It’s to the point because everyone’s process differs, and may change due to time and circumstance. I can write with some ambient noise, for example, so I can take a notebook over to Soul Food Books in order to grab coffee and one of their tables and know I’ll have a productive afternoon. Here at home, I need more quiet, and it takes me a little longer to get focused, but once I’m started I can write fast and furiously for a stint that’s good for a chunk of words. I like writing in airports, but it’s scattered writing, flashes of notes, observations about people, notes for stories I’ll write later.
Sometimes I write on the computer, other times by hand in a notebook. I’ve tried dictating and at first it didn’t work well for me but over the course of a decade has become crucial to my process. I sample different notebooks – I like big artist’s sketch pads to write in, actually, because I like all that white space with plenty of room for extra notes and diagrams. I don’t like writing on small surfaces, like business cards or Post-its; I don’t think I’d get much done if forced to rely on those.
And actually, I take that back. If all I had to write on was index cards, I’d make that work. Because sometimes you have to, or else give up on writing. A new parent, for example, won’t have the uninterrupted bouts of time that they once had. They have to start thinking about writing in short bursts, or at a time they’d normally be in bed. The trick is to write, to resist the temptation to slack off, to give yourself a break.
Try new things. Go write somewhere today where you haven’t written before and turn out a few hundred words there: sitting on your front steps, or on an aquarium bench while tourists pass, or sitting on the back of one of the lion statues outside the Art Institute in Chicago while a November wind gnaws at your fingers. Or write a list of ten places to try – and then try at least one. Or stay at home in your usual place, that’s fine too. As long as you’re getting some writing done.
The mantra of our household is: writers just effing write. Because it’s so much easier not to do it, to spend time reading blog posts or alphabetizing the spice rack or making plans and blueprints for the wonderful story we’ll produce, once we get sufficiently prepared. Prepare yourself for the writing, don’t prepare the writing for you by fiddling with outlines or research or format.
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3 Responses
Amen!
Cat –
I would only quibble a very tiny bit with your last sentence, and only because (as a *rank* *beginner*) I need to organize something as big as a novel a _lot_ (maybe my engineering training). I can write a short story (up to ~5000 words) without an outline; I’ve kinda stalled on a 10-12000 word story (having made some scene-by-scene rough notes); my “great American SF novel´´ (the one I’ve been puttering at for nearly two decades) is making more progress as I formally write up character sketches and scene lists. But what I think that’s really doing is just making things jell in my head, so that I can finally get the words onto paper.
But without a doubt, I *most* *heartily* endorse your basic premise – “Writers Just Fscking Write!”
– JDB