how much do writers write?
answer: a lot more than you think
Since starting this newsletter a number of friends have said to me, ‘Where do you find the time to write so much?’
I find it odd, as it’s not a question anyone bothered to ask during the ten years I worked as a columnist and feature writer at a newspaper, or for that matter during the subsequent ten years of freelancing and writing books while raising small children. Compared to those other two jobs two or three short newsletters a week is really not a lot of writing — if you don’t believe me ask any of your writer friends. It’s not even a lot of published writing. This newsletter is, for me, still primarily a labour of love (it will always be a labour of love, I just hope that one day soon it will be one that also washes its face).
The truth is, while paid subscribers and those of you who’ve joined my little club get the best of me, all of it, the whole damn endeavour, is really just a warm up to my other, properly paid work, by which I mean: commissions and The Book (whichever one I happen to be banging my head against at that particular moment.)
The truth is, most professional writers write a lot. Averaged out over a five day week, my word counts would be significantly more than a thousand a day. This is not to say we’re consistently productive or even very good. I’ve had periods when I didn’t write much, but since packing my boys off the school these hiatuses have been fewer and farther between. I’ve never had writer’s block, mainly because it’s a luxury I personally can’t afford. Instead what often happens is that I get distracted or bored because I’m confused about the work that’s before me, so I start writing something else, then realise I’m procrastinating and return to the original work, where again I encounter the original problem, the one that made me confused in the first place, and at that point… everything just goes to shit for a while.
I’m used to it now, I recognise the feeling for what it is. If a deadline’s involved, I’ll push through it. And if not, I’ll take a breath and go on a lasagna or pickle-making jag or laze about reading and watering the plants, and that’s a privilege, a big one — and like most privileges it’s good thing to appreciate and enjoy it. (And I do.) I don’t think of these moments as blockages but as a necessary reversion to closed tasks instead of open ones (more on this idea in a future post).
What these Periods of Confusion feel like for me is what I imagine it’s like for a singer who suddenly loses her pitch or a golfer who’s game falls apart. Or that freaky thing where you’re driving and you suddenly become aware of the all the moving parts of the car and how they’re connected to your body and you panic. So yes, sometimes I choke, but I tend to just push or cook or garden my way through it. It might be different if I had other marketable skills but unfortunately I don’t. Newspapers are a great inoculation against writer’s block. The first rule you learn is that you need to hit your deadlines. The second rule, which serves the first, is that perfection is the enemy of the good.
If you’re planning to write a memoir or any kind of book, or even just a publishable short story or poem, my advice to you is to write a lot, as much as you can, ideally everyday. I know, I know, it sounds like a lot and it is a lot but in this post I’m going to share some practical advice that will help you get there.