How to Keep Writing? Break It Down.
By Guest | August 5, 2014 |
photo by Jeff Golden
Please welcome multi-published author-extraordinaire Claire Cook today to Writer Unboxed! Claire wrote her first novel in her minivan when she was 45. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Must Love Dogs, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack. She is now the USA Today bestselling author of twelve books and a sought after reinvention speaker. Her latest book, called Never Too Late, is a writer’s helpmate and resource tool, and an writer’s autobiography of sorts for Claire. Said Claire about the book:
Reinvention is the theme of my novels as well as my life. It’s now the subject of my first nonfiction book, too. In NEVER TOO LATE: Your Roadmap to Reinvention (without getting lost along the way), I share everything I’ve learned on my own journey that might help others in theirs, including tips for pulling together a support system, building your platform in the age of social networking, dealing with fear and the inevitable ups and downs, overcoming perfectionism, and tuning in to your authentic self to propel you toward your goals. I also talk about my jump to hybrid publishing and how the Must Love Dogs movie really happened.
While not technically a writing book, I hope Never Too Late will be a useful resource for writers.
She’s with us today to provide an excerpt from Never Too Late, about how to keep on writing by breaking the work down into manageable chunks.
You can learn more about Claire and her many books on her website, by following her on Facebook and Twitter and Google+.
BREAK IT DOWN
(Excerpted from Never Too Late. © 2014 Claire Cook. All rights reserved.)
It’s helpful to have a North Star of sorts as you’re reinventing your life, too. Whenever I start to feel lost, I focus on my daily pages and they pull me back on track.
When I’m writing a novel, I write two pages (Times New Roman, 12 point, double-spaced, single-sided) a day, seven days a week. Oh, puh-lease, you’re probably thinking. Two paltry pages? You could write twenty pages at a single sitting with one hand tied behind your back.
Well, sure you could. I bet if you were really determined, you could wake up tomorrow and walk twenty miles, too. And then you’d limp around for the rest of the month, icing your shin splints, promising yourself that you’ll get back to walking again one day. Soon. Really soon.
No matter what is or isn’t happening in my life, I can write two pages a day. Consistently. Day in and day out. And at the end of five or six months, even factoring in a few inevitable I just can’t do it any more meltdowns, I have the first draft of a book. Rinse. Repeat. And that’s why I’m now the author of eleven books. And counting.
Another advantage to this approach is that I’m essentially living in the book as I write it, thinking about it constantly, jotting things down all day long and when I wake up in the middle of the night. I often stop writing for the day before I’m tapped out. This means I have a place to start the next day, which takes some of the pressure off. Sometimes I quickly type a whole bunch of things I don’t want to forget at the bottom of the page before I close the document. Sometimes I reach for the nearest notebook and scribble them there. But I try not to let myself actually write ahead, because I’ve found that, for me, that usually makes the next day’s writing much harder.
The next morning, I reread and polish the pages I wrote the day before as a way to find my way into my characters’ heads and voices again. I don’t allow myself to go back any farther than that at this point, unless I have a specific reason to do so. If I went back to the beginning at the start of every writing day, my perfectionist streak would kick in, and I’d still be tweaking chapter one of my very first novel. My goal at this point is to push forward, because I can’t make a book better if I haven’t written it.
Instead of two pages a day, I know lots of writers who set a time quota. Two hours. Or four. Or twelve.
This wouldn’t work for me, simply because I can’t be trusted. I would cheat. I’d start with the best of intentions. I’d open the manuscript, type a sentence, delete it, type it again. Then I’d check email, do a little bit of Internet “research,” answer the phone, check Facebook, throw in a load of laundry, have a snack, check Twitter. And about fifteen minutes before my writing time was up for the day, I’d write really fast, trying to make up for what I hadn’t done.
I have to paint myself into a corner. Not only do I commit to two pages a day, seven days a week, but I write the page numbers on a paper calendar when I finish writing them. I know, way dorky, but it works. Because I can tell beyond the shadow of a doubt that yesterday I wrote pages 131 and 132, which means that today I absolutely have to write pages 133 and 134. Like most novelists, I have an active imagination, and this, coupled with my fair share of self-destructive tendencies, means that if I don’t do this, I’m thoroughly capable of convincing myself that I’ve written my daily pages when I really haven’t. Because I’ve agonized over those pages so much it almost feels like I’ve written them.
My deal with myself is that I’m not allowed to go to sleep until my daily pages are written. Sometimes it’s relatively painless and I finish early and then move on to the rest of the day. Sometimes it’s not, and I find myself sitting in my office at 11 P.M., just trying to live through that second page so I can finally go to bed. It gets ugly sometimes, but my pages get done.
So figure out your own version of my two pages a day. Maybe you’re more trustworthy than I am, so devoting an hour or two a day to drafting the roadmap to your reinvention will work for you. Perhaps doing two concrete things a day to move you in the right direction makes more sense. Or maybe you decide your first step is to register for an online class to give you some essential skills you need before you go any further.
If this is sounding way too loosey-goosey to you, you might feel your time would be better spent creating an action plan. Preferably with lots of bullet points. Or a Pinterest board, which for me would be total procrastination, but for you might be just the thing you need to move you forward. Go for it.
Whatever you decide your two pages a day will be, commit to it. Open your notebook and write it down. And either get a dorky calendar like I use, or make sure you build in some other measurable strategy for making yourself accountable along the way. Because trust me, some days will be harder than others. Some days you will want to cheat.
Readers, how do you break it down?
You can download your free Never Too Late workbook and find out more at ClaireCook.com.
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
I had to put a stake in the ground. I told myself that if I were really going to do this full-time one day, I had to start now, even if it means working a day job and establishing the writing career at night and on weekends. That’s how a career change works, after all. If I wanted to leave my engineering job and be a dentist, I’d have to put in a lot of late hours renewing my education. Writing is no different. So I made a “production schedule” and hold myself to my own deadlines. It’s aggressive, but so far I haven’t had a meltdown. In fact, I feel happier when I work this hard. I’m actually accomplishing something I love. Who needs TV when I have that? I guess sleep would be nice, but I’ll get plenty of that when I die. Thanks for the post.
Sounds like a great plan, Ron! And I agree about being happier when working hard. I find procrastination much more stressful….
My biggest problem is managing my brain, so I get up, block the internet for 300-330 minutes (so I can’t cheat), and then whatever comes, comes.
I end up taking 1-2 half-hour naps (that brain again) during that time; the rest of the time is spent writing – but that part varies from writing about the writing to writing why today I can’t write to brainstorming why the current scene doesn’t feel deep enough to actually writing.
The result: a new scene posted on my blog every Tuesday since I started getting serious. Since I’m an extreme plotter, everything has a where – and I just have to figure out the how. I have a set of thought-starters for the brainstorming, and so far every scene seems somehow different but also familiar.
My biggest bump is always switching from one character’s pov to the next (of 3); that takes some going through the specific steps on my lists.
And then everything clicks, and the scene flows – dialogue, internal monologue come from the character. I do a final pass to make sure I have put in everything on my list, and to clean up language. I run the scene through my editing software, which catches things like using the same verb or phrase too many times. I do a little victory routine.
Repeat.
For you, it’s pages. For unreliable me, time. I can’t control output by forcing myself, but I can sit here happily writing my way, and it seems to work.
Whatever works, Alicia! I’m endlessly fascinated by how different we all are!
Great post Claire.
I laughed a little as I read it. I am editing my book. And I have a goal of 5 pages a day. Like you, I don’t function by the hour as I cheat… So much more fun and interesting to eras all the newspapers and Facebook and so on…. So now I don’t open any of those until I’m done w 5 pages. But I don’t stay w the 5. If a day allows and I can go to 10-20, I go for it. Only I don’t allow myself (the operative word here is allow) to slack the next day just because I did 20 pages the previous day.
Am 3/4 done w editing my book and love the feeling of progress as I look through the spreadsheet (yes Ron, I am an engineer like you).
I find that editing has a different rhythm, Priya, at least for me. I tend to stay with it as long as I can, and I often do full passes for specific things—maybe focusing on one character, or sharpening dialog.
This is such a great idea – thanks. Like many people I have a very busy and unpredictable life (three boys aged 11 and under, plus running a small business). Given this, my approach to writing has been very haphazard. Basically, I write whenever I have time and energy, which sometimes means I will do nothing for several weeks.
Setting a highly attainable goal is a much better alternative and one that I intend to adopt starting now. I think I am going to go for 400-500 words a day – every day – and see what happens.
I hope it works for you, Rob! If I waited until I had time and energy, I’d probably have one or two finished books by now instead of twelve. It’s amazing how those two pages a day add up, and how doable it is to fit them into a busy life.
I think consistency and flexibility is the name of the game. I started out with a lofty goal of a chapter a day, but found that I didn’t always have time to write 5 or 6 pages (it’s a middle grade novel) at a stretch, so from there, I cut it down to 1,000 words a day, but then found that as a mother of 3, that wasn’t always possible either. It then became 500 words a day, but still I wasn’t consistently able to write 500. Now, I find that 250 words a day is a good doable goal. I can usually manage that without being interrupted and it’s much more consistently attainable, so I feel I’ve achieved something which then motivates me to keep going.
Some writers might think 250 words is a really low goal to set for yourself, but each writer has to find his or her sweet spot. And 250 words a day for 7 days is roughly 7 pages or 1750 words a week, which is certainly better that 500 words twice a week. And if I’m able to write more, then that’s just icing on the cake.
I so agree, Natasha. Consistency over time is what matters, and also being being realistic about the demands of your life. Good for you for fitting writing into your life while mothering three kids!
Claire, congrats on your new book. I have done NaNo three times (and won each time), but 1,667 words a day for 30 consecutive days is an unsustainable output for me. My sweet spot is 500-600 words per day. Sometimes I can do a lot more, if I’m writing a scene that’s really working for me. The key, as your post drives home, is consistency. Doing it every day with a consistent output. Every writer needs to find her comfort zone. It’s better to write something each day than to procrastinate.
Thanks for the congrats, CJ! And yes, I think the specific strategy or page count is far less important than committing to consistency over time.
So interesting to hear that many of you have a word count per sitting. I have never thought about how many words I write in a day…some days it’s an entire chapter, others it’s two pages.
However, I do have a strict schedule regarding time. I have been writing this way for over ten years: Monday through Thursday, from 11 to 3, the only exception being a well-deserved vacation.
I find that when I write at different times of day, my writing style varies. By working the same hours each day, I tend to stay consistent. It has also become quite the habit. Up at 7. Gym from 8-10. Coffee with hubby from 1030 to 11. Writing from 11 to 3. Then I go to work as a tutor from 330 to 8 ish. Dinner late in front of tele.
Fridays I do all my housecleaning…Saturdays I hang out…Sundays social networking. It’s a busy week, but I get a lot done!
One final note: I have found that if I stop my writing session in the middle of a scene, often in the middle of a sentence (the more dramatic the better) then I am off and running the next day. Keeps away the writer’s block!
So great that your system is working so well for you, Leslie!
I am a turtle too. 2-3 pages a day on the weekdays, more on the weekends if I can squeeze them out, gets me where I need to be. I wish I could pound out 5000 words a day, but that doesn’t seem to work for me. I love the idea of writing page counts on a calendar!
I don’t see us as being a turtles, Kathleen. I’ve published twelve books since 2000, which I think is a pretty decent output. And I also try not to look over my shoulder to see who’s writing faster—it’s so not a race. Glad you like the calendar idea!
Great advice!
Thanks, Karen! I hope you’re well!
Hi Claire,
Like you I write every day. Occasionally I will take a break, but that is always very deliberate – much like how you mention the need to not cause a meltdown, I think writing, like anything, can become static if we ever get to the point where we’re doing that “same old same old”. That’s when it’s time to do something nostalgic that you never get the time to do because you’re always push-push-pushing.
Writing is as much about discipline as it is about being free and spontaneous. It’s a careful art of discernment. If I spin my wheels too hard all I’ll churn our is slush. So I get out, dig the snow from under my wheels – heck I even make a snowman while I’m at it, or a snow angel (depending on how wet I want to get). When I get back in touch with my creativity, it only takes a small rev for the project to move forward.
Why are we in a rush, anyway? There’s no reason for it. That’s how accidents happen. I’d sooner get to my destination, enjoy the scenery by taking the scenic route – that will make the hot chocolate at the end all the more rewarding, and I’ll have something more interesting to share.
Great attitude, John! I’ve been under contract and deadlines for most of my career, so the meltdowns are usually caused by wondering if I can deliver on time, but in the end I do and end up being grateful that I didn’t have a choice. But I still make plenty of time for fun—just after my daily pages are done!
I’m only just catching up on WU and loved this. I’m a daily writer as well and sometimes I think it’s the only thing that’s helped me keep on task. I’m looking forward to reading your writing memoir — the best kind!
I love the idea of 2 pages a day, it’s doable yet over time, extremely productive. I think a daily page goal feels better to me than word count, for some reason :)
Mostly, I try to fit in writing when I can (summer is tough because I have both kids with me) which often means writing during my son’s nap and occasionally in the evening (though my brain is usually toast by then). I might try 2 pages a day when my older daughter is back in school, omitting weekends for now.
Thanks for sharing such great practical advice and your inspirational success story!
-Dana
I like your two-pages-a-day approach to writing. However we set our goals, it does come down to discipline. I have to make myself stop doing other things, like reading blogs and leaving comments (LOL) and get to work. Which is what I am going to do in about ten seconds.
Thanks for the tips.
I like the idea of two pages a day. I might have to try that. Right now, I’m waiting for lightning to strike with a story idea.
Very inspirational, Claire.
I find myself falling off the wagon here and there when it comes to writing consistently, and then I remember the tips you just wrote.
Much like saving money, it doesn’t necessarily have to happen in big chunks. Save $25 per month and you’ll have thousands in five years. Likewise, write 500 or 1,000 words per day, and eventually that great book/story/article will be finished.
Thanks for the great article.
Elvis