The Lazy Work
I keep skipping the work that makes me feel lazy. Problem is, there’s no skipping it. If you skip it, you don’t move ahead. If you skip it, you don’t get the story done.
So why can’t I do the lazy work without feeling massively guilty and unproductive?
the research
I once researched espionage for about ten months (one six-month stint and one four-month stint) over two years, before I realized that writing a spy thriller was not going to happen anytime soon.
So now, doing even a day of research freaks me out and makes me feel like I’m wasting time. I think I’m afraid that if I do research, I won’t write the book.
But, um… I can’t nail the book until I do the research. *sigh* I’m stuck!
The Simmering
Usually I set a story on simmer in my imagination while I’m writing the story or two before. Ideas percolate, the characters get real, and scenes start to bubble up to the surface.
But when the simmering process is incomplete and you don’t have another, mindless job to make you feel useful while your imagination is simmering…
…you have to watch the watched pot that feels like it will never boil.
I mean, it doesn’t make me feel like a productive member of society when I go, “YES! Finally! I dozed off and was in my story world!” Or even worse, “I DID IT! Days of imagining my story have paid off: I’ve finally had a dream in my main character’s point of view!”
And, to steal an example Laurell K. Hamilton recently cited: “I’m ROCKING now! I just put on winter coats in ninety degree weather because it’s winter in my book!”
Tangible Progress
Counting the words you wrote for the day makes me feel like I’ve made progress. Research doesn’t feel like progress. Thinking doesn’t feel like progress.
But it has to be done.
So how do you manage it? How do you not feel guilty when your word count doesn’t go up? Is this just my problem?
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Natasha Fondren is a writer traveling the U.S. in a camper with her four cats. She is currently enjoying the lizards and desert heat in Arizona.
No, I feel exactly as you do and about those two things precisely. You lay it all out perfectly. Research feels like play. Plus, in order to find exactly what is going to be useful, which can’t be known until you’ve done some research and thinking, you need to look into a lot of things that turn out not to useful, in themselves,making it seem like even more of a time waster. But if I didn’t look into ten different matters which sparked off no ideas, I wouldn’t have got to the tenth one which ended up being used.
I also need time to ponder and if I attempt to start writing, before the ideas are ready I’m wasting my time. But it is indeed the waiting that seems like the waste.
Once I am writing then I do count my words, although with me my goal is usually to at least complete a scene every day.
I have no tricks for dealing with these matters except to keep telling myself that writing, while maybe a “job” is some sense, is a very peculiar job and doesn’t go by all the usual job rules.
Eric, exactly! Exactly, exactly.
Such a good comment, and all I have to say is Yes! Yes! That’s it exactly!
But it’s true, LOL!
This is absolutely not just you. I think it’s why I brainstorm while I’m running. Because I’m physically getting somewhere, while doing the behind-the-scenes stuff. I guess trying to balance a few things–adding word count on one project, while researching another might make you feel like you are progressing. And I think that the idea that nothing is ever wasted is a good attitude to have. That research might not have turned into a book, but I bet it influenced a character, or your writing in some other way. Nothing is ever wasted. And you have to go with your instincts. Do what feels right. And know that you are not alone.
I’m going to have to make “Nothing is ever wasted” my mantra. That’s a great way to look at things, Heather!
It sure feels like it sometimes, but there’s no way around it.
I do think you need to cut yourself a break. I combine writing and research because both spur ideas. Word counts are fine and good, if they’re purposeful words that are getting the job done. But too many word counts can act as filler for real story and real work.
I just went to the gym and listened to U2 and relaxed. But I worked, too, because I came home with my next scene firmed up in my head. (u2 lyrics are so visual, they often do this for me.) I felt, going in, that I wasn’t working. But lo and behold I had. Now I’m ready to sit and write.
I love U2, Betsy! See, maybe I’m missing the gym. Maybe I’m reading too much. I read while working out, and when I’m not reading, I’m writing. Maybe I need something to take me away from the world of imagination, so my mind has time to work new things out. I don’t know.
I had to ask a cyber friend questions before I could continue in my wip — and it drives me nuts when I had to wait for the answer. I did go ahead and write the scene, and when I got the information, I had to go back and change it. Not a big deal in the end. It’s the emotion that counts. But I do obsess over getting details right. And like you, I want to write now, not later.
So no help here. Sorry.
I hear you. Edie, sometimes I’m SO anxious to be finished YESTERDAY. I’m impatient.
I actually enjoy doing research. For a short story that I finished for my blog, I spent the better part of about three hours stretched over two days researching bible verses, The Divine Comedy and archangels. It was great, because some of the other stories that I got on the back burner have that particular religious bent to them.
As for feeling guilty when I couldn’t get my word count up, I used to. But now, its no big thing, especially since I’ve been using the tips that I picked up from everyone to actually write a book properly.
It’s been a learning curve, but now making sure that all of my various tangents to the main plot actually make sense, is more important than pumping up my word count. Like you, I have a mild form of ADD, only back in my day it was called “hyperactivity” and it was wrongly medicated with Ritalin. So the more I can make myself focus on having a readable story, the better.
Ugh, G! I never got diagnosed, because I didn’t have the hyperactive part. But I clearly remember in first and second grade, I’d come home with piles of work over Christmas break, and I’d be MONTHS behind on stupid busywork, just because I spent so much time staring out the window, LOL. There were two of us in the class that were just “different” that way.
I used to get singled out for “special treatment” in school, which is why I think certain aspects of me (like writing) are so incredibly messed up.
But we learned and persevered, which is really all you can do for yourself.
I just have to start out with a LOL here — someone whose blog is entitled “Spy Scribbler” doesn’t write espionage…? That’s kind of hilarious, seriously.
Sorry. [cough/grin]
Anyway, I know what you mean about having a hard time thinking you’re being productive if the wordcount isn’t going up. I have a file where I log words written, and for the last chunk of getting the novel ready to submit, I was just editing. Sometimes the wordcount went up, but often by less than ten words, between additions and deletions, and sometimes it went down. It’s all progress, and I know that intellectually, but I eventually just gave up on the idea of recording it anywhere. I just have to look at the file and say, “All right, I got through a chapter and a half of edits,” and let my brain beat my gut into agreeing that I am beingt productive.
I do the Simmering thing too.
I’ll get a basic idea for a story, whether it’s a plot idea or a situation or a problem for the character to have or the opening scene or whatever the story seed is this time around. Sometimes I’ll bang out the first few paragraphs and sometimes I won’t. Then I’ll let it sit, and my subconscious works on it for a while. If I’m being a Good Little Writer that week, I’ll actively work on something else while this is happening, but I’m not always good. [hides under keyboard] I don’t do this all the time, and sometimes after a few weeks or months my subconscious just shrugs and says, “I got nothin’,” so I have to either shelve the project or go to another technique. But it’s worked — to the point of sitting down one day and realizing that I know where the story’s going and how it’s going to get there and diving right into very productive writing on it — often enough that I can say it’s fairly characteristic of how I work. Except when it’s not, in which case I try something else if I like the idea enough.
I think the hardest, or at least most frustrating part, is figuring out within some reasonable amount of time which way a story is going to go. I’ve had the “Simmering” stage take quite a while, but I’ve also let it simmer for months only to find that simmering isn’t working. If I could figure out right away, or even within a week or so, whether simmering will work, that’d save me a lot of wasted time on individual stories. There are times when there’s actually a problem I need to work on, something I have to actively (with my conscious brain) work out, or change, or back up to and demolish and completely redo, and just simmering doesn’t usually help with that. I don’t know ahead of time, though, and that gets frustrating.
Angie
Yes, yes, YES, Angie! I’m SO impatient for the simmering, but there’s no rushing it!
Yeah. I started the SpyScribbler blog when I started a spy thriller. I was an avid spy thriller reader. Still am. I did loads of research. Months worth. But… no spy thriller. Maybe something of that effort will seep into my stories. I know the research on the people aspect of espionage is almost like life skills for a writer, LOL.
I feel exactly the same way! Words are tangible, but thinking…
When I was in college I worked with my dad, who is a physics professor. I sat at a drafting table in his office. As I was drafting, he would stare into space. I’d get annoyed, and ask, “Dad! What are you doing?”, (thinking he should be helping me). He’d reply, “Robin, I’m thinking. That’s what I get paid for.”
I LOVE that, Robin! I think this is the second time I’ve said that I love your Dad!
Natasha, it’s all torture. It’s all the nature of our beast: WRITING! I swear if I ever start to feel normal, then I know I’ve completely lost my writing edge. So, you feel whatever angst, guilt, or stress over simmering, researching and tangibility. It’s just who you are, word count up or down.
Hah! So true, Kath! So true! Yeah, maybe I just need to accept it and not fret about it. That’s going to be one of my New Year’s goals.
What Betsy said.
LOL, Bernita!
I wouldn’t call research or simmering lazy work at all. I mean, it’s essential–without it, you’d have a big pile of nothing in the end.
This is true, Elizabeth! Very true!