I want to talk a little bit about writing schedules. Specifically, writing schedules that work for busy people. People who have jobs, families, outside commitments, and still are keen to take on a large project such as writing a novel. I’ve found that busy schedules can actually be helpful for my writing because it forces me to think deliberately about the time I am committing to my writing projects. If I know that for example, I have from 8:30 until 10pm to work – and that if I procrastinate through that window, I won’t get another shot until the same time the following day – that’s sometimes the only impetus I need to sit down and do the work.
Like many authors, I am a novelist with a day job. For me, that happens to be working as a naturalist guide on a small tour boat in Alaska. For six weeks at a time, I am living on the boat and working every day. That sort of commitment means that I need to be very deliberate about the hours I carve out for writing. When I’m on the boat working, I write for about half an hour every evening. When I’m off the boat, I switch to writing to a specific word count. That gives me a concrete goal to aim for every day. Writing to a word count also, conversely, gives me permission to stop writing when I hit that number. And for people taking on any large project – whether that’s a novel, exercise regimen, a diet, or starting a business – I think knowing what time not to devote to your giant important time-sucking endeavor is just as important as any other aspect of your schedule.
In 2013, my personal writing process changed considerably during my first experience with National Novel Writing Month. For those of you unfamiliar with the event, the idea is to write a 50,000 word rough draft during the month of November. Completing this pretty much requires writing every day, as well as doing little-to-no editing during the month. My first attempt at NaNoWriMo resulted in the first draft of Court of Twilight, which is being published this fall through Parvus Press. Just as importantly, NaNoWriMo also helped establish two key habits that have been enormously helpful for me in the four years since.
First, it helped teach me to write fast, which for me is synonymous with turning off my inner editor. To write 50,000 words in a month, it’s not possible to sit and agonize over the perfect word choice for each sentence, or whether I want an adverb at the end of a paragraph, or whether I need dialog tags in a particular sentence. I don’t mean to imply that these things don’t matter – they do, just not necessarily in a first draft. For me, it’s enough to try and get the general direction of the story. Everything else can wait until I already have a semblance of a story. After that’s done, I can (and should) worry about adverbs and word choice and sentence structure and everything else.
Similarly, I’ve learned to not be too concerned with revising the MS when I’m still actively in the process of writing it. Instead, I keep a list of things I want to go back and change, or issues I need to take a closer look at. Some of these changes are pretty substantial. For example, one of the major characters in Court changed gender halfway through the first draft. (No, I won’t tell you which one, though I think a careful reader would be able to guess). I never rewrote any of this character’s scenes to reflect this change until well into the second draft. It was more important to follow the momentum of the story than worry about going back and making the rough draft consistent. First drafts are not meant to be novels. They are meant to be giant inconsistent masses of possibility. I found it very helpful to embrace the notion that my goal for the first draft is exactly that – a big potential-filled mess, combined with a large list of notes about what I want to do to make it something more approaching a novel.
About Mareth Griffith
She bounces between summers along the Alaskan coast and winters in various warmer locations. She lives in Seward, Alaska, and continually tells people that the winters there aren’t as bad as people think. When she’s not writing, she works as a naturalist and wilderness guide, leading adventurous souls on epic quests to seek out glaciers, bears, and whales in the wilds of coastal Alaska. Mareth plays classical violin well and rhythm guitar badly, and her writing has previously been featured in the Redoubt Reporter, Alaska Magazine, and Pen the Kenai, an essay exhibit documenting life on Alaska’s Kenai coast.
About Court of Twilight
Set in modern Dublin, Court explores themes of family and obligation while unwinding a centuries-old mystery involving murder, magic, and the fate of an entire people that you never knew were living right under your nose. It’s a wonderful story that unfolds to gradually pull you deeper into a hidden Dublin. And it just happens to be written by one of the most interesting women I’ve ever met. Mareth is a modern day adventurer, having traveled the world and lived rough in some of this planet’s most remote wilderness. Buy from Amazon.com.
I admire your work ethic. For me, after a days work and then putting the children to bed, it is how enthusiastic I feel towards my current writing project that decides how much I do. Some evenings I find I am just too tired, which is frustrating.