5 Things I Learned Writing My Latest Rough Draft

I’ve noticed a weird thing about acting. If I’m a bit nervous before I go onstage, then when I get out there, I’m calm and fine. I’ve prepared for not being able to predict exactly what’s going to happen, and I’ve accepted that each performance has surprise moments.

However, if I find myself strutting around thinking, “Psssh, I can do this. I’ve done it a billion times before. I’ll be fine” — that’s a danger sign.

It’s not that it’s not true: I can do my part, and I have done it before, and I will be fine. It’s that I haven’t prepared myself for the fact that each time I step out on stage is a learning experience, because every show is different. If I’m not open to learning, I’m perpetually scrambling to keep up rather than calm with in-the-moment acceptance.

Writing is kind of the same.

I write way more often than I act. I’ve written over a dozen novel-length manuscripts since I first started finishing things, and many more short stories, plays, essays, etc. Sometimes, this leads me to figure I know everything about myself and my writing process. I forget that there are always new things to find out. For example:

1. It is still really easy to burn myself out.

I thought I had it all figured: slow but steady work each day. Write more when I feel like more. Don’t set hard deadlines above personal mental health. Put limits on my teaching-work and housework time to give myself space for writing.

But even taking all this into account, I managed to sizzle and fry my energy until now, close to when I intended to start revision on the manuscript I completed in May, I find there’s a part inside me that cringes at the thought. Even though I love these characters and this plot and really want to put it all together to finally share with friends and critique partners and my agent.

Why? Because I wasn’t careful to limit my writing-work time too, even though I know better, know that just because I enjoy work doesn’t mean it’s easy or fun.

Instead, once school semester ended, I pushed myself to write past 1000 words a day, not letting myself relax, ever. Did I say 1000? It would be easy to write 2000. 2000? How can I let myself sit here chilling with the Wii U when I could break 3000?

Unless I set an upper limit as well as a lower limit, my nagging inner voice will torture myself all day: you could write some more today, I bet. A real writer would.

It’s like guilty fitness voice. No matter how many times I tell myself it’s more important to assess whether going to the gym today will actually make me feel good, physically and mentally, instead of stressed or sore, the self-talk is hard to stem. You could go to the gym now. Do you want to? Is it okay not to? It is okay. No, it’s not. Yes, it is. Etc. Even on days when, in the morning, I’m pretty sure I can’t or won’t go, I worry at myself the rest of the day wondering if maybe I could squeeze it in.

I need to work on ways to shut that voice up so I can indulge in mental regeneration time that’s actually refreshing instead of an additional stress.

2. I can write a lot more per day than I thought I could.

On the positive side, it turns out that writing 500 words a day — so long as I’m content with them just getting the job done, for now, until I finally figure out what the job actually should be and how to do it best in revision — is only about 30 minutes’ work for me. I thought it would take me way longer.

(But, of course, conflating the time it takes to actually do with the energy and effort it takes to get done is what tripped me up with #1 up there…)

3. Writing first thing in the morning is great. But that doesn’t mean I need to write every day.

Writing first thing in the morning starts my day off right. It improves my energy and mood and takes away a stressor.

However, I need to schedule myself at least one day off a week, a day that I can choose to take or not. Breaks are important for not getting burned out.

And having one day of break doesn’t make me “not a real writer.” I have to let go of the stories of “real” writers who must make time before their kids get up at 5am every morning or sneak their notebooks into fifteen-minute breaks between their first job and their second.

I am really lucky to have a very flexible schedule with plenty of time to write. I do feel grateful for it and don’t take it for granted. But that doesn’t mean it’s my ethical duty to write all the time whenever I can just because some people can’t. That would be like spending all my money because there are people who can’t afford to buy things or eating every piece of food I see because there are people who are hungry.

I am not valuing the time I do have if I allow myself to waste it by writing on low batteries. Time to recharge is okay too.

4. My first instinct is dialogue, and it’s almost always wrong.

Like I wrote about before, I learned while writing this draft that my knee-jerk reaction to making something happen is to have my characters sit around and talk about it to each other or themselves.

Also like I wrote about before, that is almost never the most effective way to tell my story.

5. Writing characters who don’t feel OK can make me not OK.

This one surprised me most of all. I tend to write in first-person. My characters are usually going through a variety of unpleasant situations and the unpleasant feelings that go with them — that’s how stories work. But their feelings don’t tend to infect me, certainly not in the first drafts.

I don’t worry for my own life when my character is tied up in a room about to fill with poison gas. I don’t jump out of my own skin when a sudden noise startles them.

Which is why I thought I’d be totally fine writing from the perspective of a narrator going through intense grief. Why not? It’s not like it’s me these terrible things are happening to. All I have to do is imagine what it’s like for her, write that down, and then step away.

Ha ha ha.

At first, I was puzzled to find myself on the verge of tears by mid-afternoon on days that had started out feeling great. Everything was going right for me! I got some writing done I was really happy with, I was eating right and exercising, it was sunny but not too hot — things were looking up! So what was the problem?

It was also totally helpful that I was burnt out, since this character crisis came approaching the climax of the story, and I’d already been writing every day for several months.

Luckily, it didn’t take me too long to figure out that I was having trouble shutting off my character’s emotions and that I needed to take extra care of myself. Even though I wasn’t the one feeling these things, they were strong enough and close enough to emotions I had felt sometimes that it was important to be gentle with them.