Writing Myths – Myth #1

I’ve been working pretty consistently on the new novel now for longer than I have on any recent project. It’s been 7 days in a row now that I’ve consistently hit my daily word goal of 1,000 words. This is the first time I’ve ever written this consistently and this productively when not involved in NaNoWriMo. These might be the first tentative baby steps toward being a real, live grown-up writer, and not someone just playing at it. That said, it’s only been 7 days, and I’m bound to soon stumble and hit my head on some unprotected corner of a coffee table.

This experience of writing consistently (which is, after all, the one piece of advice that really doesn’t differ from one successful author to another) has taught me that there is advice out there that might not be everything it seems on its face. So, over the next few posts, I’d like to debunk some of myths I’m facing during this process.

Myth Number 1: Set a daily word count and write until you hit that goal.

If you follow this blog or have read the Acknowledgments in The War Master’s Daughter, you know that I credit NaNoWriMo for my finally being a published author. Now that I’m questing after my first non-NaNo book, I look to the aspects of the contest that made me successful. The one that comes to the forefront is that lovely little bar graph that shows your word count progress. Boy does it boost your confidence. Boy does it motivate you. So I created my own little bar graph and my own daily word count goal, attempting to mimic the driving force that got me to write for so many days in a row.  

However, in practice, I have found this particular piece of “advice” to be the most damaging. Sure, the daily word count goal might work for NaNoWriMo, where the goal is a certain number of words, and really nothing else. But, as other WriMos know, we all end up playing little tricks with ourselves to pad out the requisite 1,666 words/day. Contractions, begone. Evil adjectives and adverbs, you are welcome on the doorstep of this bizarro writing world. Characters, your middle names have never been so important.

Following this technique, I’ve written just over 15,000 words of my new book, or about 20% of my anticipated total final length, and 7,000 of these words have been over the last 7 days. I was impressed with my progress—until I went back and read some of what I’d thrown in there. A lot of those words are utter crap. A lot. WriMos are familiar with this phenomenon, encountering it during the celebratory (or funereal) December read-through. Haven’t we all had that moment of “What was I thinking?” And “How is it possible that I wrote that badly for that many pages?”

Perhaps setting a daily word count works for you if you have the luxury/curse of writing fiction for a living, and you need some sort of self-imposed deadline to make your writing take precedence over, say, cleaning the refrigerator, alphabetizing your DVDs, or vacuuming your cat. But when you have a finite amount of time—cut in on by a 9-to-5 day job, weekend social obligations, and chores that actually need tending—setting a word count goal is a recipe for churning out crap. Yeah, you might find you occasionally pen something diamond-like, but fast writing develops bad habits of lazy writing. The mentality of “I’ll go back and fix it later; gotta gotta gotta get words down NOW” takes the art and concentration out of the writing process, turning it into something mechanical akin to shoveling dung. You can’t write mechanically and write beautifully, unless you are some kind of prodigy or a consummate professional with decades of dedicated experience. When you’re an amateur—as in, doing because you love it—writing for quantity instead of for purpose turns out to be a huge waste of time.

And you’ll hate yourself when you get to the editing stage.

A Better Way: Set a daily time goal.

As Pablo Picasso said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

Rather than spitting out 1,000 words, no matter how long or how short it takes (which, predictably, correlates with how much time you actually have until you are required to be doing something else), schedule daily writing sessions in manageable blocks.

Set one of those cheap, plastic kitchen timers for 60 minutes, then sit in your chair with your work open in front of you and don’t do anything else except work. You might write 1,000 words. You might write one sentence. But promise yourself (and keep your promise) that you won’t do anything other than write. And if you’re not physically creating words and sentences, you’re staring at your page, thinking about writing. Don’t do “research.” Don’t check Facebook. Don’t fold the laundry. Do the work. When your timer dings, you can stop—or not. But you’ve put in your time. The quality of the results will be higher.

Moreover, you’ll develop good habits. You won’t put down words with the intention of fixing them later; you’ll put down words with intention. Efficiency will come with time and habit—then you’ll have the best of both worlds.