The Power of Habit

We moved house recently, not a totally unknown occurrence for us as we have nomadic tendencies, but we’d lived in the house for almost six years, which is pretty much a record for us.

The new place is only about 5 km and a couple of bays further up the coast, so I know the general area, and still use most of the same facilities, shopping etc. Because of this, there have been one or two occasions when I’ve got into the car and switched into autopilot mode, only to find myself taking a route back to the old house. Habits are powerful things!

Autopilot mode is useful and we use it in most aspects of our life. When we first learn to do something, like driving, we have to go through each individual movement, possibly even muttering instructions to ourselves as we do. However, once we’ve learned the sequence of movements and practiced them, dozens or possibly hundreds of times, the knowledge moves into a different area of our brain, and we don't think through each individual component or movement.

Habits of themselves aren’t good or bad, they are a part of our learning and development. When you get dressed tomorrow, look at what foot you put into your pants or socks first, and then the following day use the opposite foot first. It’s hard to break the habit because it’s something we do without thinking, but if we had to think through every movement or task we do, we’d be overwhelmed.

The writing work ethic is an interesting one. Some writers wait for the muse to attack, while others write every day.

My day job is non-fiction writing, and if I’ve learned anything it’s that waiting for the muse to attack doesn’t work. It may seem like a very ‘writerly’ thing to say, but in practise it means we’re not going to finish. The only way to finish a book is to write.

It’s certainly not the easiest thing in the world, especially when the sun is shining, but the bottom line is: writers write.

I speak from the experience of both sides. I’ve had periods when I’ve made myself sit down every day and write, and periods that, for various reasons, I haven’t been able to, or not felt like writing.
 
What I do know, is that when you sit down to write on a regular basis, magic happens. 

Now to practice the art of habit and follow the advice of Mary Heaton Vorse.
‘The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.’

Spring

 

The clocks went forward this weekend for Daylight Savings, and while it has officially been spring for a few weeks it does feel like it now. Right on cue the weather put on a stunning weekend, and the local beach and ice cream shops have been busy. 

In Auckland we enjoy a temperate climate, and so the variation between the seasons isn’t so great. Most of the trees are green all year, and some plants that only flower in summer in colder climates manage to bloom for most of the year, but it is still good to see the spring flowers making their entrance.

I recall walking through a short stretch of woods to school and enjoying the bluebells that gave the wood its name. In Cyprus there would be a short rainy season at the beginning of the year, and what was usually dry desert-like expanses would turn into fields of glorious yellow flowers overnight. In Wales, daffodils are a national emblem and during Spring they bloom in every available space. It is a glorious time of year.

I’ve been busy plotting and writing, and enjoying feeling of progress, even if it isn’t especially noticeable in word count (an amount of murdering my darlings has been taking place). 

A friend and I were discussing the impetus of deadlines the other day, most especially those created for no other reason than a date. As we celebrate Christmas during the summer, the schools are closed for the long summer break and families take additional leave from work.  With so many people away that means work projects don’t really take-off until February, and then speed up through the year. November and early December are usually frantic, and so by the time Christmas comes everyone is glad to have some time off. It is understandable as people want to finish projects before the summer break, and start something new when they return. 

Even though the New Year is just a date, it is also quite an impetus for finishing things off and starting something new. In that light I’d like to think my current WIP would be finished by that time – whether it’s manageable I’m not sure, but I’m working on it.

 

Losing Your Way

How long to write a book - A couple of months ago I had a look through my word count stats for Driftwood and Lives Interrupted, and thought back to when I wrote them. What made the difference between the parts that hung around for ages, and the parts that flowed?

A plan and some goals, not to mention a deadline. However, I'm sure the deadline wouldn't have been met without the plan and goals.

I looked at my stats because I've had a partially written first draft of another novel hanging around for a couple of years. To be honest I'd lost my way. I knew the destination, but not how to get there, and I thought the idea was good to keep going rather than file away. 

I had a limited amount of time to work on it before a new work project started, and I was determined to finish this first draft.

So a plan and some goals were needed.

My first problem was the block of what happens in the second half. My daughter read what I had so far and then we brainstormed. She came up with ideas that were way more leftfield than I'd come up with. Things that didn't work for what I knew of the characters, BUT the important thing with brainstorming is not to reject ideas without looking closely at them. I reined in some of those ideas, just a little, and in taking them in different directions I had my breakthrough. Still not a complete journey, but I was on my way.

Step two of the plan involved outlining those ideas, and moving around what I already had to slot in the new scenes, and in doing that more ideas came. Phew!

The next part was familiar - a mixture of new writing, rewriting, and the delete key on parts that just didn't stack up or pull their weight.

I now have a draft and a plot that runs through from A-Z. A skeleton with meat on some of the bones.

When I find myself procrastinating over things it's usually because I don't have a plan and goals. I also find a deadline helps as well, even if it has to be self-imposed sometimes.

Writing is, and should be, a pleasure. Something I enjoy and look forward to. However, it becomes something entirely different when I don't see progress. If that's how you feel about it, then look at what your goal is and set some realistic stepping stones to reaching it. And this isn't just for writing either, it works for anything you want to achieve.

I think how I feel when I've been putting off a job I dislike and how it hangs over me, and then how good I feel once I've completed the it. 

Small Tasks

I think almost everyone I meet talks about the difficulty of finding enough time in their lives.

Writing the novel, short story, article etc. seem just a small part of it sometimes.

Twitter, blogs, emails or marketing all eat into precious writing time, however, looking on the positive side most are activities that involve us practising our craft.  Though I do agree that if we spend all our time on the latter activities we'll never complete the former.  That's why I find it important to try and plan my time, though I'm certainly no master at this.

While I haven't formally set myself any goals (for so far at least!) I had a basic plan to spend the first two weeks of January finishing a few tasks that have been sitting on the To Do list for a while.

The biggest one of those was to revamp my website.  The pages are now uploaded, and you've probably noticed I changed the look of the blog as well.  On the website I've used some photos from my travels around New Zealand for each of the pages.  In Lives Interrupted I've mentioned pohutukawa trees several times.  They are out in full bloom here at the moment, and there is a photo at the top of the Novels page.

I've written a short article I've been thinking about for a few weeks and sent that off, and I'm now editing some short stories.  The stories have all been around for a number of years, and several have been published in literary magazines here in New Zealand, so I'm hoping to have those finished early next week.

I don't work well with physical clutter around me, and the same goes for mental clutter of jobs not finished, so I'm hoping that completing these tasks will help me get ready for the big job on my list.

I'm keen to get onto planning (or maybe that should be re-planning) the novel I partially wrote last year.  I've decided to work in a slightly different way for this book and I'm eager to see if it makes me more productive.  I'll let you know how it goes as I get into it.

Happy writing.

Unfinished Projects

On Friday I started off talking about multi-tasking, and ended up on the subject of finishing projects.  There is certainly no point in putting away the laptop and notebooks after sending a manuscript out to publishers and agents.  If you want to make a career from writing you need to produce more than one book or article.  But there are other times when it might be a good idea to turn to another project for a while.

I found it hard (read impossible) earlier this year to get back into the edits I needed to make in Lives Interrupted.  I would open the manuscript; open the edit file containing my notes on what I had completed, and what was still left to do.  I would read a few lines and feel this unbearable weight press down on me.  It was as though I was preparing to climb a mountain.  I'd close the files and walk away from my laptop.

It wasn't that I didn't want to write, but more that it seemed insignificant compared to what was happening at the time.

Ultimately, in an effort just to write, I put the editing aside and started working on a short story to submit for a competition.

It took a while but it worked, and I came out the other side with a renewed enthusiasm to get back to my novel.  Sometimes we do need to put a project aside and work on something else - just not too often I guess, or we end up with a hard drive of unfinished writing.