Never Enough
One of the annoying things I’ve found about the full-time writer gig is a much stronger feeling of not getting enough done in any given day.
Working for the state, I knew I had an hour to write during lunch, and maybe a little time later that evening, depending on what was going on. So if I got 1000 words done, I was doing great.
Now, I get up and do my two hours of telecommuting, and then at 10:30 the rest of the day is all mine. Since I have more hours to write, I should be doing 5000+ words a day, right? Because that’s what the math says.
Of course, the math doesn’t care about calls from the school, grocery shopping, holiday preparation, vacuuming the house, picking my son up from school because he’s not feeling well, and all the rest. Nor does it recognize that sometimes I need to get up and stretch, or walk away from the story so I can think a bit and figure out where to go from here.
My math doesn’t care about any of that.
At the same time, I’ve been thinking about more projects I want to do, things I’m really excited about. There’s the middle grade book, the trilogy I pitched to DAW, and a list of other things that not only would my fans (hopefully) really like, but that would also help me continue to grow my career, and as a writer.
Basically, I want to WRITE ALL THE THINGS! And I somehow expect myself to do it all RIGHT NOW!
Realistically, the past few months have been incredibly productive. I did three and a half short stories in October. I wrote the first draft of a book in November. It’s halfway through December, and I’m halfway through the rewrite of that same book. I also did page proofs for Revisionary somewhere in there.
And it doesn’t feel like enough. I knew being the stay-at-home parent would eat up a fair amount of time and energy, but it’s hard to find that balance. There’s always been the voice whispering, “Shouldn’t you be writing?”, but now that voice expects it to be all writing, all the time.
That’s not healthy.
I’m thinking I need to do more long-term planning. List out these various projects, come up with a realistic estimate of how long each of them will take, plug in the ones that have deadlines, and see how it all looks. NaNoWriMo was helpful because not only did I have a concrete goal, I also had a daily goal, and if I reached that, it was easier to give myself permission to stop.
This has been your periodic glimpse of writerbrain.
Murphy Jacobs
December 16, 2015 @ 12:19 pm
I know those feels, sir.
When we left the jobs and the house in Florida so my husband could return to school, I couldn’t find a job. Then health problems, and now finding a job is sort of a non-starter. I’d sold my first short story, survived my first editing process (with scars) And I thought “well, hell, here’s my opportunity. Write, woman, Write!”
And nothing. Lots of staring, lots of frustration, way too much psychological bruising. Major blocks. All bad. Took me a good 6 years to work that out (wrote a novel during NaNo, now trying to get going on that). You can burn yourself out and just stop writing.
Your plan makes sense, though. It pays to go things that aren’t actually writing because they do help the writing in the long run. The brain will run through things while your hands are busy.
This sounded so much smarter in my head.
SherryH
December 16, 2015 @ 1:20 pm
Augh! This! So much this…
In October, I thought I had it all together. Then November hit, followed by December. Whatever I’m doing, I feel as though I should be doing something else. I sit in front of my computer, and my mind goes blank. I have zero interest in the story I’m supposed to be working on, and I’m not sure I even like the characters any more.
My goal for the rest of 2015 is to try to wrap my brain around what things I need to be doing and when, and maybe clear my plate of some projects so I can focus on some other projects.
As for, “If I can write 1000 words in 1 hour, then I should be able to write 5000 words in 5 hours,” I’m not sure it scales that way. For me, there’s a time factor, but also a mental energy factor. I may have 5 hours to sit in front of the computer, but I may only have energy to write for one or two of them before my brain gets fogged and the words start to flag. Can you break up your writing into an early block and a later block, maybe divided by the consulting work? I don’t know how flexible that chunk of time is.
Good luck finding the system that works for you, and if you do, please share! And may you and your family have a very happy holiday!
Melanie
December 16, 2015 @ 1:30 pm
The more time I have for writing, the more I feel resentful of not having more. It’s like a sickness!
I have a twitter writer friend who has a system where she allocates a certain number of beans at the start of the week. Each bean represents a certain amount of work (I think it’s an hour per bean). After each hour of work, she moves the bean from one jar to another jar. When the first jar is empty, she’s done working for the whole week. That’s her system for avoiding overwork and ensuring she takes a guilt-free break at the end of the week.
I think it’s brilliant– I’d do the same thing, except I have the dubious good fortune of having a built-in braking mechanism (my hands start to hurt and I have to stop or risk injury) that limits my hours 🙁
In news unrelated to work but highly related to repetitive stress and fatigue, just wanted to say I appreciate the big fonts you use on your website.
Marie
December 16, 2015 @ 1:32 pm
I’m so much this, with added sprinkles where some interrupters can’t be put on hold, like a puppy.
Harry Connolly
December 16, 2015 @ 1:44 pm
I confess that I get most of my writing done away from home. A few hours in a Starbucks or the library really cuts down on the distractions.
Fraser
December 16, 2015 @ 8:12 pm
Funny Harry, going to anywhere with books is far too distracting for me.
It’s very easy to overdo if you don’t make yourself stop. Even at my reporter day job I’d sometimes push off my lunchtime break because if I eat at my desk and put a couple more hours in, I’ll have all the stories due Friday done on Thursday, THEN I’ll take the break. I always felt like crap afterwards.
Alan DeHaan
December 16, 2015 @ 9:23 pm
I wish I had some kind of advice, because this’ll just lead to burnout which’ll just feed your depression even stronger.
Maybe first, set some boundaries. Obviously life will happen inside those boundaries, but that way you can go at least tell the evil Brain that you will write from x to y and then take a nice break. (Obviously you can go further if you’re on a streak buuuut).
And the person above who said “Maybe divide your hours” could work. As well as maybe limit your goal. Set daily goals ala NaNoWriMo, but the goals should be flexible. (Obviously revisions work differently than novels which might work somewhat differently than short stories which work kind of differently than fan fiction you secretly publish under a pseudonym). Just…find a way to take care of yourself in this.
D. D. Webb
December 16, 2015 @ 10:04 pm
I’ve had an educational year pertaining to this very issue.
I’m a webserialist, which is exactly what it sounds like: I write a serial on the Web. For almost a year, I was updating my story three times a week, MWF, at four to five thousand words per chapter. It was all going quite well, I’d built up a good community of readers who’ve been increasingly enthusiastic about it, and a few months ago I decided to make the leap and start turning my hobby into an income. So I did what other serialists I know have done, and started offering donation incentive bonus chapters. Basically, I put up a Paypal donation link on the site, set a donation goal, and whenever it was met, I would post an extra chapter that week.
The response floored me; my donation goals kept being blown away no matter how I increased them. It was incredibly validating for me as a writer, knowing that people loved my work enough to put actual money into it, especially when they were getting it for free and gained nothing from paying but faster updates. Soon I found myself doing five chapters a week, making honest-to-god money from writing. It was a dream come true for me, the fulfillment of my most cherished ambitions and a promise of having an actual career at this.
Two weeks later I was constantly missing deadlines, suffering writer’s block like never before, in the grips of one of my worst ever depressive episodes and longing to just quit the whole damn thing.
I managed to get myself straightened back out once I realized that I was simply overextending my creative energies. That was a hard thing to come to grips with. One of the most difficult parts of establishing good writing habits, for me, was having to constantly tell myself “You sit your butt in that chair and do the work.” I’d hear about writers like Nora Robers, who write for eight hours a day, seven days a week, and see the output of the likes of Stephen King, and think, “There’s no reason I can’t do that! I just need to DO it!”
The truth is, I can’t do that.
I have bipolar disorder, baseline depressive, and I simply have a finite amount of creative energy to spend on things. You don’t appreciate how much of your creativity goes toward keeping your whole being in balance until you’re squeezing every last drop of it into a single thing. I need my downtime in order to function. I can crank out fifteen thousand words a week, and sustain both the quality of those words and my mental health. Beyond that, one or the other starts suffering. Probably both.
It’s futile to compare oneself to other writers; they’re not working with your brain, and likely wouldn’t do as good a job with it as you can. Speaking as someone who has gone down that road, I entreat you not to fall into that trap, or believe that the amount of time you have equates to the amount of time you should be writing. If you suffer from depression, as I do, and as you’ve mentioned that you do, Jim, you can do yourself very real harm by overextending.
It’s not about filling the hours, or the pages, but about finding your own balance. I apologize for this; I know it’s presumptuous as hell for me, whose entire resume is “some dingaling with an internet connection,” to be telling a Hugo winner how to work; I just happen to see a reflection of my experiences in this post and hope my insight is in some way useful to you. If you have more time to write now than when you were working for the state, that’s great! It’s a great time to figure out how much you can and should write per day, or week (I for one don’t write every day; I get better results from giving my brain a rest day, just like building up a muscle). Everyone’s balance is unique; creative work just isn’t a nine-to-five proposition for most of us.
You know that depression lies. So do false expectations. You do seriously great work, and I’m glad you’ve got more time to focus on it now. As always, I’m looking forward to reading your next book, but that’ll be when it is ready. Please don’t burn yourself out by pushing it.
Best wishes, and my sincere respect!
–Webb
Fraser
December 17, 2015 @ 6:38 am
Setting goals and stopping when you’ve accomplished them is a big help for me.If you want to put in work so you’re a week ahead of schedule, do it, and then stop. The fact you have more time when you could do more work and get two weeks ahead (or get ahead on another project too) does not make the extra work a good idea.
I have read “how to” articles by writers who shut out the entire world when they’re on deadline—no going out, no having fun, see family only as much as necessary … I guess that worked for them, but I’d rank it as sub-optimal for most people.
Amanda
December 17, 2015 @ 9:52 am
You’re referring to yourself here as a full-time writer, but to me that’s downplaying your other commitments – might it help if you think of yourself as juggling three part time jobs instead? Your morning telecommute, your writing, and the family/housekeeping role are all demands on your time and energy. Not to mention the mental gear-shifting that’s involved in switching between roles (though you may well be better at that than I am).
I’m inclined to agree with you about setting targets, whether for a daily time/word count, or per project (I find daily or at least short-term targets easier to stick to, but again, that’s my brain not yours). You only have a certain number of work hours available though, so look at what can be done within those, not the number of overall hours in the day – you still need to budget time to have a life around your work. With that in mind, don’t discount the time spent promoting your work when looking at what you do – it’s part of the writing job, and counts as much as actual writing does from that point of view. And of course the stay at home parent role has a huge reactive component that is never going to play well with plans and targets, so even the best-laid plans will need adjusting sometimes.
(I feel like I’m trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs at this point instead of being remotely helpful. My apologies, but hopefully you can read this in the spirit it was intended. Basically, realistic structure is good, flexibility is necessary, don’t dismiss stuff that eats into your time, whatever it may be. Oh, and good luck.)
Pam Adams
December 18, 2015 @ 11:43 am
Perhaps it’s also important to think how much ‘creatorness’ you have in a given day. Perhaps your previous methods allowed you to compress your daily creation into a shorter time span. Having more time may not mean that your brain is generating more ideas.
Ellen
December 27, 2015 @ 1:24 am
Having an hour to write a day means your hindbrain has the rest of your day to simmer story. That’s not something you can do efficiently, at the keyboard or away, because story-generation is about as interested in efficiency as gasoline engines are in the urge to paint.
That all sounded better in my head too. Point being, give yourself credit for more than just the letters typed on the page. Story-generation takes more than fingers moving on a keyboard.