Writing Process Part 1: Butt-in-Chair

Whenever I go to a reading event, inevitably during the question and answer session someone asks about the author’s writing process. It seems that writers interpret the ‘writing process’ as having two meanings. One is writing routine; the butt in chair work of getting words on paper.

Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, says she doesn’t have a set writing schedule. When an idea strikes her, she writes non-stop until the work is finished and then she might not write anything again for months. Lee Childs, author of the Jack Reacher series, asserts that if you want to sell a book a year, you have to write a book a year which means writing every day. Jennifer Egan, author of Manhattan Beach, says she writes almost every day.

One of my writer friends writes for one hour every morning before work and is working on their third book-length manuscript. Because I’m most productive when I get into ‘the zone’ writing at a specified time for a proscribed length usually ends badly for me. I tried the writing for an hour every morning thing but ended up spending the day at work with my mind still in the story rather than paying attention to what I was being paid to do. I tried writing for a set time every night and ended up lying awake half the night with a bit of dialogue or plot point bouncing around in my head. I have found that if I’m struggling to get into the zone, using the Pomodoro technique helps get me past that. Once I’m on a roll, I have to keep going.      

Other writer friends, especially those with children still at home, talk about carrying their work-in-progress with them and writing while waiting to pick their kid up from events or appointments. I used to think writing in every spare moment was the way to go. I made myself crazy trying to make it work for me. It didn’t. Once I almost missed a flight home because I was using those spare minutes waiting in the airport to write and didn’t hear the boarding call even though I was sitting right next to the gate. A gate agent, who had apparently been watching me pound away on my laptop for the hour I’d been sitting there, tapped me on the shoulder and made sure I got on the plane.

I used to use Saturday as my writing day with hours-long chunks of time I could use to write until I exhausted my mental energy. Now that I’m in semi-retirement mode with part of my retirement plan being to write more, I’m figuring out a revised writing process that lets me be more productive while still enjoying the freedom of not being bound to the nine-to-five routine.