About Writing: Ep. 4 Taking My Time

I've listened to a few authors vlogging and blogging about writing fast or writing more slowly, and the pros and cons were discussed. I will not be rehashing their material here. This post will be mainly about my thoughts that rose to the surface as I mulled over what works for me.

When I first tried to write a book, I wrote a beginning. After all, Dickens published only parts of his stories at a time, right? Okay, give me a break because I was twelve, but the newspaper editor was extremely nice and encouraging when I asked him to publish my fragment of a story after I rode my bike all the way uptown. Of course, he didn't, but he was nice about it. True story. 

A few years later, I was still going in blind. Writing a great beginning. Setting the right tone. Lining up my characters. However, I had no idea where I was going or how to plot a story. A couple of decades later, I knew the kind of story I wanted to write, but it wasn't coming together. Yet. I read a lot--novels and books about writing. Plots. Beginnings, middles, and endings. Word choices. I watched movies and thought about how they were put together and the parts I liked or didn't like.

"If your goal is to write the fastest and publish the fastest, your book may never reach its full potential. It may be little more than a glorified rough draft of what it could have been."

I spent nearly a decade writing my first book. I was going through a divorce, and I needed something to put together while the rest of my life was coming apart. I started the book, laying out my basic idea and some characters and things that would happen. I would get stuck over the years and put it aside. It just wasn't coming together.  I had come up with other story ideas that were whole and easier to plot. I worked on those, and while I was writing another book and trying out a potential critique partner who was writing a paranormal story, I was reminded me of the book I had put aside. I picked it up again. I decided the ten or fifteen or so chapters I had written weren't that bad. In fact, it was pretty good. I just needed to push through. 

So, I put aside Novel Number Two and went back to Novel Number One. I had a different perspective about the book now, and I was better able to look at plot problems more objectively. I fixed the parts that didn't work. I finished the draft and polished and repolished. Finally, I had a book. After publishing the first one, I immediately returned to the second book, and within the year, I had finished it, as well. I don't think I would have ever been able to finish Novel Number One if I hadn't been working on Novel Number Two. There was some almost magical understanding that I gained with Novel Number Two that enabled me to push through and create a book. Something clicked inside, and I was better able to grasp the whole picture.

It probably took nearly nine years for Novel Number One, and three to four years for Novel Number Two. They are not related in any way. They are for different audiences altogether, but I still learned things with each one about the way I write.

Although the writing process gets easier with each book, since publishing Two, I've been so distracted. It's been difficult. Not the writing process, but trying to fix my life and the things that demand my attention in a way that works and enables me to do what I love to do. Only in the past year or two have I been watching the writing videos and seeing what other writers are doing. I see the trends that are really popular, but those trends don't resonate with me.

I am working on Novel Number Three (and Four and Five and so on--all of the ideas are crowding around me), and it's coming together, but I want it to be just right. I'm at nearly 98K words, and I know there's more to be told and sorted out. As I reread, I cut out bits that I think are just bogging it down. I keep going over the same bits and feel like I'm getting nowhere, but it keeps getting a little better. 

I read slowly but deeply; I write the same way. I favor quality over quantity and depth of understanding over speed. If it's a test of speed, I will become paralyzed and unable to create. Unable to think.

"If you find inspiration in daydreaming, staring into space, appearing to be doing nothing while you are miles and miles away, that is perfectly okay. Sometimes that's what writing looks like."

Maybe pushing yourself to write 50K words in a month is something you feel you need to do because you have never written 50K words period. There's nothing wrong with that. Maybe you are able to churn out stories quickly. But I've never imagined that I would be the kind of author who writes and publishes quickly. I have tons of ideas, but it takes time to mold them into the right shapes.

Novel Number One has very little resemblance to the first ideas I started putting on paper. It went through many changes from beginning to end. Ideas that weren't working got tossed out.

If you don't feel you can keep up with writing fast, don't be afraid. In a recent newsletter, dated February 12, 2020, A Manifesto for Slow Writing, John Matthew Fox echoed my feelings exactly when he said, "Perhaps we'll never find what we truly need to say, our deepest and most powerful subjects, if we race through the pages." If your goal is to write the fastest and publish the fastest, your book may never reach its full potential. It may be little more than a glorified rough draft of what it could have been.

For me, the same goes with strictly adhering to a template or outline with no flexibility. I use outlines as a guideline (to rein myself in and keep the end goal before me lest I wander aimlessly in the desert for forty years) with the understanding that nothing is set in stone. These days, there's a "hack" for every task, but there is a reason than being a "hack writer" is not a good thing. It's not genius, and it's not a compliment.

You may never find the path you were meant to explore by remaining on the same trail that others have walked over and over. So, don't be afraid to create your own path and go at your own pace. If you find inspiration in daydreaming, staring into space, appearing to be doing nothing while you are miles and miles away, that is perfectly okay. Sometimes that's what writing looks like.