No Days Off
How to Write Every Day Even When You Can’t
I did a smart thing.
I got ahead on Shelf Life just a little this week, knowing that I was due for Moderna shot #2 on Tuesday and might not be up to writing much for the next few days. But then today I scrapped that article—well I didn’t scrap it, but I put it back into the editorial calendar for a later date—to write this one instead even though I feel a little crummy (only a little), because I had the inspiration to write about how I make myself write even when I am feeling (a little) crummy. Which I am.
I did a smart thing and then I did a less-smart thing. Par for the course, really. Anyway here’s the fever-screed I threatened you with last time.
Not all of my credentials are created equal. My bona fides as an editor are unimpeachable. I have been receiving cash money in exchange for my editing skills consistently and for long enough that nobody can debate whether or not I can speak authoritatively as an editor. I don’t claim that my writing creds are as solid. Nobody publishes my writing but me; whether that’s because I don’t submit it anywhere or because it’s not that good is a matter for contemplation, primarily by me, at 3 o’clock in the morning.
I don’t speak from a place of authority as a successful, published writer but I do speak from experience as an editor of pretty much every type of writing and also as someone who is working on getting good at writing through constant study and practice. That’s it, that’s the whole value proposition. I assume that’s why you read this, as the only other reason is because you know next time I see you I will ask if you have read Shelf Life lately.
I can say with high confidence that I can give advice on writing consistently on a schedule—even when it is not your full-time or even part-time job, even when it is just a passion project for you—and my evidence is this article and the 75 that precede it, comprising some 150,000-odd words (I don’t know, haven’t been counting lately), which is more than One Hundred Years of Solitude, but feels like fewer.
Is Shelf Life as good as One Hundred Years of Solitude? I mean, obviously no, but if you think about it, both publications contain many of the same words and both are tangentially related to an insomnia plague so, honestly, I anticipate a Nobel any day now.
What I’m trying to say is, if anybody can tell you about how to keep yourself writing when no one is holding your feet to the fire and you feel crummy and you would prefer to be doing anything else, I can.
There’s a persistent myth that real writers are the people who write constantly, are compelled to write every day, always feel inspired and motivated—and everybody else is just a wannabe writer. This is abjectly false. I see this come up a lot in various writing groups I participate in. A member will ask, “How do I start and keep writing?” and everyone rushes to tell them, “Oh just write when you’re motivated, don’t force it.”
That is terrible advice.
There are two things you need to do to get good at anything: Study and practice. That’s it. You don’t need any kind of inherent talent, a wild imagination, a baked-in creative process, college credentials, or an idea you don’t actually work on but refer to as “your baby”—none of that stuff. Study and practice.
If you want to be a good writer you have to study writing (best done by actually reading) and practice writing. If you wait till you’re motivated to write, and you’re not one of the lucky ones who came with built-in hypergraphia out of the box, then you’ll practice every now and then and that’s not enough practice to get good at anything.
Everybody knows that to be good at playing the piano you have to practice every day, or at least most days, for years; and then you have to keep practicing every day to maintain that skill level and continue to build upon it to become great; and then maybe somebody will pay you to play the piano.
Nobody gets suddenly motivated every once in a while to play a Rachmaninoff concerto and expects to sit down at a piano on a whim and play the concerto well, not without years of daily practice under their belt, let alone be paid for the quality of their playing. So I just think it’s weird we believe writers should be able to do that.
Somehow you have to make yourself write every day, or most days, if you intend to get the practice you need to become a good or great writer. Herewith, the ways I make myself do exactly that.
Gamify Everything
I proceed from the premise that everyone has a trick to make themself do things they must do but don’t want to do. Everybody has those things.
Likewise, I believe everyone has things they can do effortlessly for hours at a time, not necessarily because they enjoy them (although maybe they do) but because these things give them a sense of accomplishment. For instance, I can play a video game for eight hours straight, even if I’m not having fun, if it’s giving me a sense of accomplishment. If you don’t believe me then you have never spent all day clearcutting a forest in Valheim, trust me that is not fun.
Actually let me back up and proceed from an earlier premise.
People need to occupy our minds. One of the ways we do this is with entertainment. Entertainment comes in active and passive kinds. Watching a movie or TV show, scrolling Instagram, or reading a book are passive forms of entertainment. We don’t interact with them, we just absorb content. Playing a video game, musical instrument, or sport—or writing—are active forms of entertainment. They are immersive and we affect their outcomes. The enjoyment of an active leisure activity stems in part from accomplishment.
Everybody already knows the above but I’m clarifying what I mean when I say I can do something that occupies my brain for a long period of time even if I do not enjoy it if it provides a sense of accomplishment—because my brain believes it is entertainment. In a sense it’s all the same thing. To “entertain” someone is to keep them amused but also to “entertain” something is to think about it, give it consideration.
If you primarily consume passive entertainment, then getting your brain receptive to active entertainment will take work. It doesn’t feel great at first; it’s like going to the gym. This is not to say, by the way, that you should stop consuming passive entertainment. I think it’s good for the brain to have a mix. I mean I’m not a brain doctor so what do I know? But I have noticed that if I err too much on the side of active entertainment it gets hard for me to concentrate on passives like reading or watching TV because I get antsy feeling unproductive. Anyway it’s probably a good idea to get your brain set up to derive enjoyment from both.
Number-one problem with deriving a sense of accomplishment from writing: If you sit down on Day One to write your novel and you write all day you will not have a novel to show for it. Unless you write all the time, you don’t have a great sense of whether a writing session has been productive or not. You won’t know how much writing is a good output versus a poor output. If you sit down with the goal “I’m going to write my novel” then “a novel” is the unit of measure you’re working with and you’re not going to accomplish that. You have to know how much writing you require of yourself so you can feel accomplished when you achieve it.
When you play a video game, all the accomplishments are portioned out for you. When you gain enough experience points, you level up. When you earn enough gold, you can buy new gear. When your gear is good enough, you pass a DPS check (a damage-per-second check) and you qualify to go on a higher-tier raid than you could before. Most of these things are accompanied by sound effects that mean, “Hey you did a big accomplishment just now, friend!” Further, you get a sense of accomplishment over time—as your skills improve, you reach higher character or player-skill levels, and you can tackle ever-more-challenging content or stronger, smarter opponents.
Writing doesn’t come pre-portioned into achievements for you. You have to set them up for yourself. Otherwise you will find yourself at the far side of your first writing foray without a finished piece and you won’t derive any sense of accomplishment and your brain will remember that this activity produced zero endorphins and the next time you sit down to write you’ll be less motivated. Again, I’m not a brain doctor. The obvious solution is to gamify your writing process.
I have a certain amount of writing that I try to do every day and when I hit that amount of writing then I have accomplished my writing goal for that day. I don’t always make it but most days I do. That metric changes sometimes but right now it’s pegged at 500 words or 30 minutes spent on any writing-related task. That is not much. That is a very manageable amount of writing for anyone.
Five hundred words too much for one day? That’s no problem, you can definitely do 30 minutes and then you can feel great about a productive writing session. That’s what I started with in September and what I’m still working with now and I have written 150k-plus words of Shelf Life in addition to the other stuff I write that you don’t see.
It’s not unusual for me to write 2,500 to 3,000 words in a couple of hours. This is a substantial increase over the pace I started with. I know because I track how much I write and how much time I spend writing. The improvement in pace and accumulation of work product provides a sense of accomplishment over time.
Set your achievable writing goal, whatever that is for you. Capture meaningful metrics to visualize your growth and improvement over time. Build in rewards for yourself to enjoy as you hit milestones. (And if you haven’t already, read my now-ancient article on tracking tasks to build habits, which features a drawing of your cat.)
All Writing Matters
Everybody wants to get out the content. Every writer wants to be done writing whatever they’re writing. Everyone’s next question after “How do I start writing?” is, immediately, “How do I publish my writing when it’s done?”
Not all writing is drafting.
If you want to write, day in and day out, so that you can become good at it and complete a draft of whatever story you are trying to tell, you have to stay on task. If you miss days, if you see your writing habit failing to coalesce, your streaks breaking, you will lose motivation and give up. One of the reasons this happens to me, and that I see happening to others, is that they only count drafting toward achieving their writing goal. Worse, they might count only drafting words on a specific project toward their writing goal.
Not all writing is drafting.
Give yourself credit for all the writing you do. On days that I don’t draft, I have a notebook I write in (a literal notebook, not a laptop) devoted to my largest and most complex writing project (which is not this). A Stalogy Editor’s series in B6 size, if you want to picture it. If I get to the end of my day and I haven’t checked “writing” off my to-do list for the day, then I take 30 minutes to write something about the project but not in draft form.
These pages are almost always in the form of free-written lists. I pick a character or character relationship, a setting or worldbuilding topic, or a plot element and spend 30 minutes writing a page or two pages of notes about it. These usually start with a question: For instance, “This character is surly, what is she so mad about all the time?” or “If this species doesn’t reproduce like humans, then how do they reproduce?” This process ordinarily generates the next topic I want to make notes about, so I wrap up by putting the topic heading on the next day’s page and clipping the book shut.
I always end this note-making session while there are still things I want to think through and write down. Get past the fear of leaving an idea unwritten. Close the notebook while you still have more thoughts to keep your brain working on it till the next day. This keeps me on task on days I can’t get to drafting and also keeps me interested and invested in what I’m writing even if I can’t get back to drafting that project for a while.
Planning your writing project is writing. Outlining is writing. Revising is writing. Ideation is writing. Journaling is writing. Don’t narrow your understanding of “writing” to just “drafting.” Drafting is a major part of writing but it is not the only part. Count the writing work you do. Count it all.
Listen, earlier in this article I used the term passion project and that made me realize I don’t know if I ever offered proper thanks to Sarah Q (I mean D), who told me one day a few years back over a shared plate of poutine that I needed a passion project. SARAH Q (I MEAN D) YOU’RE THE BEST AROUND THANK YOU.
Off to complete 5G assimilation into my person. I will return Tuesday with the article you should have had today! Enjoy your warm weekend!
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