The start of the school term looms next week and even if you don’t have kids, or yours have long since flown to their own twigs and shiny things, September feels like the beginning of a new year for us all. At any age, there’s not much better than a new pen or a fresh pack of socks for the autumn ahead. A mere whiff of stiff shoe leather sends me into Proustian memories of my childhood. (On the subject of which, what happened to Scratch-n-Sniff stickers and could someone bring them back, please?)
Whatever fills your pencil case, the end of the summer holidays means getting back into work mode. At the beginning of July, I met with my agent to get notes on the first draft of the novel I’m currently working on. Over the last six weeks or so, I’ve done a lot of reading and thinking around the edits that need to be done. But it’s only in the last ten days that I’ve been grinding my writing gears to get back into the flow of the prose so that I’m ready to hit the ground running when my son starts back at school next week. It’s hard. My general rule, when I’m writing a novel, is not to be away from the writing for more than two days. If I take three days off, it will take me a week to get properly back into it. More than a month away is challenging, although it brings its own benefits too. It has given me a distance from the plot and characters which allows me to observe them more objectively and judge what needs to be done to fix or enhance certain aspects.
Inevitably, whether you’ve taken off three days or a month, life will sometimes get in the way of your project and you’ll need to get your head back into the right frame of mind. Here are the things I do.
1. Discipline
Wha-? Artists are free-flowing people, right? No rules or conventions, they go where the muse takes them and eat hummus right out of the pot!
WRONG.
The muse shows up when you show up to work, and not at any other time. First and foremost, the week before you start, set out your intentions with a schedule. Diarise the time you will put aside for your WiP (work in progress), whether that’s an hour or six hours a day. Make it regular – every day, with maybe the weekends off. (More if you like – Stephen King writes on Christmas Day. Someone with a wife to cook the turkey can do that.) But don’t allow more than two days away.
Protect that time, whatever anyone else thinks of your project. Don’t break off to make a telephone call or meet a friend for coffee. Granted, it’s easier for me because I’ve published several novels now, so people understand it’s my job. Although I still get people asking me how I find the time, which is hilarious. I find the time as much as anyone does: it’s a Monday to Friday desk job. I don’t find the time, I make the time because I have to pay my bills.
I learned from the best. Ernest Hemingway, for all his huntin’, shootin’, drinkin’ ways, arose at dawn every day and wrote for five or six hours. Anthony Trollope wrote for three hours every morning from 5-8am, and then went to work. Haruki Murakami gets up at 4am and writes for five to six hours.
I’m not an early riser – I get up at 7am, and walk the dog or go to the gym, get some errands done, then get to my desk around 9.30-10am. I write through the day, with a half-hour lunch alone, until around 5pm. I’m not always writing – there’s thinking, there’s faffing, there’s research and so on but those are my working hours Monday to Friday. When I’m on deadline, I’ll work weekends, too but generally just three or four hours.
Even if you are not (yet) making a living from your own particular creative project, only by engaging in it regularly and for at least an hour at a time, will you make progress with it.
And, for what it’s worth, I think these ideas can be applied to anybody. An entrepreneur, lawyer or beautician needs discipline, inspiration and time away from their mobile phones in order to focus on their work, as much as a sculptor or gardener.
2. Indulge in inspiration
When I’m away from my WiP, I read for inspiration. That might be research, or novels of a similar genre (whether good or bad). I’ll re-read old favourites, and try to analyse what works so well. In my lunch breaks I try to read, rather than check emails and social media (easier said than done). I choose my telly watching carefully – things with plots and stories that might help me work out what kind of points could improve my own. (Note: I’m not talking plagiarism here! It’s more about observing the pacing of a story line, or at what point, say, in a crime the red herrings are planted.) If I’m painting, I’ll drop into an exhibition and get up close to a painting or two – what are the brushstrokes? The colours? Expressions on the faces, or shadows on the still life? A poet should read a lot of poetry, a playwright should read plays and go to the theatre, a cat costume maker should get a life. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)
Scrolling Instagram pictures, by the way, do not count.
3. Throw your phone out
Well, OK, not completely. At least remove it from the room. And if you really, really, really need it at your side, then set it to Airplane Mode and only allow the one person you need to hear from to alert you. No checking Instagram (the One Sec app is great for helping with this, as well as setting a daily time limit). No using it ‘to check something’ because that will send you down a rabbit hole. Absolutely no checking emails or WhatsApp (or Threads or whatever). There are times for phones but this is not one of them.
4. Quieten the conscious mind
This is the bit I find the hardest. I think of our minds as a ticker tape of breaking news constantly running through, trying to alert us to dry cleaning that needs picking up, the lawnmower blade that needs ordering, the shopping list, the friend that you meant to call and so on and on and on. I’ve tried doing ticking things off my To Do list first so that they don’t encroach on my mind later but often that means by lunchtime I’m still working through them. This is what works for me:
A. A detailed weekly planner. You can buy these and I love the huge A3 ones: I have this one. On a Friday, last thing, I’ll write out the following week’s plan and it has to have everything on it: the gym, the school run, the telephone calls, the meetings and the times given to my writing. It means I can see the schedule and know that I don’t need to think about something in advance because I’ll get to it when it’s Thursday at ten o’clock.
B. I have a dedicated lap top for my writing, separate to my main computer for admin work. This means I can work anywhere (my husband and I share an office – a shed in the garden – and when his Zoom calls are loud, I go into the house), but crucially it has no email or linked message notifications, no social media passwords stored so I can’t get into any of those things.
C. Use the Focus setting: Word has this (in the View tab), as does Scrivener (my preferred software for novels). It clears the screen, and I find it amazingly effective.
What doesn’t work for me but does for lots of others is putting music on. I’ll do it sometimes, I have a playlist of familiar music, mostly classical (no lyrics to sing along to) and it can help to quieten stuff down and let you get on with the thinking. Stephen King likes to put on very loud rock music. What you’re trying to do, I think, is be semi-meditative, allowing your brain to access the deeper thoughts where your creative ideas lie.
5. Let the subconscious get to work
There are times you need to step away from the desk or worktop. I’m bad at this. My work ethic, from my journalism and non-fiction book days, kept me at my desk. In the early days I was chained because my boss could see me from her office, so there was no stepping away without just cause. And then at home, as a freelancer and non-fiction writer, I kept the habit up because time at the desk meant words on the page. But fiction is different. Sometimes sitting there and trying to force the answer to your particular problem – what would this character do next? – is the worst thing you can do. Now I try to go and do something that distracts but does not fill my mind with another thought. Something mundane that requires you to concentrate on your actions but that also allows your mind to wander: putting the washing on, driving, a supermarket shop, taking a shower, playing solitaire, walking the dogs, taking a gym class (online, so you’re not going too far away). Try to limit it – fifteen minutes is usually enough, an hour is the most you should need. This allows the subconscious time to expand and breathe and come up with the answer. With luck, it’ll pop into your mind in that hour. But if not, don’t sweat it –go back to your project, and if need be, carry on with some other element of it, knowing your subconscious is working on the problem for you. The answer will pop up soon.
Get yourself ready for the start so that you can feel good from the first day. Me? I’m off to buy a new pencil case.
I really enjoyed reading this, and it has been very helpful so thank you. I have minored in discipline and majored in procrastination for so many years, so I am hoping your advice and methodology will come in very handy for future writing.
I got a lot out of this post and since I have a fascination about creativity, I have read other artists' advice on it. Amazingly, it is universal in terms of having the discipline to show up consistently. Now to turn the phone off and get to it!