J is for Just Do It

My friend Fiona is decluttering her crowded house. She's really going at it, too. The other day she spent five hours working through paper clutter. She doesn't do this every day; after all, she has a full life. But she told me she is making it a point to get rid of something every day, so that even if she can only find a few minutes, the total of clutter in the house is reduced.

So, Fiona's decluttering, and I'm writing this book. It's uphill work this time. With some books, I can pound away and easily get a few thousand words a day. The Operation Tomcat books were each written in less than a month. Okay, they are novellas, not full-length novels, but still. They are easy and fun to write. I wish I'd chosen another of them for this project!

Be that as it may, I selected for my background project a book about people in a psychiatric hospital.  Not including the huge amounts of time I have had to spend on research, it's just a more difficult book to write than, well pretty well anything I've done before. There's a lot of grief, a lot of sorrow, a lot of character growth, and it's not as funny as most of my work, either. I've noticed in recent years that a lot of what I've been producing is not quite as frivolous as my early books.

Fiona's approach of doing something every day is a good one, and one I've been trying to apply with this book. In fact, I have it externally imposed, since I've been doing a friend's writing course and this book was my practical work for the course. We were to write a minimum of 750 words every weekday, and report our week's progress in our group every Friday.

On its face, this seemed like quite an easy thing to do. 750 words is not much; it is far less than my usual daily wordcount when I'm working on a book. And yet, somehow, with this one I found myself really struggling. So for today's article I thought I'd examine some of the reasons for that, and perhaps explore how they can be countered.

1. Emotional distress. 

This looms large at the moment. A little while ago, I was accosted in the street by a maniac, as I walked home from church. You would think that in a nice, middle-class suburb, an elderly woman could walk home from church without trouble, wouldn't you? Well, evidently you'd be wrong. The maniac said he was going to come to my house, hurt my animals or perhaps kill them (the actual term used was 'fuck up'), and pour a bucket of urine over my front door. Charming! And just so I'd take him seriously, he informed me of my address, which he's found out by stalking me. Now normally I'd ignore threats, but in this case Emily and my other kids are threatened. That's a whole different ballgame. I spent the first three days almost completely incapacitated with panic attacks, unable to leave the house. I'm still afraid, and more, I'm grieving the loss of the church where I've been so happy for the last eight years.

But wait! I'm supposed to be a professional! I've been writing for years, and I am neither a novice nor an amateur. We don't just not write because we 'don't feel like it', and nor do we imagine the existence of 'writer's block', muses, inspiration or any of that claptrap. It's a job. It's a job I know how to do.  I have set working hours. There is no reason in the world why any unhappiness ought to prevent me from being productive. So strike that one. It's an excuse. Perhaps those first few days were permissible; if I'd still been working in the city I might well have taken a couple of days leave. But no more. I've dealt with the situation as best I could; certain security measures have been implemented, and I'm not going to say any more about that as this is a public blog. Also, I saw a doctor, and got some really good techniques for dealing with panic attacks. This is the way. If something is hurting your ability to work, deal with it.

2. Interruptions. 

When you're working, you need to let everything - and everyone - else wait.

This one's a biggie, and a constant problem for many writers. You do not punch a time clock, you do not get a regular salary cheque, and because of this people tend not to see your job as 'a real job'.

The solution to interruptions is simple, although often not easy. You have to use the magic word. The magic word is 'no'. No, I can't come out shopping for the day. No, I can't pick up your kids from school/be on your committee/make a cake for your event/gossip on the telephone for two hours, whatever. No. And not just to other people, either. You have to say it to yourself as well. No, I'm not going to answer the phone. The doorbell, well I do tend to answer that, but unless it's the police or a delivery, people get pretty short shrift. No salesperson ever cold calls me twice! No, I shan't just go and hang out the washing/shop for dinner/take the dog for a walk. Just as with salaried employment, these things have to be done outside working hours. I have a twenty minute break in the morning, an hour for lunch, and I knock off at three. That is plenty of time to do personal stuff.

3. Internet. 

Of course it's wonderful, and there are genuine uses for it. Research, networking with other writers, and so on. But you do not need to have it up when you are actually writing. Especially Facebook, which will give you a notification every time someone tags you, or replies to something you said, or posts in a group you belong to. This comes under the heading of that three hour gossip-fest on the phone. Close Facebook, and close your email accounts, and close twitter, instagram, and any other social media sites. And especially if you participate in any online gaming. Close that. If you're playing something like Forge of Empires, as I do, time your productions to finish on your break, or just accept the fact you won't be there to collect them. It's only a game. Don't let it destroy your work. If you have an ongoing problem with this, consider giving up the game. It's not worth looking back one day and saying, if only I hadn't played so many games I might have finished my novel.

4. Too many tasks running concurrently. Just as this can spoil your computer's performance, so it can inhibit your own. Page thrashing isn't just a feature of technology. If you're constantly switching from one thing to another, choose one and stick with it. Of course it's valid enough to have several things on the go - things are at different stages. I have at present one finished book in revisions, and a long story in rotdown. But if you're drafting multiple things at the same time, this is bad. If they are similar things, you can get tangled between two books and make errors, like mentioning a character from one book in the other. If they aren't similar, it's even worse. Part of why I found it hard to get going with this current book is that for the early part of the year I was still writing the other one, the one that is now in revisions. That's a children's fantasy novel, a very different animal from the current work. It was hard, very hard, to get my mind out of one mode and into the other. In the end I acknowledged this and took a break from the current book to finish the children's one, which is my major project for this year, and was also close to completion. After I finished the draft, I went on with this book, and then I found it went much better. This is why in general I do not ever work on drafting more than one thing at a time.

Even with two unrelated tasks like drafting and revisions, you don't want to be havering back and forth. Different kinds of work require different mindsets. Segregate them. Perhaps you'll write in the morning and do revisions in the afternoon, as Stephen King does. Perhaps you'll write until you reach your daily target (time or wordcount, or a chapter, or whatever) and then work on your revisions. Ideally, the way you structure your day will take advantage of your knowledge of your own body's energy peaks and troughs. Also, having a set plan or method for dividing your time helps you to avoid spinning your wheels. You don't want to be in the position of sitting there scratching your head trying to decide what to work on. While you were doing that you could have written something.

So those are the Big Three, the unholy trinity of the enemies of productivity. And there is one more thing I need to say. Once you've said no to all the crap, dealt as well as you can with any issues like illness or maniacs threatening your family, and examined your workload for sensible composition, one thing remains. JUST DO IT.