Living with your Story
Over the years of working with writers on their stories, I have occasionally been asked: can you tell whose books are going to be published? The messier answer to this question would be a complicated one to do with the integral strength of the story as well as the luck of the draw when it comes to the right agent at the right time followed by the right editor at the right time.
But in a way, what I feel is really being asked is whether I can tell which writers will succeed and which won’t. And my answer to that one is simple: the ones who write the most.
As per the old saying about how you get to Carnegie Hall (practice), there’s no getting around the fact that words need to be set down on a page, at some point, and the only way to write a novel (or anything) is line by line. Which means the writers whom I get a hunch about are simply the ones I see doing the work, persisting, putting in the practice.
But what I wanted to say in this Tip today was that the most important part of this work ethic is a walk, not a sprint. Especially when it comes to long fiction. The most common mistake I see getting in a writer’s way and eventually killing their self-confidence is the idea that they are going to write their novel in ten-hour feverish blitzes every other weekend. That’s a romantic idea, but I’ve hardly ever heard of it being successful. And the writer usually ends up feeling they just aren’t a good enough writer - they don’t have it in them - when what they are really saying is ‘how crap I am that I can’t play the violin really well now that I’ve thrown a few long Saturdays at the problem’.
Have a look at the writing habits of most well-loved authors. Steinbeck, when he set out to write The Grapes of Wrath, because he knew it was going to be a longer book than his previous novels, set himself a daily writing target of 2000 words. Some days he managed 850, sometimes 2200, but he kept going. Stephen King mentions the same word count of 2000 a day as his process. Graham Greene, who wrote 25 novels and several short story collections, famously wrote 500 words each day - stopping at exactly that, even mid-sentence - and then read it over last thing at night so his subconscious could sleep on it.
The point of this is not a particular word count you need to sign up to – and more will prove you are better writer. No, no, no! The real point is the every day part.
Time and time again I have seen writers I work with really start to flourish when they find a way to write their story every day. This can be for as little as half an hour, or an hour, or three hours (which it starting to get hard for most people who don’t earn their living as a writer). But whatever amount of time the regularity of their habit soon begins to have an effect. The word count steadily rises, which feels like a mini-achievement in itself, but even more than that the story starts to live in them, to embed in their consciousness, so it is always with them. This means when they sit down for their allotted amount of time each day, there is no part of that time wasted getting back to the story, remembering what they were doing, who these people are, what happened in the last scene, why they even wanted to write this story in the first place. They know, because they have been living with the story. Every day. For a little while.
Your story will thank you for it.
Think of it like a friendship. The people we are closest to are usually the people we live with, because we see them every day. And even our loved ones who are far away, that closeness exists because at some point we had that regularity of contact. How would we know and love them so deeply otherwise?
So remember:
Set yourself a manageable word count - doesn’t matter how small, as long as you stick to it.
Sit down with your story every day.
Dream about it in between.
And believe me, this daily practice is what – more than anything, more than talent, more than inspiration, more than any writing class or group or workshop – will get the job done.