Often trying to imitate these really rigid daily schedules ends in failure and a sense that we’re some kind of imposters. So many of us are this way! And yet-we want it to be as simple as a militaristic writing schedule, as the 5 AM writers club, showing up every day, waiting for the muse to show up too. And of course there is no right way to have a writing schedule of course brilliant writers have written at all hours and according to all manner of quirky or mundane habits of course the only thing anyone cares about in the end is whether you wrote and whether it’s any good.”
I work in spurts, at random hours, crashing deadlines and taking ill-advised breaks and wasting just so much time. In her craft capsule essay, The Schedule, Jordan Kisner calls it “cosplaying the work”-her attempt at building regimented schedules, habits, routines. I’m a different writer when I smooth out each sentence in a paragraph before moving on versus the writer deep in the havoc of a messy first draft. I’m different when I’m angry, when I’m hungry, when I’m tired. I’m a different writer at different times of the day. I’m a different writer on a clock than untimed. Writing longhand, I find I produce really different work than drafts I type. That’s fine! But switch up one or more significant habits. Now, you might not have the ability to invert every habit. Usually pruning and polishing my writing as I go
Let’s say, for my baseline, I’m this kind of writer: This one’s my go-to change-of-pace: whatever I usually do, I invert. Or, what usually works for you.īut even what usually works will sometimes fall flat. Whatever your usual habits are-that’s your baseline. What I mean is: what kind of writer are you most of the time?ĭo you have designated writing hours or steal time when you can?ĭo you revise and polish one paragraph at a time, or do you write a fast, rough, complete draft? In fact, I like the idea that most of what works for most of us is to meander: to trail away from our current habits when we’re stuck and try something that (for us) we don’t normally do. I’ve been reading Jane Allison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode-her craft book about narrative patterns beyond the classic arc-and I love that trio of dictums as writing advice too.