How Good Writers Work
Many people who want to be writers don’t actually like to write. That’s okay, and pretty normal.
I have met only two writers who actually like to write. They will be on vacation, say, and realize that they miss writing, so will just sit down and bang something out. They look at writing the same way that you or I might look at a nice croissant. The things in life that block them from writing are annoying.
It’s exciting to be given an assignment by an editor. But almost immediately the dread can set in. How will I get this done? Where should I start? Who should I talk to? What kind of structure should the piece be? Can I even do it? The assignment can lodge in your mind like a sinus infection.
Nowhere is this dynamic more true than with writing a book. Sometimes a writer will sell a proposal and get a big advance. That’s often the best day for the book. Because now the proposed manuscript shadows your every decision, your every weekend, your every free moment. You will need some structure. And unless you are one of those preternaturally structured people, you should find someone who has finished a book and ask for advice.
It’s silly to say but writing requires discipline and confidence, and also the opposite: a sense of when the moment is ripe and a certain detachment from what’s happening on the screen. You are taking chance, an essay. You are not chipping words into granite.
As you gain more experience as a writer, pay attention to your writerly metabolism. I have seen writers change their pace and their levels of anxiety but only rarely. This question of “pace” came up a lot when magazines were expanding their websites. Some writers turned out to be quite good at riffing—at getting into the arena with the news and the culture. But I saw a lot of burnout and a lot of reversion to the pace that a writer felt comfortable with.
The best writers (“best” in the sense of getting original words on the page with regularity) have a strong sense of their own metabolism and guard it. They are not necessarily “slow” or “fast” but effective. I remember talking over a proposed assignment with a writer. There were several ways to do it: a profile, a piece of cultural criticism, or a rapid-fire blog post. For each variation, the writer stated the number of “sessions” that it would take to finish it. Precise numbers.
So find the session that works for you. The rhythm.
"Lodge in your mind like a sinus infection" conveys it so well.
So much of writing is also about observing your process, as it is about the world and yourself. At first going meta felt like a limiting requirement of a job, where you have to know your process to be able to plan a project, guide a team, negotiate, optimize, etc. All this "extra workload" around writing.
Now I can see how it is freeing - you know what part of the process comes naturally, what part needs work - it aids your learning. It is nice to able to teach yourself as opposed to only writing and feeling lost when the tap stops running.
I like the idea of a "writerly metabolism." I started writing seriously two years ago and back then, I was obsessed with sticking to a weekly publishing schedule. I needed the constraint. But two years later, I'm more relaxed. I'll work on a piece till I think it's ready to publish. I'm not necessarily writing any more words or working any faster than I was back then, but I'm spending longer with ideas.
Another change I've experienced recently, which might also come under the notion of "metabolism," is using a range of writing forms to buy back time and energy. For eg, if I've just spent 3 weeks on a heavy-lift essay, I might choose to write a listicle next—something that is quick and requires less mental work, but is no less enjoyable. Maybe a writer's metabolism includes these formal ingredients as well.
What do ya'll think?