Something tickles your muse so you sit and begin writing.
Sometime later you decide you’ve finished. Enough is enough and you have other
things needing doing. Or your muse has run out of steam and is limping across
the finish line. Or you’ve reached your word count goal for the day. Or your
hourly count. Or you get frustrated and give up.
But how do you
know when you’re REALLY done?
For me I usually
write anywhere from 2 to 8 hours
daily. I sit before my trusty laptop, start banging out words and everything is
going great. Hours later the pauses between writing grow longer and longer.
Then once I realize I’ve been going back through what I’ve already written and
am attempting to find superior words for the past half hour or so I know I’m
done writing for the day because: write first, edit last. Time to recharge my
muse because it’s drifting off into the oblivion of slumber, exhausted. So I go
about the rest of my day with the later plan of reading a good book for a few
hours and maybe getting in some weight lifting depending on the specific day of
the week after my “real job” because that’s what recharges my muse for the
following session.
For others they
have a specific word count goal for the day and once they reach it they stop
regardless if they can continue writing. 1,000 words achieved? 2,500? 3,729?
Done and done. Time to mow the yard or wash the dishes or beat the kids.
Others still
have a specific set number of hours they write each day, and once the ticker
hits whatever o’ clock they click save then close their laptop and go about
their daily routine until tomorrow comes along with a new day of writing.
Then there are
those whom have no specific goal at all. You know who you are. They may sit for
hours toiling over 3 little paragraphs while attempting to make every word a
perfect fit like pieces to an elaborate puzzle. Or they write 10 pages only to
realize 9 of those pages are uninteresting or illogical or unrelated bunk and
needs be deleted. Sometimes they have no plan of how their story will go and so
sit in wonderment trying to figure out where their protagonist should go next
or wait for that perfect line of dialogue while they chew on a pen for 2 hours
straight and stare out the window. Though sometimes the words flow onto the
page so fast their fingers can barely keep up. While other times they grunt and
frown because everything they type is crap and their usual musing flow has
slowed to a disappointing trickle.
Which brings me
back to weight lifting.
Lifting weights
has afforded me several things over the years (strength and muscle and better
health included) and those things have carried over into my writing. Though I’m
not a competitive bodybuilder or powerlifter by any means. I started lifting
weights when I was a few months shy of 20 years old, I was bitten by “the iron
bug” and have continued lifting ever since because I enjoy the struggle of
moving heavy weight and the benefits it affords me both physical and mental.
And every time I step under or grab the oly bar (olympic bar for you newbs to
weight lifting) I have a specific goal to achieve. I don’t always achieve it,
mind, but when I do my happiness blooms like spring flowers. Weight lifting is
a constant flow of success because you set smaller goals to reach over a
shorter course while slowly achieving a larger goal over the longer haul.
Want to squat
300lbs by next summer? Then you start with the puny 45lb. oly bar across your
back knowing you will try to add 5 tiny pounds to the bar each workout or every
week until you eventually reach 300lbs.
Weight lifting
is humbling. It’s just you verses the load. There’s no taskmaster lashing your
back with their motivational whip. You either move the weights or you don’t.
Period. No one else to blame but yourself and your lack of effort.
Which is why
it’s so much like writing. Because it’s just you verses the empty page. You
write a little each day over the short course while slowly working toward
writing an entire novel over the long haul.
I’m a Plotter by nature. I’ve tried
Pantsing but it wasn’t for me. How anyone can sit and try writing while having
no idea what they want to write about is something I’ve never been able to
grasp. To me that’s like getting into your car intent on driving but with no
destination in mind. I understand the appeal but not the waste of gas.
I plot my
stories out before I begin writing them so I know they make logical sense while
also containing surprising yet logical plot twists. I divide them into smaller
sections, each with a brief description that tells me where I’m going though
not specific enough as to how I should get there so I can still weave new
ventures into scenes that did not occur to me while plotting. This helps me
write every time I write. I literally cannot think of a single time I’ve ever
sat to write and produced nothing.
And it’s because
of weight lifting that I hold to this plotter’s mentality. Every workout I
strive for more reps or sets or weight than the previous workout. Progressive
Overload is the #1 key factor to getting stronger and more muscular. Everything
else is wasted effort if there’s no progressive overload. Even one more single
rep than last time is one more rep than last time. Tiny accomplishments added
up equal a big success. If I’ve plotted out 40 scenes for a novel, I know once
I’ve written all 40 scenes that I’ll have a finished first draft of an entire
novel. I may have more scenes when I’m finished, which I almost always do
because writing is a wondrous process of discovery, but in the end that first
draft is done. Next stop: editsville.
Because of this
I tend to view Pantsers as those whom go to the gym having no idea of which
exercises or what muscle groups they want to train for the day, only that they
want to exercise. And if you have any knowledge of or experience with lifting
weights (I have 20 years worth as I write this, by the by) then you know these
are the exact type of “lifters” who remain small and weak because they achieve
zero consistent progress.
These are the
skinny-fat guys (yes, “skinny-fat” is actually a lifting term, meaning your
limbs are skinny while the rest of you is fat) benching 185 or squatting 225
for “heavy singles” just like they were two or more years ago, and you know in
two or more years’ time they’ll still be struggling with the same weights while
you’re pushing up 315 for reps or rebounding out of the hole with 495 for a new
PR (PR = personal record; the “hole” is the bottom of a squat just so ya know,
and not just “the tops of your thighs breaking parallel to the floor” bottom
but the “calves touching hamstrings” bottom). These skinny-fat “lifters” also
assume glugging 3 protein shakes in one month on top of the 2 extra cheese
burgers they ate will somehow add 30lbs. of muscle to their spindly frames then
blame “overtraining” or their lack of steroid use when it doesn’t.
Monday they
exercise their chesticles, Tuesday their arms and abs. The next two days are
“rest” days because they have stupid memes to tweet out to their 7 followers
and groceries don’t buy themselves. Friday rolls around and they decide on
chest and biceps again because why not? They want to develop a frosty peak on
that massive 12 inch bicep of theirs anyhow and a wide sweep to their flat birdchest.
Saturday? Naw, I gotta mow the yard, and Sunday is my “relax and play video
games all day” day. Monday again and they decide they haven’t worked their
wheels in a month so they bang out a few half-assed squats, sinking 6 inches
“deep” if that and with excessive hunching because they overloaded the bar in
the hopes of impressing the hot girl locked in a distant stare while doing
1,000 unweighted lunges hoping to tone her saggy glutes who doesn’t even know
their name, then they slam the weight home in the power rack and call it a day.
Tuesday is a rest day because their lumbars are almost as sore as their fragile
ego from Monday’s “squats.” Wednesday and it’s time for some high-rep curls for
the girls to pump those tiny biceps, and 5lb. lateral raises to plump their
medial delts wider . . . until the pump goes away 20 minutes later and they
look like they never even hit the gym let alone broke a sweat in their
too-tight wife-beater gripping their flabby gut. Thursday was gonna be back day
but now it’s chest day because they watched a youtube video the night before of
a silverback twice their age and body weight benching 700lbs. at his local
powerlifting meet and earning cheers. What weight did I use last time? Oh, who
knows. I don’t keep track of that stuff anyhow because simple math is hard.
Friday and whew! It’s been a long week at work so they decide on an extended
weekend vacation from the gym. Besides, it’s summer out, and who wants to get
all sweaty when I can post on Facebook about the last song I listened to and
how it made me feel then sit for hours refreshing the page every 15 seconds
while wondering why nobody is liking my dumb-ass post because I forgot I’m not
the center of everyone’s universe.
See where I’m
going with this?
Inconsistency
breeds a severe lack of results.
Now, this
doesn’t mean to say that Pantsing is an inferior method of writing, because
it’s not. It’s just not my preferred method when it comes to making progress
because you can’t measure inconsistent achievements.
Go ahead and try
to find your average word count when you write 1,500 words on Monday, 200 on
Tuesday, Wednesday you cranked out 4,500 but deleted half of it because you
looked back and realized the last half had nothing to do with the main conflict
of your story, Thursday was a good day with 3,200 words down while the kids
were at school, Friday you got nothing though you did realize your
protagonist’s hair should be brown instead of black after 3 hours of
daydreaming, Saturday you managed 500 words but you had to cut it short because
you were hungry then did two loads of laundry, and Sunday you banged out a nice
1,700 words but you’re not sure if they’re a keeper because they’re about a new
character you just came up with on the fly and haven’t yet figured out how to
work them into your story.
Every Pantser I
know enjoys the excitement of discovering what they write as they write it.
Though when no words come pouring forth as they’d hoped, they grow frustrated
and blame their muse because it’s a lot easier to blame than themselves for
being undisciplined as a writer.
“I just couldn’t
write anything today because my muse wasn’t working.”
Bullshit.
What you mean is
you didn’t write anything today because you are a lazy writer.
Humble yourself
and admit the truth. You might as well do so now because nobody is going to
write your novels for you.
Nothing worth
doing is ever easy. Weights don’t lift themselves, and neither do blank pages
fill with words on their own.
Hard work and
dedication reap their own rewards. Having a set goal, however tiny, is still a
goal for you to work toward achieving. And success breeds the motivation to
continue achieving.
You make
progress by keeping track of your progress. It really is as simple as that. And
you don’t blame anyone but yourself if you fail to achieve results. Set smaller
daily goals so that when added up they equal a big success over months of
writing. Which makes that time spent toiling away all the more satisfying when
you look back and see just how far you’ve come and how much you’ve
accomplished.
Let me tell you
about my writer and lifter friend Sean. Sean doesn’t write every day, instead
he writes only when his muse strikes him. Sean also doesn’t rewrite–ever!–because
he believes editing will remove the inspirational emotion from his writing (god
help us all) because he’s an artist and when he writes he writes with passion
sparked by the flames of his fiery muse. One day Sean gets a particular interesting
character stuck in his head involved in a few interesting situations, so from
here on out he decides his stories will revolve around said character. For the
next year Sean only writes when his muse strikes him. One year later and Sean
has a random collection of stories loosely connected to his character who is
not even a protagonist because no antagonist exists.
So what does
Sean do now?
He can either
face facts and assemble all of his stores, arrange then rearrange them until
they flow into each other with a logical sense of connection, go back and
rewrite everything so the scenes weave together, and eventually he’ll have a
finished novel. Maybe. He also has to deal with several major plot holes he has
no idea how he’s going to plug because he never planned out any of his stories
beforehand. Or Sean can continue down his inconsistent path and keep writing
stories that have nothing in common other than a protagonist wandering through
random events and hope for the best.
Sean, by the
way, has never published anything. Ever. Because readers don’t want to spend
their hard-earned money on let alone their time reading a collection of random
events. Sean also buys lottery tickets with the “plan” of winning and retiring
from life and is always disappointed when his numbers don’t come up in the
Idiot Tax.
Is Sean’s lack
of progress always true? No. But even Napoleon Dynamite had a plot revolving
round a very interesting protagonist.
Sean is the type
of “lifter” who goes to the gym whenever he feels like it. He never records any
weights or sets or reps on any of his exercises because his exercise routine is
always different. He can bench press his own body weight for a few reps if he
really pushes hard, but he never gets anywhere near his goal of bench pressing
300lbs. because some chest days (which are never set in stone, god forbid) he
bench presses while others he does cable crossovers and never with the same
weight twice let alone for the same sets and reps. Sean has the appearance of
possibly working out, though he definitely isn’t what anyone would describe as
athletic. Sean has yet to understand the motto “Failing to plan is planning to
fail” despite the irony of living it.
Now let me tell
you about my other writer and lifter friend Arnold. Arnold
understands that a goal without a plan is just a wish. One day Arnold
gets some ideas about an interesting protagonist involved in several
interesting and related events. Arnold
spends a few days coming up with many more interesting and related scenes,
moving them around until his story possesses a logical sense of flow while also
having several intriguing plot twists. Arnold
then sits down every day determined to write 1,000 words no ifs, ands, or buts.
1,000 words per day is small enough to manage without interfering in his other
life activities yet large enough to produce good results so that’s his goal.
Sometimes the 1,000 word goal takes Arnold
several hours, and sometimes he’s done in half an hour. But he’s made a plan
and a commitment and so sticks to it. After 80 days Arnold
has an 80,000 word first draft of a novel. Arnold
pats himself on the back for all his hard work because his planning and
dedication has paid off.
So what does Arnold
do now?
Arnold
takes a break and rewards himself. For the next week he relaxes while his new
novel “rests.” The following week it’s back to work, because Arnold
spends the next 80 days rewriting and editing his novel-to-be. 1,000 words per
day just as before, only now the process is much easier because all those words
actually exist. 80 days later and Arnold is done. Hooray! He rewards himself
for all his hard work. Then he spends the following weekend polishing his
entire novel by crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s while omitting
needless words and double-checking spelling and grammar. Weekend over and
everything in Arnold’s new novel is
exactly how he wants it. He could keep tweaking but he knows it’s not
necessary. Now Arnold sends his
finished manuscript out to publishers. But he doesn’t play the waiting game by
sitting there biting his fingernails down to bloody nubs, no sir-ee. Instead Arnold
sits and plots out a new story just as before then begins working on his next
novel-to-be. 1,000 words a day worked out great so he bumps it up a tad to
1,200 a day because why not reach for higher than before?
Arnold
is the type of lifter who has a plan before he hits the gym. It may not be
perfect, and he adjusts it where needed, but his plan provides him goals to
strive toward. He keeps a record of his workouts to ensure he makes slow but
steady progress because progressive overload is key to training, though
sometimes he goes into the gym knowing only that it’s “back day” and decides
which specific exercises to perform while working out his back. Arnold
not only reached his goal of a 300lbs. bench press months ago but is now
closing in on 350lbs because he’s consistently added a tiny amount of weight to
the bar over a long period. Arnold
definitely looks like he lifts weights by the way his muscular physique bulges
beneath his shirt and pants. And Arnold
attracts more female attention because not only has his consistent workouts
given him an attractive physique but it’s also an instant visual indication to
others than Arnold is a
hard-working man who follows through with things.
Arnold’s
consistency has not only helped him in the gym but also carries over into other
aspects of his life. Arnold is
ambitious and sets goals then strives to accomplish them, making him a success
and a boss favorite at work. Because weights don’t lift themselves, Arnold
is confident when he lifts weights he hasn’t lifted before and humbled when he
doesn’t because he has nobody to blame but himself. Arnold
is friendly to others because he enjoys helping those weaker than him while
also knowing he is physically capable of defending himself against bodily
threats.
There is a major
difference between Sean and Arnold, and it ain’t the stink of their gym shorts.
Arnold
is a man others respect and know they can depend on because he follows through
with things. He’s a man who gives his word then does his best to stick to it.
He lives on his own and works hard to accomplish his goals. If Arnold
hit the lottery he’d bank it as savings and enjoy a comfortable rest of his
life while still working hard to achieve his writerly dreams.
Sean is a boy
pretending to be a man who shows up late if at all, and when he does you never
know what kind of mood he’s in because of his uncooperative muse. He blames
everyone else but himself, makes promises he never keeps, and is unreliable at
best. Sean is the loser who lives in his parents’ basement smoking weed and
playing video games or listening to music all day at 30-something years old,
and every so often he scribbles down a story in one of his notebooks for that
first novel he’ll eventually get around to writing. Always telling everyone
he’s gonna be a writer someday . . . always someday, though never today. If
Sean hit the lottery he’d be broke within 2 years.
I advise you to
treat your writing like an exercise program. Don’t think of it as a chore but a
habit, and make it a good one. Don’t be a Skinny-fat Sean who makes little if
any progress, looks like he’s hardly every touched a weight after several years
of “training,” and blames the weights or his uncooperative muse for all his
lifting or writing failures. Instead be an Athletic Arnold, a confident and
determined though humble individual earning constant success through proven
results because he cares enough about himself and his achievements in life to
plan ahead.