On Writing A Lot Of Words

All the writing advice I have

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

I always hesitate to give writing advice. When I give relationship advice, almost no one can check whether my relationships are slow-burning disasters. But if I give writing advice, all you have to do to see if my writing is any good is reread the paragraph. It just offers too much scope for critique.

But whether or not my writing is any good, I have years of evidence that I sure do write a lot. So here is my advice on becoming prolific.

Have A Compulsive Writing Problem

David R. MacIver’s essay Creative Fury puts into words something I have long struggled to articulate. The funny and memorable way to put it is this passage:

Two great books on productivity that I really like are Hillary Rettig’s “7 Secrets of the Prolific” and Mason Currey’s “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work”.

The first book says the secret to productivity is having good habits and structuring your time, untangling the emotional and practical problems that lead to your blocks, and letting go of your perfectionism and grandiose goals so that you carefully and systematically produce work every day and steadily work towards achieving your goals.

The second book says that the secret to productivity is alcohol, coffee and, occasionally, meth.

But the passage that describes it in a way optimized to convey the idea to nonwriters, rather than to get a rueful chuckle out of writers and incidentally encourage an unhealthy relationship with addictive substances, is:

[Y]ou cannot read “Daily Rituals” and help but feel that many of the artists described are very unhappy people who have clearly not done any sort of therapy to their problems at all.

Rettig’s solution to writing problems is to figure out what stops you writing and fix it, but many artists don’t do that, they just bulldoze through those problems as irrelevant because writing is important.

The most important secret about prolific writing is that, by and large, prolific writers aren’t more self-disciplined or hardworking or dedicated than you are. They are exactly as likely as you to spend all day binging Netflix or browsing Reddit in their underwear. Some of them are more conscientious and have time to write because they have elite time management skills and never have to spend half an hour looking for their wallets. But a lot of them are less conscientious, because they maintain their rigorous schedule of writing and underwear-clad Reddit-browsing by neglecting everything else.

Prolific writers are best understood as having a compulsive mental health condition which happens to be generally harmless and sometimes beneficial. We can’t not write.

I think a lot of people are frustrated when they hear advice about how to get started writing. It feels like writers are missing the point on purpose just to be difficult. They talk about how to schedule writing time, as if that’s the problem and not the fact that you spend every scheduled writing session staring blankly at a blinking cursor and occasionally typing “the,” or for variety “when.” In his MasterClass, thriller writer David Baldacci explained that it’s easy to find ideas: all you have to do is pay attention to the part of you that, regardless of what you’re doing, is always plotting how to commit the perfect murder. Never does it occur to Baldacci that this might be a sickness contracted primarily by bestselling thriller writers and serial killers.

You shouldn’t feel ashamed if you happen to not have this compulsion. You didn’t choose to not be a compulsive writer. No amount of self-improvement will make you one. You should appreciate the advantages of not having a writing compulsion, such as a balanced lifestyle and friends outside your house.

And not being a compulsive writer doesn’t make you bad at writing. Most compulsive writers are at least okay, because with sufficient practice even the biggest idiot in the world improves. But some of my favorite fiction and essays were written by people who almost never write. It’s fine to write when you get the urge, and not to write otherwise.

Some people who aren’t compulsive writers want to write professionally. I don’t understand this. It’s not like professional writing is known for its high pay and reasonable working conditions. But if you’re in this situation, I can’t help you. Maybe read 7 Secrets of the Prolific?

Many people might be potential compulsive writers, but haven’t found their compulsion yet, for much the same reason that you can’t be a heroin addict if you’ve never tried opiates.

As a test, I recommend scheduling a few hours a week of writing: an hour every weekday evening, four hours in a block on Saturday afternoon, whatever suits your schedule.¹ During this time, you should write whatever’s easiest.² Journal entries are good. So are rants about whatever is currently annoying you. Very self-indulgent fanfiction. Worldbuilding notes. Put no pressure on yourself to achieve quality or to be interesting to a hypothetical audience, or to finish anything.

Within a month or two, if you have the potential to be a compulsive writer, your habit should be coming along nicely. You should notice yourself looking forward to your writing time and feeling grumpy whenever it is cut short or you have to stop. Maybe you’re looking for extra room in your schedule in which to squeeze in more writing. Maybe you feel twitchy and irritable and unhappy when you’ve gone too long without writing. Maybe you’re constantly thinking about what you’re working on. If someone has been annoyed at you for ignoring them in conversation because you got lost in thought planning what you’re going to write next, you know you’ve caught it.

Help, I’m A Compulsive Writer, But I’m Still Not Writing