, and that right now, all I had to do was write.
So I wrote. 10 minutes turned into 40 minutes of solid, un-distracted writing time. And at the end of it, I had 991 words.
I didn’t ask myself to write that much, or for that long. I just asked myself to write for 10 minutes and do whatever I could do in that time. I didn’t put pressure on myself to do more. And when I didn’t have that pressure, I actually became productive. When I got on a roll, I just kept going. You know when you’ve hit your stride, and there’s no reason to stop just because the 10 minutes you allotted yourself have run out. Go, baby, go! And go, I did.
Who knew that taking the anti-pressure, anti-perfectionist route would end up making me have my most productive writing morning in weeks? I’m gonna try it again tomorrow. Just 10 minutes. I’m excited to see what comes of it.
In the meantime, I’m going to read more of The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer's Block. I’m only on chapter 3, but already this is proving to be a very helpful read. I’ll already recommend it to any other writers struggling with productivity and/or perfection—even if you read nothing but the first two chapters, it’ll still be a valuable resource for you.
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