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Creative recharge time
In the last ten days, I've written just about 24,000 words on the new novel, bringing me close to 90,000 words total. If I could keep up this level of writing speed, I could do a full-sized novel in just about 6 weeks.
But I can't, and by now, I think I've figured out why I have these boom and bust cycles as I'm writing, where I start slowing down and finding it more of a slog: I need creative recharge time. I can fly along for awhile, pre-writing scenes in my head faster than I can get them on paper, knowing exactly what is going to happen next. And then my brain starts to feel like an overworked muscle -- the process of putting words on paper gets a lot harder, I'm easily distracted, I don't know what's going to happen next, writing becomes an uphill slog through mud. I need to stop for awhile, let events shake themselves out in my head, and get a mental picture of how the next 20,000 words are going to go. At this point, I still have to write the entire climax -- the "big battle" -- plus a couple chapters of pivotal plot stuff at an earlier point in the novel that I skipped because there was a major "getting from A to B" thing that I couldn't figure out. I'm making an educated guess that I have between 15,000 and 20,000 words of novel yet to go. But before I write that, I have to stop for a bit.
I don't think I'd ever realized this before the last few months. I can't just sit down and write an entire novel from start to finish all the way through. It's a necessary part of my creative process to stop a few times along the way for days or even months at a time to let events shuffle themselves in my brain. It's not so much a matter of figuring out what happens (I already know what happens -- the broad strokes of it, at least). It's the smaller-scale stuff: being able to picture the characters, hearing their dialogue, writing new and different description rather than variations on the same thing over and over. I just can't churn out new words steadily without stopping and taking a break. I used to be so busy with my day job that I never realized this was happening -- life would intervene regularly enough that I never used to have to schedule breaks; I kept taking breaks whether I wanted to or not! And I had a good 8-10 hours a day when I was ostensibly working, but actually spending quite a bit of time daydreaming about the next scene in whatever project I was working on at the time. During those relatively infrequent times when I wanted to write but couldn't, I chalked it up to writer's block. And some of the time it was.
But now that writing is my day job (the other word for my current state being "unemployment"), I'm learning things about my creative process that I never realized before, and one of the big ones is that I have to give myself time to just think. I can't think properly while watching TV or reading or being on the Internet. Taking long walks with the dog is good. Driving is good. So is housework.
When I was a teenager, I was homeschooled and also wrote a LOT (reams of paper and many tens of thousands of words every year), and I used to pace. I would spend hours a day on little pacing courses around our 5-acre property, wandering back and forth over the same hundred yards or so, never getting bored, just thinking. I am sure that my family thought I was insane, perhaps literally. But this is the first time since I moved away from home that I've been back in a similar state to those years -- almost entirely inward-directed, my days mostly my own, rarely leaving the house, writing and writing all the time -- and I'm starting to rediscover why I used to do that. No one ever suggested it to me; I just did it on my own, from the time that I was really young. It was a way of carving out hours of thinking time in the day when I wasn't doing anything but thinking.
And I really, truly need that. I'm getting better at figuring out where my natural breaking points occur -- I think I'm starting to be able to tell the difference between "Oh, I just don't feel like writing today" and "I'm totally tapped out; I need a couple of days to recharge before I can manage to write coherently again". The last week I've been on a wonderful creative high, flying along, spending most of my time when I'm not working on the novel planning out scenes. And now, the well is drying up, my brain is starting to feel like it's been beaten soundly with a meat tenderizer, and I can just tell that I have to stop and spend some time fantasizing about the novel without writing any of it down, just sorting out events and getting the little details all filed into order.
It's a really similar feeling to when you're studying and you start hitting a point where you can tell you have to walk away from it because you're not learning anything anymore -- facts are falling out of your brain as quickly as you try to push new facts in.
I'm slightly annoyed by having to stop -- I had wanted to get this rough draft finished before spring really hits, and I've been making such good progress -- but on the other hand, there is something really exciting about having taken a few steps closer to figuring out this aspect of how my brain works. It's not that I'm creatively blocked; it's not that I'm sick of the novel. I'm actually loving the novel. I suppose I could force myself, but I know that what I'd write would be lackluster and dry, and I wouldn't enjoy it. I just need to stop, think about something else for a bit, let the pieces shuffle around in my head, and then come back to write again when my brain stops feeling like it was stuffed into a sack and thrown down the stairs.
ETA: I just realized this is why I never could finish NaNo! I loved those novels, and I was able to complete them later on (well, I finished one; the other stalled out on a plot conundrum at about 60,000 words). And I always started NaNo doing fabulous, sailing through the word counts and then some, usually hitting 10-20,000 words in the first week. But then I'd hit a wall between one and two weeks in. And this is why. I just can't keep up that level of writing activity for a month, and I can't rein myself in enough not to burn out. I'm a sprinter, not a jogger. *g*
But I can't, and by now, I think I've figured out why I have these boom and bust cycles as I'm writing, where I start slowing down and finding it more of a slog: I need creative recharge time. I can fly along for awhile, pre-writing scenes in my head faster than I can get them on paper, knowing exactly what is going to happen next. And then my brain starts to feel like an overworked muscle -- the process of putting words on paper gets a lot harder, I'm easily distracted, I don't know what's going to happen next, writing becomes an uphill slog through mud. I need to stop for awhile, let events shake themselves out in my head, and get a mental picture of how the next 20,000 words are going to go. At this point, I still have to write the entire climax -- the "big battle" -- plus a couple chapters of pivotal plot stuff at an earlier point in the novel that I skipped because there was a major "getting from A to B" thing that I couldn't figure out. I'm making an educated guess that I have between 15,000 and 20,000 words of novel yet to go. But before I write that, I have to stop for a bit.
I don't think I'd ever realized this before the last few months. I can't just sit down and write an entire novel from start to finish all the way through. It's a necessary part of my creative process to stop a few times along the way for days or even months at a time to let events shuffle themselves in my brain. It's not so much a matter of figuring out what happens (I already know what happens -- the broad strokes of it, at least). It's the smaller-scale stuff: being able to picture the characters, hearing their dialogue, writing new and different description rather than variations on the same thing over and over. I just can't churn out new words steadily without stopping and taking a break. I used to be so busy with my day job that I never realized this was happening -- life would intervene regularly enough that I never used to have to schedule breaks; I kept taking breaks whether I wanted to or not! And I had a good 8-10 hours a day when I was ostensibly working, but actually spending quite a bit of time daydreaming about the next scene in whatever project I was working on at the time. During those relatively infrequent times when I wanted to write but couldn't, I chalked it up to writer's block. And some of the time it was.
But now that writing is my day job (the other word for my current state being "unemployment"), I'm learning things about my creative process that I never realized before, and one of the big ones is that I have to give myself time to just think. I can't think properly while watching TV or reading or being on the Internet. Taking long walks with the dog is good. Driving is good. So is housework.
When I was a teenager, I was homeschooled and also wrote a LOT (reams of paper and many tens of thousands of words every year), and I used to pace. I would spend hours a day on little pacing courses around our 5-acre property, wandering back and forth over the same hundred yards or so, never getting bored, just thinking. I am sure that my family thought I was insane, perhaps literally. But this is the first time since I moved away from home that I've been back in a similar state to those years -- almost entirely inward-directed, my days mostly my own, rarely leaving the house, writing and writing all the time -- and I'm starting to rediscover why I used to do that. No one ever suggested it to me; I just did it on my own, from the time that I was really young. It was a way of carving out hours of thinking time in the day when I wasn't doing anything but thinking.
And I really, truly need that. I'm getting better at figuring out where my natural breaking points occur -- I think I'm starting to be able to tell the difference between "Oh, I just don't feel like writing today" and "I'm totally tapped out; I need a couple of days to recharge before I can manage to write coherently again". The last week I've been on a wonderful creative high, flying along, spending most of my time when I'm not working on the novel planning out scenes. And now, the well is drying up, my brain is starting to feel like it's been beaten soundly with a meat tenderizer, and I can just tell that I have to stop and spend some time fantasizing about the novel without writing any of it down, just sorting out events and getting the little details all filed into order.
It's a really similar feeling to when you're studying and you start hitting a point where you can tell you have to walk away from it because you're not learning anything anymore -- facts are falling out of your brain as quickly as you try to push new facts in.
I'm slightly annoyed by having to stop -- I had wanted to get this rough draft finished before spring really hits, and I've been making such good progress -- but on the other hand, there is something really exciting about having taken a few steps closer to figuring out this aspect of how my brain works. It's not that I'm creatively blocked; it's not that I'm sick of the novel. I'm actually loving the novel. I suppose I could force myself, but I know that what I'd write would be lackluster and dry, and I wouldn't enjoy it. I just need to stop, think about something else for a bit, let the pieces shuffle around in my head, and then come back to write again when my brain stops feeling like it was stuffed into a sack and thrown down the stairs.
ETA: I just realized this is why I never could finish NaNo! I loved those novels, and I was able to complete them later on (well, I finished one; the other stalled out on a plot conundrum at about 60,000 words). And I always started NaNo doing fabulous, sailing through the word counts and then some, usually hitting 10-20,000 words in the first week. But then I'd hit a wall between one and two weeks in. And this is why. I just can't keep up that level of writing activity for a month, and I can't rein myself in enough not to burn out. I'm a sprinter, not a jogger. *g*
no subject
Watching TV and reading are not time to think.
I think i was Julia Cameron who calls it moodling.
no subject
no subject
I completely recognize this--I do it too. (only, my output during the "sprint" is slower and I have a lower wordcount than yours) All that staring into space? Completely necessary to my writing process. :D
I've also found that when I *must* finish something, whether my brain "wants" to or not, applying a little pressure gives me enough of an "adrenaline" burst to be able to do it. (when I was a lot younger, the pressure used to be *time*. I used to just procrastinate until the deadline was *right there* and that would do it--it's still a temptation that has to be fought to procrastinate my way into that burst of "adrenaline")
no subject
That's an interesting point about a last-minute burst of adrenaline too. Having a deadline definitely helps me finish things, though I think in my case it's more that it forces me to push on ahead even when I wouldn't normally be at a "writing" point in my cycle.