Time-pressed writers – those whose creative work is compressed into short periods, need special techniques. Not for us the lovely luxury of whole days waiting to be filled with words; we’re the ones who through choice, necessity or devotion to something or someone else, have to squeeze our writing around time-gobbling commitments. There are lots of us. And we’re feisty.
My own problem is that when chunks of writing time arrive, it takes frustratingly long to get back inside the story and the characters’ heads. Hours I can’t spare can be wasted tinkering around, re-reading and generally fidgeting before I can settle. It’s unproductive, this re-entry process, so I wondered how to avoid it.
My sister is a life coach who works with writers and other creative people, so I asked her advice (I paid in dinners​) and we came up with a list. I’m experimenting and the ideas seem to work.
Give it a try, hard-pressed author-types and let me know what you think. You might be able to add some tips of your own.
1 Steal tiny gobbets of time.
Don’t accept too easily that you can only work on the book in big several-hour chunks; try using spare bits of downtime time too. Even if you can’t actually write, you can devote, say, part of your commute or unavoidable waiting time to Keeping In Touch with the Novel (an extremely important activity hereinafter referred to as KITNO). The point of KITNO is that when you do actually have time to sit down and write, you can spring to the keys with your fingers dancing, instead of having to make the long mental trek across the barren wastelands of Now Where Was I?
2 Turn off the noise.
The friendly life coach has successfully recommended to people that they turn off their car radios/put away their iPhones or whatever, on the way to work. Emptying the head of noise is a good first step to KITNO. So is exercise. Walking works, but no earphones.
3 Ask ONE question.
Set yourself a single KITNO challenge to focus on. When you finish a writing stint, don’t pack up until you have singled out a plot knot that needs to be untangled or a character begging to be knocked into shape. Make that particular issue the one you play around with in the little spare moments you have before the next bigger block of writing time. It can help to write the question on a piece of paper and display it. This forces you to whittle it down to a few words. Family members may be puzzled by a post-it saying “Pavel’s connection with Ira Marciano??” on the bathroom mirror, but they’ll get used to it – if you’re lucky, they may even come up with some useful suggestions.
4 Night Work
Some wise life coaches suggest taking a little focused question about your book, like the one above, to bed and reading it immediately before you go to sleep so that you drift off with it on the mental To Do list. The idea is that it then goes into the brain’s night processing schedule and you wake up with an answer waiting. I’ve tried this and it works, but in a hilarious subconscious-mind-having-a-laugh sort of way. Nobody says the answers will be sensible, but they might be…stimulating!
5 Harness the tech.
Gadgets might help with KITNO. One author I know emails her manuscript to her Kindle and carries it at all times. She can read it, but she can’t edit or be diverted by tinkering with details. Others use dictation apps or voice recorders to mull things over out loud. I love a gadget, but it wouldn’t work for me. I use the writing coach’s best ever advice…
6 …Storyboarding
With no time to write, it’s often oddly possible to draw. Not proper drawings, of course, I mean the scribbly kind you could never show, but which sidestep the part of the brain that slams on the creative brakes sometimes. Ten minutes doodling in my tiny storyboard Moleskine always, always helps. It easily fits in a pocket or briefcase and it has the sober look of something that might be Proper Work, so if you need to look busy in your workplace, you might get away with scribbling in it when you should be doing what they’re paying you for (I imagine).
7 ​The 5 minute rule (an extension of #1 above, useful in situations of extreme writing-time poverty)
Even when you can’t find any time at all to write in, you can still give yourself 5 minutes here and there to think about a particular character or plot line. Then, when you go back to your non-writing work, your brain will continue to ponder your writing question and when you least expect it, leaning over the frozen veg in the supermarket, or sitting in a budget control meeting, a solution will pop up. The trick then is to get the bare bones of it down (smart phones are a great way of doing this) but truthfully, the really good stuff needs little recording because it’s so good, you can’t forget it.
8 Work out your minimum writing needs and how to get them
Work out what you need to write well. It will be different for all of us. If you can only write on a clear surface, make sure you either keep your desk tidy, or have a clear surface somewhere else. You don’t want to waste 20 minutes of your precious writing time tidying your desk. (20 minutes? Who am I kidding? A couple of days would be be more like it in my case!) I use alternate surfaces. I have used an ironing board before now – it works!
If you need certain music, have it ready in a playlist; if you need a particular brand of coffee, get some in!
Set the bar low. I’d quite like a daybed overlooking the beach on a Caribbean island too, but I’ll settle for any old corner, as long as I have a working keyboard and can’t see any other paperwork or bills.
9 Don’t forget to feed the outer woman or man
Your minimum writing requirements probably extend to food. So it’s good to plan your writing-time food stocks too. At certain points in the writing process it’s very easy to scoff any food that can’t actually walk away, and the main craving seems to be for sugar and transfats. If you want to live long enough to publish a nice, fat Complete Works in several decades’ time, it’s probably better to stock the freezer with home-cooked healthy dinners and/or beg/bribe someone to cook your meals for you. Eat and drink after the writing, unless you really are Ernest Hemingway.
Once everything’s in place, you know you can just sit and write, write, write!
Oh, and 10 Remember, it’s meant to be enjoyable!
Writing is hard work, but it’s Elective Hard Work and that should be very satisfying indeed, if not actual fun. No-one is holding a gun to your head. If it’s not, in the end, rewarding, do something else!