I think the first advice I ever got from a writer about writing was that I should write every day. It’s also probably the best advice. It’s certainly the most common. In any case, it’s advice that I accept.
Writing daily is good for many reasons.
First of all, it means that you’re making progress. That’s all it takes to eventually get to the end. If you write just one page—250 words—each day, then in less than a year you can write an 80,000 word novel.
Second, you’re making it a habit. I find it a habit that’s easy to keep, if I just do it. Even on the busiest days I can squeeze in a few minutes of writing. But once I decide that it’s okay to skip a day to handle some other major task or allow for some schedule conflict, I find that writing “almost” every day is a much easier habit to let go by the wayside.
Third (and this seems especially the case for writing a novel in particular), you’re inhabiting the world you’re writing about. As long as I’m writing every day, the characters remain fresh, their world remains alive, their situations remain immediate. If I wrote yesterday, I’m vastly more productive today than if there’s been an interruption.
I wrote a while back about the difference between writing every day and exercising every day, because I think they’re very different. Exercise is about stress followed by recovery. You can exercise every day, if you’re smart about making sure that each day’s exercise activities allow for recovery from the previous day’s exertions. In running, alternate long runs with short runs. In lifting, alternate upper-body with lower-body.
It may be that reason number 2 (making it a habit) is a good enough reason to create an exercise schedule that allows for daily exercise, but I don’t think it’s important for creating a successful fitness regimen. It’s perfectly possible to get fit exercising just three or four days a week.
But I think reason number 2 is the least important reason why writing every day is important. Reason number 1 (making progress) is more important. It scarcely applies to fitness. (It’s not like you’re ever going to be done with fitness the way you can be done writing a novel.) And reason number 3 (inhabiting the world of your story) doesn’t even really have an analog in fitness.
This post was prompted by the recent post by my Clarion classmate Beth Adele Long, who has started a public effort to write a novel by writing daily.
But I’d already gotten myself back to daily writing some days ago: since January 21st, I’ve worked on my novel every day. Early on there was day that I only managed to get 41 words written, but I got those words and hundreds more each day since then. All together, I’ve written almost 8000 new words since getting back to daily writing—a tenth of a novel right there.
I’d written the first quarter of a novel some months ago (writing daily most of that time) and then stalled out when I discovered that the middle of the novel was terribly dull. I’ve spent the months since then figuring out where I’d gone wrong, and I don’t think I’m going to have to throw away much of what I wrote. I’ve got most of the already-written part whipped into shape and (I think) I’m ready to jump in on the next part and write the middle of an interesting novel.
So, one question is, if I hadn’t let the fact that I was writing a dull middle of a novel stop me a few months ago, would I be ahead now? After all, I could have written 165,000 words of dull middle in that much time—and very possibly I could have figured out where I’d gone awry sooner than I ended up figuring it out.
On the other hand, in that time I finished two short stories and got them out to markets.
So, I don’t have an answer there. But I am back at work on my novel, and I’m once again writing daily.
This post was great, thanks Phil. I know how important it is to write every day–I would rather do that than anything else, yet, if I stop, it’s so hard to start again. It’s great to know that I’m not alone, and it’s great to hear that you’ve gotten back on schedual. Thanks for the reminder.
What kind of relationship have you discovered between your different kinds of writing? E.g. between blogging and writing fiction? Is it like the relationship between jogging and lifting weights, or what?
I find that different kinds of writing don’t really compete with one another, except for time. That is, I can work on my novel until my fictional brain is tired, and then find that I’m fresh as a daisy for writing a Wise Bread post. And then, if I still have time, I can write a post for my blog here. But if I’m working on a short story, that uses up my fictional brain just like working on the novel does.
Of course, competition for time is at least as fierce as competition for brain power, so I’m not sure how much difference it makes in practice.
Interesting. I’ve found that, on average, writing code deposits energy in my fictional writing bank, while certain other activities (like visual design) tend to drain it. I’m intrigued by the different kinds of energy and how they interact. Thanks for the insight.