What a Month of Writing Every Day Taught Me
By Greer Macallister | February 7, 2022 |
I strongly disagree with the advice that in order to be a writer, you need to write every day. First of all, you’re a writer if you write, no further qualification necessary; calling yourself a writer isn’t a matter of minimum word counts, publishing stage or entrance criteria.
However, as a published writer with my fifth novel coming out this month and two more under contract to deliver in the next two years, there are certainly times that I, personally, feel like I have to write every day in order to deliver what I’ve promised. But these are phases, short bursts, driven by upcoming deadlines. Even then, I don’t beat myself up if circumstances keep me away from the keyboard for a 24-hour period. Less one day means more the next. It’s a balancing act, not a limbo stick.
But when I was setting a month’s worth of goals for myself on January 1st—sort of an adapted, shifting version of New Year’s resolutions—I decided to experiment with putting 30 minutes of daily writing time on the list. And every day in January, I met that goal.
What did the discipline do for me? Well, it made a few things clear, and I thought they were worth sharing.
First off, all promotion is writing, and all writing takes time. At the beginning of January, I was seven weeks out from the release of Scorpica, which kicks off an epic fantasy series called The Five Queendoms. Scorpica is Book 1; I was awaiting my edit letter on Book 2, which I’d already submitted to my editor; and I’d written quite a bit of Book 3, which isn’t due until October. (A little more about Book 3 later.)
As you probably know, one of today’s major methods of book promotion is the placement of essays, posts and interviews to appear in online (and occasionally offline) publications around the book’s launch date. In collaboration with my publicists, I’d already developed a good-sized list of pieces I needed to write. So I started tackling those one by one, and the focus on writing 30 minutes a day (or night) brought something into sharp relief: just how long some of them take. I’d start typing interview answers at 9pm, worried that it wouldn’t occupy a whole 30 minutes, and next thing I knew it was 10:45. One list-based piece, which involved looking things up and making decisions as well as the actual generation of words, kept me busy for four days’ writing sessions in a row, most of them well over the minimum half hour.
I’ve long been an advocate of seeing promotional writing as the kind of writing that sharpens your skills, not just as a distraction from “real” writing of books, and I stand by that. But I can see clearly how it can grow to take over my schedule if I let it. I’m on the lookout now to make sure I don’t take on too many of these assignments or obsess for too long over the exact words I’m choosing for every last one.
Sometimes, it’s good to just see where your will to write takes you. As I mentioned above, I wasn’t in the midst of a highly time-sensitive project, which would have made for a very different month. For the first couple of weeks, the promotional writing was enough to keep me busy, and there was enough internal variation—some lists, some interviews, some essays/posts on a single topic like this one—to keep me entertained.
But then I started to hunger for something different. More creative. So I set aside the promotional to-do list and thought about what might be, well, actual fun. After all, I still had plenty more 30-minute sessions to fill. I realized it was the perfect time to write up a synopsis for my next historical fiction project. A synopsis is only fun if you don’t have to write it, in my experience, and because I wasn’t under any kind of pressure, I was able to spend a leisurely few days’ worth of writing sessions throwing word spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck. It would have felt completely different if I’d had to force myself to focus.
That said, I work best with clear goals. At the beginning of the month, I had an amorphous, sloppy, incomplete draft of Book 3 clocking in at about 87,000 words. I didn’t want to spend most of the month cleaning it up, because a manuscript full of carefully polished scenes can still be a disaster if those aren’t the right scenes to include, and with Book 2 still not approved, none of the choices I’d made in the Book 3 manuscript so far could be set in stone. However! It felt squishier than I would have liked, so I knew I needed to do something.
In the end, I made it a matter of word count: I’d go in and add some scenes that were in my outline that I hadn’t yet written, and when I got to the nice round number of 90,000 words, I’d stop. With a clearer target in mind, albeit a completely arbitrary one, I was able to focus on the task at hand and then step away with a sense of satisfaction.
Is writing every day for you? Hard to say. And as with me, it might be perfectly appropriate at some times but a counterproductive exercise at others. All I can suggest is that if you haven’t tried it, maybe pick a short period to give it a shot. You never know what you might discover.
Thoughts to share? The floor is yours.
Raised in the Midwest, Greer Macallister earned her MFA in creative writing from American University. Her historical novels have been named Book of the Month, Indie Next, LibraryReads, Target Book Club, and Amazon Best Book of the Month picks and optioned for film and television. Her latest novel, The Thirteenth Husband, is inspired by Aimee Crocker, the Paris Hilton of the Gilded Age. Macallister also writes the ongoing Five Queendoms epic fantasy series as G.R. Macallister. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books, she lives with her family in Boston, MA. www.greermacallister.com
Greer,
First off, congratulations on Scorpica and the other books in your series. EPIC accomplishment — literally! Secondly, I’ve only written every day for a full month years ago, during my first (and only) stab at Nanowrimo. In the beginning, coming up with 1667 words was easy and enjoyable, but towards the end, it felt like I had bamboo shoots under my nails. The writing was awful, and once I surpassed my word count and successfully completed the month, I never revisited that book. It’s since been lost to a burned out hard drive. Thank goodness!
I haven’t had the time or, due to personal reasons, the gumption to write creatively in a fairly long time, but I do keep busy within the writing realm. I read and promote other writers, and fill my time with the pursuit of other, simpler, creative endeavors. I was recently in the Washington Post for their Style Invitational weekly contest — getting “ink” on my very first try, which is quite an accomplishment, according to The Powers That Be. It’s no biggie in the grand scheme of things, but to see my name in a major newspaper did my heart good. It’s the little things that are getting me back on course.
Thanks for your article. It helps me be a little easier on myself. I’ve felt like I’m running out of time. Again, congrats on your series! Looking forward to seeing Scorpica at the top of all the lists!
Mike, congrats on the Post toasties!
Congrats on the Washington Post Style Invitational–I googled it :-) So fun. But mostly I’m here to tell you it isn’t too late. One of my favorite novel series is the Flavia deLuce novels (about a 10-year-old British poisons expert in the 1950s). The first one was published (his debut novel) when the author was 69.
Congratulations Mike! Celebrate. Please post a link please to your winning entry?
Thanks, Tom, Natalie, Vijaya, and Greer,
Here’s the link. It talks about the new contest at the beginning of the article, and down below, lists the winners of Style Invitational 1470, “Your Add Here,“ where we had to add a prefix to a word or object and create a new word. I’ll tweet it, too — or at least screenshots of the important parts (with me in it!).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/03/style-invitational-week-1744-hyphen-terrible-tour-de-fours/
Thanks for the link. I had so much fun going through them. You all are so witty! I might have to sign up to play.
Thanks for the kind words, Mike, and huge congrats on the Style Invitational! I used to enter it all the time and never even got a mention — that’s some stiff competition. So many things feed our writing that aren’t necessarily what people think of when they think “writing time.” Save that newspaper clipping. Your creative brain sounds like it’s percolating some good stuff.
Greer, wow! Congratulations on a new series of books!!!!! I feel pretty much the same way about being a writer and the variety of writing we do. It’s all good. I esp. like the practice of daily free writing because it’s a way into both the imagination and the things I need to get done. Even when I’m on deadline, as I am now, it helps to make the swirling thoughts take shape, and tangents to follow later. My notebook and pen are highly portable and I write anywhere, in bed, on the porch, in church :) I’d say half my writing occurs not at my desk but elsewhere. Back to work!
“I’d say half my writing occurs not at my desk but elsewhere.”
“We learn how to swim in the winter and how to ski in the summer.” –William James
You never know where inspiration will strike! (Even in church!) Love it.
Hey Greer – For me, momentum has always been vital to the gig. Give me more than a few days away, and I typically lose it. Regaining momentum can be tricky, and at times takes me several days. Which means that doing a little work every few days can be a real time-saver.
Looking forward to digging into Scorpica. We’re getting so close! Exciting. :)
Wow, Greer, congratulations on your new series. Momentum is easier to achieve when you have deadlines. But reading your post today will help me get back to work. Thank you.
“Sometimes, it’s good to just see where your will to write takes you.”
In his writing guide RON CRALSON WRITES A STORY, the author talks bout how, not long after sitting down in his chair and beginning the morning’s writing and getting off to a decent start, he gets the urge to get up and go to the kitchen for a second cup of coffee. But he resists. Instead, he stays put. And in his experience, the work that emerges after declining that second cup of joe is often his best of the day.
BTW: Did you know Scorpica was my mother’s maiden name? (Joking.)
Thanks for this, Greer. Congratulations on the new series. (And kudos on The Greer View. Catchy.)
Greer, I drafted a memoir (53,000 words) in an eight-month period by writing every day for 30 minutes, with weekend days off. I was startled how that short period of writing built upon itself so that I finished the durn thing.
(Though by “finished,” I mean not—the polishing of the ragged edges of the creature is taking just as long as the original composition.) But those bird-by-birds do fly.
Congrats on the series!
That’s fabulous momentum, Tom! Sounds like it really worked for you. Oh yes, my rewriting takes at least as long as my writing, if not longer, but there’s something both necessary and magical about getting that first end-to-end draft down. Congrats and good luck!
Thanks Greer. This describes my situation perfectly. New book Danger to Others due out in March. Lots of blogs etc to write in addition to book 3.
Greer, like you, I’ve long believed that writing every day isn’t the key to getting the work done. It’s great advice, sure, but real life can make that really hard for some people, and the idea that “if you were really committed, you’d make the time” can be both true and crippling. I wrote my first three novels, my practice books, on Fridays because that’s the time I had. They weren’t published, but now I have 13 books out and two coming later this year. What’s most important is consistency. For anyone interested, I wrote about creating a writing practice you can actually maintain on my blog, https://www.lesliebudewitz.com/writing-wednesday-the-writing-practice/
Congrats on the new book and the successful January experiment!
Coming into the comments a day late, but…I think I could really, REALLY get into daily writing if I didn’t have a full time job *writing* as well. It’s hard to do the 9 to 5 every day AND write creatively every day. And you’re right–those promotional pieces can take a lot of time. I tend to wish I were more consistent of a writer, but I don’t think that will feel very healthy for me or make me very happy until I’m “retired” from my day job. So, maybe in…20 years? :)