Back to getting foxy with books. I’m digging this guest blogging business!
So I’ve had the pleasure of attending a couple of swanky book parties the previous two evenings. Last night was one for Seth Greenland, whose new critically acclaimed and hysterically funny book SHINING CITY launches today. Seth will be our BookFox guest for an informal conversation about short stories and then some tomorrow. Upon entering the house, I ran into the lovely Katie O’Laughlin, owner of Village Books. She was selling Seth’s book. I’d seen her earlier this summer at another private house party for Honor Moore’s stunning memoir THE BISHOP’S DAUGHTER. I thought you would all be interested to know she finds that people are more apt to buy the book at a private book party at someone’s house than at a reading. I thought that was fascinating, and a helluva tip if you’re trying to move books. I also had a chance to meet Josh Emmons, who was out here briefly for a reading at BookSoup for his new book PRESCRIPTION FOR A SUPERIOR EXISTENCE. Josh was charming, and I wasn’t suprised when he said he grew up in Humboldt. Since I live in Topanga, I know about the psychological and physical pipeline that runs between these two places, in part fueled by a love of marijuana and anti-authoritarianism. Josh Miller (author of THE MAO GAME) and Reza Aslan (author of NO GOD BUT GOD: THE ORIGINS, EVOLUTION AND FUTURE OF ISLAM), threw him a party at a fabulous house. Turns out the house belonged to Amy Heckerling (director of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”). Talk about a cool vibe. However, no books were for sale there.
So that’s the recent book party round-up.
For my posting today, I wanted to share about time management in terms of writing. I imagine this will be just as helpful to those crafting short stories as books. Last year around this time, I was panicked that I couldn’t crank out the first draft of LOVE JUNKIE in time for the publisher. In a lucid moment, I composed an e-mail cry for help.
This is what I said on July 20, 2007:
“Dear magnificent fellow writers and fabulous friends,
As most of you know, I’m under this crazy deadline to bang out a memoir with difficult and psychologically taxing material in a matter of a few months. Something that’s come up for me is time management. Every day is precious. Yet I still wrestle with the old demons of procrastination, vagueness around time, trouble balancing life nourishment with hard work.
Then it struck me: why not ask my friends? Writers I admire. Friends I hold dear. How do they handle it?
If you have time or inclination, I wonder if you could write back a short bit about how you concretely organize time in one day of writing. Or one week. Or month. Especially when you’re on a hairy deadline. Or how you plan over the course of weeks. How much time do you actually spend writing each day? Do you write every day? How do you break down the different aspects of writing? (Research, daydreaming, planning, actual full-on scene writing, etc.) How do you achieve balance? Or do you disappear from usual social and family life, lose hair, teeth (as Flannery O’Connor warned)? I’m curious, too, if you have rituals, ways to keep you on track, focused.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.”
The response I got was overwhelming. I’m going to give you a few edited samples so you can see the range of methods, and get a taste of how different writers can be.
Rene Steinke is a novelist and poet. She is the author of THE FIRES: A NOVEL and most recently HOLY SKIRTS, a novel based on the life of the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. HOLY SKIRTS was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award. Here is a bit of her response:
“I’m having the same issue (though my deadlines are self-imposed) and time is complicated by being a mom to a two-year-old, but here are some things that worked with my last book, when I had a publisher deadline that was really scary. I did find that I was surprised by how much I could get done when I really had to.
1) I’d assign myself tasks for every day at the beginning of the week.
2) Usually the tasks were write 5 pages, rewrite 5 pages, and take notes on what was to come. (Or more pages for each if necessary — but this is sort of my natural length.) Reread and take notes on things that need fixing, type, edit, research, etc. at end of day.
3) I did my best not to go out, not to drink much, and to make sure I exercised every day.”
And here’s Dylan Landis, whose collection of linked stories, NORMAL PEOPLE DON’T LIVE LIKE THIS, is due summer 2009 from Persea Press. An excerpt from her recently finished novel, FLOORWORK, won special mention in the 2008 Pushcart Prizes:
“I tie the forced daily writing to coffee, which is not very healthy, but forces the issue.
Once or twice a day, I go to Starbucks (because their coffee is hotter than anyone else’s, not because I support their corporate ethos) with my notebook of historical clippings and a smaller blank lined notebook in which I do my handwritten cruddy fragmented first drafts, and I use the horrible loud Starbucks music to force myself to turn inward and deeply focus and shut out the world and hand-write.
For some reason I can’t do this in my own home — maybe because it’s silent and there’s nothing to shut out. The hand-writing can be any scene, anywhere, any point in the book, though I try (not always successfully) not to stray far from where I was last because I like to get one scene finished at a time. I’m allowed to read, but at this point only from the historical notebook, and only for immediate reference and inspiration — I can’t spend the whole coffee session that way, avoiding writing. Not allowed! Gotta move the pen for half an hour, the duration of a tall half-caff. I then go home and type — either based on what I just wrote or based on stuff I wrote days or weeks earlier. (I don’t force a connection.) Ultimately the goal is to get a revised version of the notebook into the computer.
It’s all linked to coffee. My body mistakenly craves coffee when my blood sugar falls or when I’m hungry. So at least once a day, sometimes twice, this writing opportunity presents itself. I don’t allow myself to go to Starbucks and NOT work on my book.”
And finally, Francesca Lia Block, author of many books, including the award-winning DANGEROUS ANGELS. Her most recent publications are BLOOD ROSES and QUAKELAND:
“Do you have an outline? Are there parts that are easier to tackle out of order than others? Are you someone who needs pressure to motivate? (Can you change this or accept it and know that as the deadline approaches you will pick up speed?) Do you have a daily routine?
This is my intuitive take on a day for you:
Wake up — morning ritual must include food and exercise
Work for two hours until lunch
Take break, more food maybe exercise again or instead work in the afternoon (I get my best work done at this time, weirdly). If you can’t work at this time, see a friend, do something fun. If you do work then take the evening off with a meeting or dinner with a friend. If you work better at night (I don’t) then no reading or TV until you’ve worked for 1-2 hours.
This routine is for M-F but the weekends can look a little different. Maybe work all morning and play all afternoon or vice versa on weekends. Try to eat well, exercise, don’t drink much, plan your days carefully around your work schedule as if you had a “real” job. Don’t spend too much time on line. Call the Jungian Center and get an inexpensive therapist.
I would jump in wherever you can and stream of consciousness try to bang out — quantity over quality! It doesn’t matter how good it is just that you do it! Editing can come later. Now your goal is just to get out the words.
Pick a relationship or subject and just write 5-10 pages on it. Cringe, cry, scream, bang the keys but don’t get up from the fucking computer until you have at least one complete page. You can get help at every step along the way. Be strong.”
Malina Saval:
“I have an 11 month-old, a husband who hasn’t worked in 20 months, I’m writing for Us Weekly and Variety and I’m on deadline for a book due to Basic Books. I feel like I am drowning! I think the best advice I have ever gotten was actually from my lazy
ass husband who when I went to him one day and said, “I’ll never get this done,” he responded and said, “It’s not about getting it done, it’s about doing it.”
The implication was that just write a word, then another word, try try to get to the end of a sentence. Then keep going. Not focusing on the final product and just going word-by-word so helped me in terms of not getting overwhelmed by the giant task of completing a book. It really helped lessen the anxiety. Of course, a glass of wine here and there helps as well!”
Malina has a book coming out next April called THE SECRET LIVES OF BOYS. Non-fiction. It’s for presale up on Amazon….
Edie Meidav:
“Cafes. Write in cafes. No distraction. Evening: revise. Quotas of 1000 words a day.
Begin each day revising and moving forward.”
Edie is the author of CRAWL SPACE and THE FAR FIELD: A NOVEL OF CEYLON.
Renee Bergland:
“I’ve been on deadline this year, and I have a million ideas about it.
SO: what has worked?
First, what messes me up:
I think my big problems come when I get obsessed about completing the whole thing. I can get so worried about the impossibility of the whole that it is very hard to concentrate on the parts. Two observations about this: I try to stop obsessing and break it into little, doable bits. ALSO, I often realize, when I manage to start on the little parts, that my panicked obsessing was actually—THINKING–and an important part of
processing. So, as always, forgiving myself when I’m caught in an obsession spiral, believing that it is part of productivity (even if it feels more like anxiety) is part of the deal.
Next: what helps me.
GRAPH PAPER.
I make charts. Toward the beginning of my book I used four colors: one for hours of reading, one for pages of journal, one for pages of actual draft, and another for time in the chair. The side axis was numbers, one through ten, the bottom axis was days. This was quite helpful to me, because it offered me concrete proof that time spent sitting in the
chair on Monday often led to pages of draft by Friday. There were definite echoes– the reading bump on day one would be a journalling bump on day two or three and a draft bump a couple days later.
But the friends in my writing group think the charts are totally unhelpful for them–actually, that isn’t quite true– almost everyone in the group likes doing them for a few weeks. Most think it would be stupid to do them all the time.
I guess I sort of agree with that, because once I am in the swing, I simplify the graph a lot, and just graph words written per day. This is incredibly satisfying to me. Anthony Trollope said it was the only way he ever got anything done– that his small notebook recording his words per day was the secret behind his 50 three-volume novels. He was nuts– I think he wrote 2500 words every morning, before work, waking at four A.M. or something.
But he had a servant to bring him coffee.
I don’t have a coffee-bearing servant, but even so, the other thing Trollope had right was the morning thing. When the crunch is on, I decide on a daily wordcount minimum, and do not allow myself out of the bedroom until I hit it. (I get up, make coffee, and head back to lock myself up. no shower, no workout, no chores at all until I hit 1200
words. Then chores, and then anything else I do on the book is icing on the cake)
Final thing that’s really important to me–I start early and I stop early– It’s really important to me to sleep alot– like ten or twelve hours a night when I am trying to get writing done. Every night. And since writing on deadline makes me anxious, that means I have to work out in the afternoon so that I can sleep. So even when It’s going
incredibly well, I tear myself away in time to go for a run. In winter in New England, that means I need to stop for good around 3:30 or 4 pm. These days (glorious July) I can stretch it until 7…”
Renee is professor of English and Gender Cultural Studies at Simmons College. Her most recent book, MARIA MITCHELL AND THE SEXING OF SCIENCE: AN ASTRONOMER AMONG THE AMERICAN ROMANTICS was published in April 2008.
Bruce Bauman:
“Except when I’m at a colony, I can’t do more than six hours a day no matter what. Trying to do 2-3 hours in the A.M. at home. Then 2-3 hours at my office at the airport in the afternoon. Maybe look at what I’ve done later than night. Keep off e-mail and the phone. I dunno. It’s just hard, hard, hard. Is it better to have a deadline than to be writing with no one waiting for it?”
Bruce is the author of AND THE WORD WAS.
Tod Goldberg:
“For me, it boils down to not taking every job I’m offered and being realistic about my time and also understanding that my best work comes when I’m relaxed and not writing to meet the deadline. So, this is what I’ve learned:
Get up and go to bed at the same time. I know this sounds simple, but it puts me on a pretty good clock if I know I’m expected to sleep and wake at certain times.
Delineate time for writing fiction and writing nonfiction. I know, it sounds stupid, but if I know, okay, I write nonfiction stuff — journalism, reviews, even reading student work and commenting, only during daylight hours and fiction only when during daylight when I have nothing else I have to do and otherwise can write fiction from 5pm-2am, then I’m good.
Don’t give yourself easy ways to procrastinate. There’s a reason I live in the desert and not LA. But when I’m working I frequently pull out my wireless card so I can’t go online and fuck around, downloading music, blogging, whatever.
Take days off. I’m a big believer in days off. You’ll want to work after having taken days off.
Don’t drink coffee every day. I know, impossible, but I’ve found if I don’t drink coffee every day, when I do drink it, it actually has the desired narcotic effect.
Don’t take every job offered to you. I know, I know, money is important, but I swear to god, interviewing some fucking golfer for a magazine takes me ten times longer than anything else on the planet and even though someone is going to give me money for it, I have to sometimes think, okay, is it worth the stress?
Send nude pictures to me. Seriously. That shit helps.”
Tod is the author of the short story collection SIMPLIFY, and BURN NOTICE: THE FIX, LIVING DEAD GIRL and FAKE, LIAR, CHEAT.
So there you have it. From serious to silly, from sacred to profane, from coffee servants to graph paper. It seems finding a way to manage time as a writer is as varied as voice. I’d love to know your answers to the questions I posed for my friends. What gets you through the writing day? Also, I have more tips to share as writers send me their current bios and permission. You guys just have to let me know if you want me to post more on this topic. And now — on to a writing deadline I have this afternoon!
Signing off from Topanga Canyon,
Rachel Resnick
