Pep Talks for Writers Read online

  I’ve been one of those people. I’m an expert at fake productivity. I get trapped in an infinite task loop where I’m consistently accomplishing little actions, but making dubious progress toward completing a novel. I do research. I tinker with the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first chapter. I go back and do more research. Or I get distracted by the glistening sheen of an entirely different writing project. (New novel ideas are always at their brightest before the writing begins.)

  I’ve concocted these writing evasions—which feel like productive writing—because I don’t truly want to deal with the mess of the whole thing. My rough draft is like a toddler, just out of diapers, cavorting in glee, with crumbs of Pirate’s Booty on its lips and juice dripping onto its shirt. It’s knocking over things all over the place and yelling too loudly. I love my story’s exuberance, but I’m fatigued by the thought of teaching it to grow up.

  A goal without a deadline is like a class of students without a teacher—full of potential, but lacking structure.

  “The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress,” Philip Roth said. I want to get out of this hell.

  So how to finish? The lessons of NaNoWriMo apply to creative projects year-round: Make a goal, set a deadline, and devise a plan of accountability.

  Goals give us direction, but a goal without a deadline is like a class of students without a teacher—full of potential, but lacking structure. If I don’t give myself a deadline and track my progress, my novel will exist in a perpetual state of questionable movement. (I know because one of my novels took 10 years to finish.)

  You don’t need to write 50,000 words each month, of course, but think about what you can do each day on a regular basis. Can you revise your novel for an hour each day? Okay, then set a goal of 30 hours of revision in a month and track yourself each day. Can you write 250 words a day? Okay, then set a goal of 7,500 words in a month. (Funny how 250 words each day can add up; if you write 7,500 words a month, you’ll write 80,000 words in a year, which is a good-sized novel.) Even a snail can travel a great distance if it moves forward each day.

  The key thing is that you can’t set a vague goal. Without a clear goal, you’re likely to find a million ways of talking yourself out of committing to achievement. I think of this scene in Lewis Carrols’s Alice in Wonderland.

  CAT: Where are you going?

  ALICE: Which way should I go?

  CAT: That depends on where you are going.

  ALICE: I don’t know.

  CAT: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.

  Goals are the lighthouse that guides the boat to shore. They’re the north star we follow.

  Even with such a system, however, lapses are inevitable. I make a list of obstacles that I will likely face, whether it’s an onerous work deadline, self-doubt, or outright boredom with my novel, and I think about how to overcome them. After a lapse, it’s important to forgive yourself, readjust your goals, and give yourself a fresh start so that a bad week of writing doesn’t lead to a bad month of writing, which then turns into a bad year.

  It’s all about designing your life around the things you rationally want to achieve instead of sinking into the powerful claws of more impulsive needs. We tend to be myopic creatures, preferring positive outcomes in the present at the expense of future outcomes. But our present self is doing a disservice to our future self, who will scream back into the dark hallows of the past: “Why didn’t you work on our novel?” Think about how your present self can better serve your future self.

  I look forward to seeing my novel finished, as if watching it like a proud parent at graduation. It will be polished, finely woven together, ready to be read by others. Hopefully, it will find a nice cover to wrap itself in, a bookshelf to live on, and will wish me luck on my next novel. There’s always another story waiting.

  TRY THIS

  SET A GOAL. SET A DEADLINE.

  This is the big moment. Map out your writing goals—big goals and all the milestones that lead up to them. Pin a piece of paper with your goals over your writing desk. Tattoo them on your arm if need be. Set deadlines on your online calendar—with reminders. Form a strategy of accountability and enact it.

  7

  EMBRACE CONSTRAINTS

  If you talk to another writer—any writer, no matter if they’ve just begun to write or if they have a few published books under their belt—you’ll likely hear complaints about their lack of time to truly write the novel of their dreams. They yearn for a utopian idyll where time is expansive and unfettered, without worry about paying bills, or perhaps without worry of even making meals or cleaning the house. A pure time to write and nothing else.

  I’m such a writer. If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t shop for groceries or even gas the car. I’d reside in a completely pampered life where I would wake up and write every day—and then, and only then, would I truly realize the resplendency of my creative potential and write the novel of my dreams.

  Instead, my writing life is a cramped and hectic affair. I work all day, return home to household chores and parenting duties, and bustle through a weekend of demands, whether it’s taking my kids to games and birthday parties or doing one of the nagging tasks to keep my house from falling down (or staring at the house falling down, which is a more likely scenario). My wife and I joke that we’re in a constant race against time. I try to wake early in the morning before work on the weekdays to write, and then I’ll often jot down a smattering of thoughts while watching my kids play soccer, but I write mostly within the nooks and crannies of time, not in its expansive glories. I suffer from what I call the “not-enough blues”—not enough time, not enough money.

  There’s an old saying that if you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them, but truth be told, I’ve started to realize I’m lucky to have my limitations. I now see constraints as advantages in disguise. I’ve observed many a person with time on their hands fritter it away (and then have the audacity to complain about their inability to get anything done). Our imagination doesn’t necessarily flourish in the luxury of total freedom, where it’s likely to become a flabby and aimless wastrel. Our imagination thrives when pressure is applied, when boundaries are set.

  Think of poetry. The box of a poetic form—whether it’s a sonnet, a villanelle, or a haiku—makes the creative act more difficult, yet the requirements of the form force the writer to look beyond obvious associations and consider different words that fit into the rhyming or iambic scheme. Imaginative leaps don’t necessarily happen by thinking “outside the box” as the popular saying goes, but within the box.

  Improvisational comedy troupes often employ a similar technique of constraint by asking the audience to throw out suggestions (often surprising and contradictory ones) to the performers. The actors have to perform right away, without a plan, let alone a conversation between them. The skit emerges with help from a simple rule: Accept without question what is given to you by your fellow performers. Every line you produce must build on one that came before, and you can never second-guess that line. Marvelous, surprising skits are created on the spot, in the confines of the moment.

  So not having enough time to write might just be the best thing for your writing. Think of National Novel Writing Month. Very few people say they have the time to write 50,000 words in a month, but such a tight deadline forces one to become more energetic. By focusing on what you can give up for a month—social media, TV, and the like—and using that extra time to write vigorously toward a goal, you’re drawing from a deep well of creativity that would have otherwise gone unexplored. A time restriction takes away the choices available to us—choices that can have a paralyzing affect, causing one to dally and maybe not start at all. Constraints, however, keep perfectionism from niggling away at you, so you dive in and just start writing because you have to.

  Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 on a typewriter during his lunch breaks. Toni Morrison wrote her first novel in the nuggets of time she had after a day’s work and putt
ing her children to bed. Just a little bit of writing each day added up to a novel after a while.

  I dream of a time when I’ll have vast swaths of time available to write, but NaNoWriMo has helped me realize that I’m actually lucky to have my limitations. In fact, the ticks of the clock are like a metronome for our creativity, each tick urging us to get to work now.

  Here’s a bold recommendation: Don’t complain about a lack of time to write. Without a lack of time, the urgency of your passion dissipates.

  TRY THIS

  WRITING SPRINTS

  Explore the creative power of limitations. Set a timer for 15 or 30 minutes and push yourself to simply dive into your novel wherever you can.

  This strategy is similar to the Pomodoro Technique, a time management method that breaks down work into intervals separated by short breaks. Bursts of focus with frequent breaks can improve your mental agility.

  8

  THE ART OF BOREDOM

  Boredom is typically seen as a bad word, a state to be avoided. It’s often perceived as a vacant and dulling spell of time that we impulsively search to escape by any means necessary.

  When a moment empty of stimuli descends upon me, I reach for my phone, tap it madly, and hope to find stimulation. I have a tic, an affliction, a virus. I do this in line at the grocery store, during my kids’ soccer games, or even at a red light. Like many, I’m searching for the dopamine spritzer I’ve become addicted to. My brain craves novelty and stimulation, and I’m caught in a loop of compulsive neediness. I scroll through photos, read random updates, and then when the red light changes to green, I go on my way (if I see the light). I am my gadgets.

  It seems as if all of the entertaining diversions that the Internet delivers will feel like fulfillment, but the flickers of photos and headlines tend not to nourish my soul or spark my imagination. Instead, they steal something precious from me: boredom.

  Wait a minute, boredom . . . precious? Yes. Many vital things have gone extinct in the last couple of centuries, but perhaps one of the most underappreciated is the scarcity of true boredom in our lives. Think about it: When was the last time you experienced a moment of emptiness and allowed your mind to luxuriate in it without twitching to grab your smart phone or a remote control? If you’re like me, you’re so addicted to online distractions that you make excuses to dart away from the deep thinking that your writing requires to search for something—anything—on the Internet, as if the web can write your next scene. In fact, MRI studies have shown similar brain changes in compulsive Internet users and drug addicts. Our brains are busier than ever, but not in a deep, reflective way. Our absorption in our devices make us oblivious to the impulses of our spirit.

  Boredom is a creator’s friend, though, because your mind naturally resists such moments of stasis and seeks stimulation. Before our era of hyper connectivity, boredom was an occasion of observation, a wonderful juncture of daydream-ing—a time when one might conjure a new story idea while milking a cow or building a fire.

  Mysteries abound in the time we’re not “entertained.”

  Boredom initiates motion. When you pause to accept boredom’s invitation to actually experience the world, your senses become heightened, and you notice things you wouldn’t have otherwise. If you allow yourself to be absorbed in the stray, lingering moments of life, these seemingly fallow moments can actually become a fertile breeding ground for ideas. Being bored signals to the mind that you’re in need of fresh thoughts and spurs creative thinking.

  Boredom heightens daydreaming because moments of boredom resemble sleep. When the mind finds itself in an interlude of rest, synapses connect in different ways, and new thoughts form. So even though you might think of the time waiting in line at the grocery store as dead time, your mind is actually readying itself for an imaginative adventure or an illuminating insight.

  I think of boredom as a meditator’s breath. It’s a way to explore the silence of myself—and the sounds in that silence.

  In the musician John Cage’s 4’33”, his most famous piece, a pianist walks onstage to play a composition, sits erectly at the piano, adjusts the sheet music, and pauses for four minutes and 33 seconds. In that intense silence, sound is transformed. Each inhale and exhale, each mysterious scritch and scratch or stray car horn, becomes part of the musical experience. Expectations are flipped as listeners explore an absence that is also a presence. Mysteries abound in the time we’re not “entertained.”

  By focusing on disruptions rather than the connective tissue of a musical narrative, Cage obviated the crescendos and diminuendos of music, and his work actually became an odd meditation on what is absent. The listener creates his or her own harmony in the space, just as our minds fill boredom with a story or observations or memories—to escape the boredom.

  I recently tested accepting boredom myself. I took a vow to not pull out my cell phone when boredom hit to see what I would experience. It was difficult at first because I questioned everything I’ve just written to you. (Yes, my cell phone is quite a seductive siren.) But as I sunk into boredom, as I let my mind slouch on its couch of emptiness, the world started to fill up with intriguing details.

  One day, while waiting in line for a coffee, I noticed a man biting his lip as he waited, wincing his eyes and nervously swaying on his feet. A little boy tried to blow bubbles with his spit as his mother stared at her phone. Two women laughed about the inept advances men had made to them on Match. com. Suddenly, my little boring coffee shop had turned into a symphony of stories. The humans around me were vastly more interesting in real life than anything happening on my gadget (and I ended up including snippets of the women’s conversation in a story).

  “You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it,” said Neil Gaiman.

  That’s the secret—to notice your boredom, notice the thoughts and observations it sparks. I bet your smart phone doesn’t deliver ideas in such a rich, nuanced, nourishing way.

  TRY THIS

  REVERE BOREDOM

  Think twice the next time boredom descends upon you in an idle moment. Think twice before pulling out your smart phone, turning on the television, or even picking up a magazine. Simply reside in the boredom, revere it as the sacred, creative moment it is, and travel where your mind goes.

  9

  GETTING IDEAS: A WRITING RORSCHACH TEST

  I don’t believe in the notion of writer’s block. I think it’s too easy to end up building a twisted shrine to it—to proclaim the affliction, then festoon one’s writing life with it, saying, “I’m blocked,” over and over again, as if abdicating responsibility for creating the blockage and waiting for magical bolts of inspiration to come down from the sky and unstopper it all (which only happens in the movies, right?).

  Sure, we all have our down days. And, sure, after finishing a writing project, we often don’t have an idea for the next story right away. I think of these states more as creative impasses, as mere interludes, rather than blocks. They are times to write in my journal, take walks, dance late into the night, spend a day in a museum, read, do whatever it takes to stir up ideas and get things percolating.

  If you want to actively jump-start your imagination, though, consider taking a more energetic approach to chopping your way through the brambles of a creative lull. I’ve always enjoyed Ray Bradbury’s list-making method to tap into the swirls of my subconscious. When Bradbury first became a writer, he made long lists of nouns to trigger ideas. He said each person possesses a wealth of life experiences in their minds, and you just have to find a way to bring all of these things to the surface, recognize patterns, and read the tea leaves for your story. He did this by making lists of nouns. “Conjure the nouns, alert the secret self, taste the darkness . . . speak softly, and write any old word that wants to jump out of your nerves onto the page,” he said.

  Once he’d written a list, Bradbury plumbed e
ach word’s associations by writing what he called pensées about each noun, tiny prose poems or descriptive paragraphs of approximately 200 words that helped him examine each noun and dredge his subconscious in the process. “You ask, Why did I put this word down? What does it mean to me? Why did I put this noun down and not some other word?”

  For example, here’s the list of nouns that sparked one of Bradbury’s more notable books:

  The lake. The night. The crickets. The ravine. The AtticThe Basement. The trapdoor. The baby. The crowd. The night train. The fog horn. The scythe. The carnival. The carousel. The dwarf. The mirror maze. The skeleton.

  The list looks like just a random assortment of words, but Bradbury found a pattern revolving around his “old love and fright” of circuses and carnivals. He remembered his first ride on a merry-go-round, “the world spinning and the terrible horses leaping.” As he reflected on the associations around the words, characters emerged and carried the story forward, and he ended up returning to that terrifying carousel from his youth in Something Wicked This Way Comes. The story wasn’t memoir, but one born from the friction in his life, a friction that he was only able to decipher by stitching together the pattern of the words.

  I like doing an exercise like this because it offers a provocation. It’s a personal Rorschach test, a way to open those tightly shut doors of your mind and follow the surprising feather of a memory as it wafts through time’s secrets.