It's Christmas next month. But it was surely only Christmas last month. I don't understand. 1991 was thirty years ago and the last millennium is now almost 22 years behind us, the same length of time that separates 1991 from 1969. I don't want to come across all Marty McFly here, but Whoa, this is heavy. Something seriously screwy has happened to time.
In the face of such temporal acceleration, it's no wonder I'm getting such little writing done.
Actually, it's more to do with my own habits. I grew used to binge-writing over the years. Getting down the words was always quite a painful experience and I never went lightly to the page, with editing being the dessert after the main course, but I tended to do it all in large chunks of time as opposed to the oft-recommended set hour or two a day. Weeks often passed with me doing nothing, followed by an intense period when I wrote for days, sometimes in my sleep.
That can't happen now. In the working world - up at six and returning home twelve hours later, often working over the weekend - I'm left with nowhere near the time I had on my hands when I was furloughed, for example (or off work with two broken legs, which is how I churned out The Art Teacher, or working part time, thus able to finish Blame; the three books I've written since Blame was published have been completed in stolen fits and starts and, tellingly, haven't been published. Yet.).
If it sounds as though I’m writing about myself, I’m really not. Having to earn a crust and not being born into the aristocracy is not an original problem. Every writer I know, who doesn't write 'for a living', tells me they don't have enough time. I've written three full-length novels in five years so I think I'm getting it more-or-less right, but this year has felt like an impossibly fallow one, and now it's nearly over already.
So I'm at that place where so many writers find themselves. Looking for tips on how to write through the lack of available hours.
I was interviewed for Writing Magazine a thousand years ago and told them, somewhat soundbitedly, 'I don't find the time, I steal it.' Utter bollocks, of course. I sleep more than most humans need to and waste as much of it as anyone who's ever held a smartphone.
A brief perusal of literature on the subject of writing tells me that a little thing called 'routine' is important.
I've mentioned before, probably, the dangers of holding oneself to a daily word count, as falling short of it can make you feel failure keenly. A set time is more manageable, provided the clickbait's ignored. Building a writing habit is important only if you can ignore the distractions.
If your kids don't need constant supervision any more, for example, you can get stuff down in short bursts. That's the secret: writing in scraps of time, in smaller units. Thirty minutes can yield 500 words. Half an hour = the length of an episode of a panel show on Dave. Skip that. I don't think it can be that hard. Or set your alarm thirty minutes earlier in the morning. If you want to do it, it doesn't feel like a chore. Surely?
Lots of Twitter takes part in NaNoWriMo, or National November Writing Month. The plan is to spunk out a book in thirty days (the idiots didn't even choose one of the longer months), getting the word count up as quickly as possible. It requires intense preparation to do it right; going in cold, without a plan, ensures you write in circles and end up with 50,000 words that read as though they were crafted by a bot. It's not for the fainthearted.
Neil Gaiman said, 'You put one word after another until you're done'. I think that's probably pretty good writing advice. But Neil's not juggling a day job that's mentally and physically exhausting with trying to scrape words out from scraps left at the end of the day. He's paid handsomely to write those words. It's a bit like Jennifer Lopez giving tips on how to stay beautiful when her objective attractiveness is clearly down to highly-paid personal trainers, access to the best chefs, gyms, consultants and amazing genes. However, Neil started off at the bottom (i.e. someone who could only write in what's commonly known as 'spare time') so he's been there too, getting his early bad attempts out of the way, surrendering his ego and realising that so much of it was crap, inauthentic, conflict-less. He wrote his way to the top. By getting on with it. As simple as that.
Writers write. Yawn. I know. In the car. On the toilet. During the lunch hour (not that anyone gets those any longer). Seriously, steal the time.
And drink coffee. Lots of coffee.
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