When Writing Isn’t Writing – WNP 077

This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 77: When Writing Isn’t Writing.

[Intro song.]

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and I want to talk about writing. Now… I know that for a writing podcast, that’s not exactly surprising, or maybe it is. I don’t know what you expected when you came in here today. But we’re going to talk about writing. We’re going to talk about what writing is and maybe what writing isn’t. And I think we’re going to have a lot of fun doing it.

So buckle in, literally, if you’re driving, metaphorically or figuratively, if you are simply listening and you’re not in a car because we’re going to maybe have our minds changed today. I don’t know. I went through a mindset change when I was thinking about this topic. And so you might already be there. You might already have your mind in the place where we’re going today. You might not. Either way, I hope this is a helpful episode for you.

So when we talk about writing, we tend to be talking about the act of producing words on some kind of page, whether the person doing the writing is seated at a desk, hammering away at a typewriter or a word processor or a laptop, or if they’re just scribbling away on a yellow, legal pad with a pen or pencil, that’s what we think of when we think of writing. We think of it as an action and a very specific action at that. As writers, we also tend to be driven by, or perhaps even obsessed with, the idea of production, of writing as production, as producing words on a page, whether that page is analog or digital.

So we tend to be driven by producing words or a certain volume of words. So this means, say, we tend to value ourselves as writers based on the amount we produce, the amount of writing we produce. So number of words per day, number of pages per day, number of pages per week, number of articles you publish over your lifetime, the number of poems you write in one year, the number of books you publish over a certain amount of time. This is how we tend to work as writers. This is how we judge our own success. This is how we validate whether or not we are actually writers a lot of the times.

So this might not be true for you, but I think it is true for a lot of the writers that I have talked to. Now, why is this? I came up with a whole bunch of ideas for why this is a thing that we do. Judging our writing by the amounts that we’re producing tends to be fairly easily measurable. So we can look at what we’ve produced and say, “Oh, look at this small mountain of content I’ve produced.” Or, “Look at the number of blog posts I’ve published this month.” It’s tangible, it’s measurable. And it’s easy to quantify. Progress also visibly adds up into the goal itself.

So if your goal is to write one book by the end of this year, you can watch yourself create that book from nothing every day by adding a little bit at a time. So three pages per day turns into… Oh boy, oh boy, we’re talking about math, 21 pages per week if you write seven days a week. And then you keep multiplying that out to a certain number of pages, that’s the number of pages you’ll have by the end of the year. And that’s how many pages are in a book. It’s very easy for us to see how the progress can add up. And that keeps us focused on our goals.

Our production is also how we’ve been taught to measure our success. This is what we’ve been told to do. So if you’ve ever read a book like Stephen King’s On Writing, which I read, gosh, it must be more than 10 years ago now that I first read this book, he talks about, “Yes, I write every day. Here’s my schedule.” It’s something like, “I write in the morning and then I go for a walk and then I write some more and then I have dinner and then I write some more.” And that’s every day for Stephen King. He has a very few number of days that he allows himself to take off during the year. But otherwise it seems like his production schedule is pretty intense. So these are the role models that are being set for us as writers.

We sort of have this, “Well, if you want to be successful like Stephen King, if you want to publish a lot of books and be famous and have a mansion with a crazy spider web gate thing, you’re going to have to write every day, seven days a week for the rest of your life.” This is something that I have not been immune to. If you go back and listen to older episodes of this podcast, my tagline used to be, “Welcome to the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage they need to pursue their passion and write every day.” I’ve even told you that before. I’ve explicitly told you in previous episodes, “Hey, you need to be writing every day.”

Now, recently, I’ve sort of changed that. You may have noticed in the past, oh boy, maybe 10 or 15 episodes, I’ve started shifting what I say in the intro of this show. And it’s simply now, “Pursue your passion and write.” I no longer am prescriptive about it being every day. Even though I know that writing every day is a goal for many writers. So in addition to being easily measurable and tangible, to visibly adding up into a larger, progressive goal, in addition to being how we’re told to work or measure success, or even the metric by which we understand being a writer, we also have, I think, an emotional connection to this. So I think that if we write every day, we tend to feel more like writers.

One of the questions I get asked the most is, “Sarah, can I still call myself a writer if I don’t write every day?” My answer is always, “Yes, absolutely.” If you write, if you love to write, if you aspire to write, you are a writer and no one can take that away from you. Even people who disagree, that’s their right to disagree. If they’re like, “Yeah, nope, sorry, you can’t be a writer unless you write every day.” That’s fine. And we’re actually going to look at what that definition actually means in today’s episode. But I think that when we write, if there’s a day where we can get our writing done, if we can get that word count in, whatever it is, 300 words a day, 15 words a day, 3000 words a day, if you can hit your word count for a day, it’s a great feeling. You can sit back in your chair and you can say, “Ah, today I have written and I feel like a writer and it feels amazing.”

Finally, the last thing here before I transition into our next section, is that a lot of us need affirmation that we’re doing it right. We need guidelines sometimes to know that we’re doing it right. Because if you were to go up to somebody on the street and ask, “What is a writer or what does it mean to be a writer?” That person would probably say, “I don’t know, someone who writes books or someone who writes poems.” It’s kind of a vague definition. And so I think that as writers we’re looking for the affirmation, the confirmation, that we are writers by other people’s definitions of what it means to be a writer.

And I think this is part of why Stephen King’s On Writing is so popular because it gives a very definitive view, or a very definitive example, of what a writer’s daily life looks. Like in his book, Stephen King goes through his story of growing up, publishing his first stories, creating his own newspaper with his brother. He talks about writing his most famous novels. He talks about some addictions that he struggled with. And then he tells you, “Hey, here’s what I do. I write every day, most days out of the year. I go for a walk, I do all this stuff.” And I feel like we crave, we don’t need, we crave this. We crave to know, “Okay, there’s a guideline. If I can just do what Stephen King does, then I know I’m doing it right. Or at least I’m on the right track.”

We tend to want to model our behavior after people who we aspire to be like, or people who we think are doing something the right way. I think a lot of us are driven by the need to prove something. So we need to prove to ourselves that we’re writers. We need to prove to the world that we’re writers. We need to prove to that one person who just won’t believe us that we’re a writer or that we want to be a writer. We need to convince them. We need to prove to them that we’re in this, that we’re doing it, that we’re for real.

But what if we didn’t need to prove anything to anybody, least of all ourselves? What if pushing out X number of words or pages a day or words or pages a month or a year, isn’t what we actually need? What if writing is more than just writing? What if writing is more than just the production of words, the putting down of words on paper or onto a digital screen? What if we expanded the way in which we thought about and defined writing? We talk a lot about the writing process and this is something for a lot of us that I think we learned in school.

So I learned this, I went to public school, we probably started learning about the writing process, oh gosh… Well, you kind of learn about it a bit by bit growing up. But I think that when we really started having discussions about what the writing process meant, I think I was in probably seventh or eighth grade. And we were talking about structuring and papers. And you start at the beginning and you outline the three things that you want to have happen and then you have some kind of resolution or conclusion. And we’re taught, at a very early, age that this is the fundamental process of writing.

Now, some of you may have also had teachers that included outlining as part of the writing process. But outlining is also a kind of production, in that you end up with a paper or some kind of digital output that says, “Hey, this is what my ideas look like in a tangible form. I shall now use these ideas to craft a paper, a story, a book.” What have you. This writing process, however, I think it’s more complicated than we give it credit for. I think that we tend to define it entirely in the terms of production, of having something tangible or visible to show for our work. To show for the day. To prove that we are on some kind of right track.

Part of the reason that this podcast exists is because I know how hard it is for each and every one of us to write every day. It’s so hard. It’s so hard to produce, produce, produce. I hear this a lot from the writers I work with. “Sarah, I go to work, I have an hour and a half commute. So I leave the house at 5:30 AM. I work eight or nine hours. I pick up my kids from daycare. I come home, I have dinner with my family and I’m exhausted.” Or, “I have one hour. I have one hour every day where I can write and I don’t always have the energy to churn out my word count.”

And that’s totally valid. That’s totally legit. I struggled with this too. I struggled for a while with the notion that I had to produce a certain number of words each day to be a writer or to keep my writer status. And so we end up in this place where we’re constantly trying to outrun this avalanche. We’re producing and we’re producing and we’re not always in a place where we are able to produce. We’re not always in a place where production is good for us. We’re not always in the part of the writing process where we should be producing.

I remember one time I was working on Girl In Space… I was working on an episode of Girl In Space for season one. And I was trying to push out certain number of words every day so that I could make progress. And I remember complaining to my husband, Tim, “I’m just so burned out. I’m just so burned out, but I need to get these words out or this episode won’t happen and my audience will be angry.” And all of these other things. What I was thinking in my head was, “If I don’t write every day, I’m going to doubt that I’m a writer. My audience will doubt that I’m a writer. They’re not going to think I’m in this for real.”

And I remember he said, “Maybe you shouldn’t be writing right now.” And I got so angry and so offended. I just remember feeling, we were sitting in my office, and I just remember feeling stunned like, “Duh, if I’m not writing, I’m not going to make progress.” But that’s not what he was talking about. And this is something that I’ve had to learn over the past couple of years, because he was right. At that time, I was in such a frenzy to produce, to get words out on the page, to reach my goal, that I was doing so thoughtlessly and in a way that was burning me out. I had an hour a day to work on this show and I thought that if I didn’t spend it producing words on a page that I had wasted it. This is not true. This was an idea, a conception, a belief that I needed to let go of.

What Tim suggested was, “Maybe you don’t need to write right now, Sarah, maybe what you need to do is think about it? What you need to do right now maybe is meditate and solve some of these loose ends in your mind before you sit down and write them out?” Thinking? What if thinking was part of the writing process just as much as writing? And what if reading was part of the writing process just as much as writing? And what if intentionally not writing, or resting, was just as much of an important piece of our writing process?

Now I am not intending for anything that I talk about in today’s episodes to be prescriptive. So I don’t want you to hear this episode and say like, “I must do this, or I must do this in the same way as Sarah.” That’s the opposite of what I’m saying. What I’m saying is I want you to really think about your writing process and if it needs to be, or if it currently is, 100% production focused. Because sometimes need other things in order to live a sustainable creative life.

Where do you get your best ideas? For some people it’s the shower. For some people it’s in the car on a road trip. For me, it’s when I am outside on a walk. That is where I get my best ideas. My most revolutionary ideas for plot twists and cliffhangers. I’ve always gotten those when I’m out on a walk. So what if, for me, going on a walk was part of my writing process? What if, for me, when I’m out on a walk, somebody asks, “Sarah, what are you doing?” What if I responded, “Oh, I’m writing.” What do you need in your writing process? For me, it consists of a certain percentage writing. So actually getting those words on the page, actually producing content.

But I have a few other things, too. So, thinking, whether that is on a walk or sitting in my office meditating. For me, it works a little bit better going on a walk. Another integral part of my writing process is what I’m consuming. So whether that’s reading a nonfiction book about thought processes or limitations, or whether it’s reading a fictional book, just to keep up with what’s going on in the larger writing worlds, with what people are doing with dialogue, how stories are being structured. Every time you consume something you learn. You learn about storytelling. You learn about structure. You learn about putting ideas together and you get your own ideas. I take notes with whatever I’m reading, be it fiction, nonfiction, everything I read I’m always taking notes. That’s how I remember things. It’s how I interact with what I’m reading. This consumption is an important part of my writing process.

Finally, another critical component is rest or actively not writing, stepping away intentionally from producing, from being creative, from driving my thoughts forward about a story that I’m working on. Now, for me, all four of these aren’t necessarily in equal parts, but I’d be curious to know what makes up your writing process? Is it 50% writing, 25% consuming, 5% resting and 20% thinking? That’s just an example. Again, not prescriptive. But I’d be curious. Because I think when we start to rethink or redefine our writing process, we can write every day or at least make some kind of creative progress.

So you’re sitting at your desk over, staring off into space. Someone asks, “What are you doing?” You can say, “I’m writing.” When I’m on a walk in the graveyard behind my house, someone comes up to me, “What are you doing?” I can say, “I’m writing.” But do we need to write every day? Do we need to produce words on a page every day to retain the right to call ourselves a writer? I don’t think so. I think that a larger question we need to be asking is, “What do you need?” What do you need in order to live a sustainable creative life? What does your writing process need to look like? What kind of accommodations do you need to make to make this happen? What does it look like when we stop feeling the need to prove to others or to ourselves that we are “writers” in the traditional sense?

As always, I do not make the Write Now podcast alone. There are so many people out there inspiring me and also helping me out financially with this show. I make this show free for you because I want you to live into your full identity as a writer. But it’s not free for me to make. So I’m really, really grateful for all of the wonderful people on Patreon who donate $1 per episode, $2 per episode, some do even more than that, to help keep the show going. So thank you. Thank you so much. Special thanks for today’s episode go to Amanda King, Tiffany Joyner, Regina Calabrese, the Ostium Network, Susan Geiger, Sean Locke, Leslie Madsen, Amanda Dixon, Julian Vincent Thornburgh, Michael Beckwith, Sarah Lauzon, Selena Zhang, Maria Alejandro, Leslie Duncan, Rebecca Werner, and Gary Medina. Thank you all so, so, so much for your financial contributions to keep this show going. I really do appreciate it.

For those of you who are interested in joining your ranks and becoming a patron on Patreon, all you need to do is go to patreon.com. That’s patreon dot com slash SarahRheaWerner. All one word. That’s S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R. So you can go there and make your pledge of $1 per episode, $2 per episode, whatever you feel like this podcast is worth to you. If you are not really financially solvent right now, it’s also very, very handy if you’re able to spread the word of this show. So if you know another writer, creator, what have you, who is struggling with their creative process or their identity as a writer or creative person, let them know that this show exists, show them how to download a podcast if they don’t know. Because as I have learned, a lot of people know how to download podcasts. And yeah, just let them know that they’ll enjoy it.

Okay. I’m a little out of breath because I just came back. My cat doesn’t like it when I podcast, she gets really upset that I’m not paying attention to her. And she just came in and threw up on my floor. So I have to clean that up. So, okay. Back on track, I’ve been working on updating my website, which you can find out at sarahwerner.com, which is also where you will find the show notes for today’s episode, so be sure to go check that out. And I now have out there some freebies for people who are interested in starting a podcast. So I have a link to a free webinar, and I also have a link to a PDF. It’s a free principle podcasting roadmap.

So you’re like, “Sarah, we’re writers. Why would we want to start a podcast?” Well, starting a podcast was how my writing career took off. And it’s been just a really great place for me to showcase my fiction writing. It’s gotten me visibility. It’s gotten me in front of new audiences. So just something to think about. If you are interested in starting your own podcast, go check out these free resources again, they’re at sarahwarner.com. And I do plan on making several new resources available for writers as well.

In the meantime, if you are a writer, which you probably are, I have also a free Facebook group for writers just like you for all stages of writers. It’s called I Am a Writer. So if you search for that Facebook group, it’s a private or closed group right now, which just means that you’ll need to answer some security questions before I let you in. We were having a problem for a little bit with robots, so now I like to have you answer a few questions before I let you into the group, just to make sure you’re not a robot or worse a spammer. So please do join us though. I’ll have a link for that in the show notes for today’s episode, because I’d love to have you in there with us.

Okay. And with that, this has been episode 77 of the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And I am really excited to hear about your writing process.

[Closing song.]