Process: Pace and productivity
Writing books never gets easy, but the more understanding you show yourself, the easier it can get
I’m a sometimes writer, only laying down words when necessary. That means that I’m usually only writing five out of the twelve months of the year. The rest of the time I’m just ~thinking~ and living my life, and this works for me because I’m a fast drafter and a fast reviser.
I’m mentioning this because a writer’s process is their own. What works for you will be a nightmare for others. What works for others will be a nightmare for you. Some people have to work every single day; but I don’t want to work every single day, so I give in to the writing impulse when I feel motivated and I chill when I’m not. There are so many other ways to level up your craft besides actually writing (reading, giving critique, learning new things, getting inspired).
I tend to draft 1-2 books a year and revise that same number, big revisions too. That’s the pace that works for me, and it’s never a regular one. In 2021 I revised books for the first part of the year, on and off with some months having nothing written, and then drafted a whole book in August and another one for NaNo in November. They weren’t full fleshed out books, only about 50k each, but they did have full plot arcs, and I count them as books #8 and #9. Then I did nothing in December. I don’t think I opened a document once. I trust that, when it comes time, I’ll write what I have to.
That’s really the whole point of this week’s musings, how pace and productivity are individual, how mine rests on trust. I figure I’ll get the work done eventually because I can’t stop writing (I wish I could, it’s not a great thing to do, very unforgiving) so eventually, next month, or the month after that, I’ll do writing things and they’ll stack up. This philosophy is pretty evident in other aspects of my life: when I’m on I’m on, and I can complete more work in one hour than I would be able to in three hours where I’m only sort of invested. When I’m really not feeling something, I’d rather put it off until a time when I’m locked in, because I know I’ll only suffer with it for that hour instead of the three hours it would take me at any other time. I jump tasks all the time, working on whatever I can do the fastest at that given time.
It took me such a long time to figure that out. I wouldn’t have figured it out (and I am still figuring out how writing works for me instead of how I work for writing/publishing) without my outside interests, namely, architecture. So much of my work in architecture was in figuring out how to design a structure in an efficient, sustained manner. What I discovered there about swapping formats to stay motivated (moving from models to drawings, from plans to sections) I learned to apply in writing (moving from Word to PDFs, my computer to my phone, shifting from writing outlines to drafting, skipping from project to project) in a way that works for me. This was, and is, the biggest and most important task I have set for myself. What is my writing process? How can I evolve it to better fit me? How will it vary from book to book? This is a method of control over my own journey. Writing books never gets easy, but the more understanding you show yourself, the easier it can get.
I used to get upset with myself when my first drafts petered out around 50k because I couldn’t sustain my pace. Now I understand that’s just what my first drafts are, and I aim for 50k and understand I’ll need to add tens of thousands of more words in revision. Those words I add in revision are always more integrated, better constructed than what I’d produce if I forced myself to keep going and write an 80k book on the first go. I’m a big time pantser, and at the 50k mark I stop and evaluate what I have and what I need to keep going forward. This is the point at which I might outline. This is the point at which I jump formats and trust that the book will take on new forms when it has to, as I think of them, as it feels right for me.
So be…patient. Be…reflective. Listen to your mind and body and the ways they dictate what you can write and when. Sometimes it’s 2 books a year. Sometimes it’s 2 books every ten years. Your methods of making are yours, and they shape your ability to sustain yourself in this industry. They’re worth explicitly developing, reshaping, evolving.
-Kvita