"Creative work," Ritual, and Disruption in Writing
I have a hard time striking balance in most areas of my life: sleep, coffee intake, video games, time spent facedown in the cat. Never is my all-or-nothing disposition more apparent than in my writing habits. I talked about this a couple weeks ago in my discussion of writing sprints, where I wisely and very originally unearthed the little gem that in order to be a writer, you must generally finish writing something—something I ironically struggle to do. In the ultimate act of self-sabotage, it seems my all-or-nothing disposition does not quite extend to the state of my works in progress.
On the bright side, at least there’s one area of my life where I’m happy with halfways.
To help with my relentless pursuit of new procrastination, I’ve been listening to isolated episodes of the podcast 88 CUPS OF TEA. Host Yin Chang interviews authors about their process. It’s very heartening to hear different authors’ approaches to writing professionally; though perspectives on process are often different, there’s an undercurrent that unites them: that writing is not just about having, entertaining, or testing out creative ideas, but about doing the work to get them to publishability.
Which clicked something for me—the dual notion of creative work. My theory is that most writers trip up on either one part of this or the other.
Two interviews I heard back to back highlighted the “creative work” duality well. Naomi Novik declaimed at length on writing for fun, but also on putting in the work to finish the fun projects you start on a whim. Elizabeth Acevedo, meanwhile, centred the ritual aspect of putting in the work—and how disrupting those rituals can spark creative aspects that keep us from burning out.
I really grokked both perspectives. I’m implementing some of Acevedo’s ritualizing tips for myself—creating a mental and physical environment specific to writing, associating coffee with writing the way I associate rain with peace, and so on. But I’m also making a point of making more real estate for ‘fun’ writing in my head, if not in my schedule: I may not have the time or writing stamina to always jot down a throwaway idea, especially when I know I can’t finish it, but I can at least spend time playing in those worlds in my head.
Sometimes I find the notions of ‘work’ and ‘play’ difficult to reconcile. In my own writing, it feels like work—enjoyable work, but still work—to do the editing, tinkering, and revision required to get something out. A big part of writing for fun for me personally is that I’m not tinkering for the aim of publication.
But listening to these authors, I’m beginning to understand that these work and play concepts are not quite so divisive as they instinctively feel. It’s just that when you’re writing for fun, the emphasis is often on the creative angle, while with editing and structuring, the emphasis is often on work, and it’s difficult to see how these work together in a finished product.
Right now, I’m struggling with my attitude on my main writing project. I’m in a heavy ‘work’ phase with it. It’s a romance novel that’s been hovering around the 45k mark for about a month. Early in August I pledged to finish a draft before September—but at time of writing, wordcount is down in the 42k range, despite that I’ve added to the document every day of the last three weeks.
It’s the type of work I’m doing that’s causing this. I’m trying to make peace with this as a natural part of process in association with my de-emphasis on wordcount as the central indicator of success. Act 2 had to be overhauled and restructured. There were several scene and story beat repetitions. The contents of Chapter 11’s hefty 3,500 outline (it was really more of a brain dump) had been already fleshed out and then made succinct in Chapter 8 (4,300 words and doing twice the work—this was a good edit!). Chapter 11 was therefore no longer needed at all. Queue a 3,500-word dump into the “sad zone.” (More on the sad zone—a term adapted from my friend Em—another week.) This realization was repeated with Chapters 9 and 13: another 4k into the sad zone.
Obviously I had the ideas of my (unwieldy, sprawling, repetitious) outline in my head as I went back and started filling in earlier blanks in the plot and just transposed them. This is first drafting, yes? Second drafting is molding a real hash back into a potato.
I’m pleased with the result. I hope this version of the novel will be much more effective. But revising the outline and taking out 15,813 words(!) on this project so far(!) this month(!) doesn’t feel at all creative.
(Sidebar—I paused here to check how much of this project I have written and then discarded since I started this project in March. I’ve discarded 28k, compared with its 42k current draft. That’s a total of 70k put down on this project. More than half of that has been discarded in the last few weeks. It makes sense that it doesn’t feel like progress. Yesterday I sat down with this project for three hours and wound up with a net gain of two words. TWO. But it’s a good potato, I love my potato. Proud of my potato. Art is hard.)
Compare, on the other hand, the other day when I sat down and wrote 9,000 words in one sitting.
I don’t know what happened. This is a number higher than I was capable of even at the peak of my writing fever last October. I just let myself off the hook for a minute and wrote self-indulgent tripe. I wrote a lot of it, in fact. I wrote 9,000 words of tripe.
And why not? It’s not publishable, but it was fun. It was also, to my intense relief, a one-off. The next day I went back to my regular projects and wrote a highly normal 1,181. The only reason I had that output was because I said fuck structure, fuck timers, fuck outlines, fuck editing, and did whatever the hell I wanted for a minute.
I do often forget how much I enjoy writing, how fulfilling it is to make an idea manifest. Both Novik and Acevedo understand the importance of that basic joy and fulfillment in our inner lives as writers, just as they understand the importance of putting in the work to remake your potato. You may ritualize your writing habits and finish every project you start; but you can also do things like write fanfiction even after you’re traditionally published and disrupt your routines to find the creativity that fuels you.
Knowing when to work and when to play, recognizing the difference and exercising each at the right time—this seems critical to creating the balance I seek. Any day now, I’m sure to do it. It’s in my future, I can feel it.
Maybe I’d better listen to another bunch of podcasts first to make sure I’m doing it right.