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The Resilient Writers Radio Show: When Writing Feels Slow

with Rhonda Douglas – Full Episode Transcript

Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. 

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page. 

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state. 

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

Rhonda:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. This is a small series where it's just me and you chatting, trying to uncover and bring to light and talk about some of the common issues that come up for writers and that have come up for writers in my First Book Finish program in particular, because I see those folks,  you know, three times a week and so I'm very aware of all of those nasty little thoughts that creep into our lives  and  trip us out and make it that much slower to finish a book. And ironically today, that's what I want to talk about. 

I want to talk about when it feels slow. So you know this feeling or you probably do. And that is the feeling that I'm working on this book and it's taking me forever. The other thought that sometimes come up with this is this book will never be finished. It is taking forever. It is too slow. I am too slow. 

So I want to talk about that as a story that we tell ourselves, but I also want to talk about it in a practical sense. So I think that this is a story that we tell ourselves probably 80% of the time, this is just a story we tell ourselves. And we tell ourselves many stories over the course of writing a book, and not all of them are helpful. And this one isn't that helpful. 

So when you're telling yourself, I am too slow, this is taking too long, what you're saying is that you're basically saying is that your expectation was it would be quicker. And often we have this idea, we look at other writers and we think they're writing faster than I am. They must be better writers because they are writing faster than I am. As though it was a game  where the person with the most words wins.

That's not how this works, right? It's not the words, it's the right words. It's the right words for your project. And so often when we think it's too slow, it's because we're comparing ourselves to others, right? We're looking at romance writers, a lot of indie, there are a lot of indie romance writers or indie cozy mystery writers, self-published, who get out three and four books a year. 

And we look at that and we go, oh my God, I'm spending an entire year on this book and I haven't finished the draft yet. I'm too slow. I feel that books take the time they take. Now, why is that the case? In some ways, it's because the act of writing a book and the act of finishing a book  is the act of becoming the writer you need to become in order to finish that book. 

And so sometimes that takes more time. Not always, but sometimes. Sometimes we need to  give some thought to what is included in the memoir and not included in the memoir in order to make it structurally strong.

Sometimes we sit down to write and it's like we're touched by the gods and you know, the muse is sitting on our shoulder and we write 1200 words. And sometimes we sit down to write and we write 50 words and it feels like 49 of them were the wrong words, right? This is how it is. 

I don't believe that there's anything, I don't believe in this idea that it's possible to have a bad in air quotes, writing session. I think any time spent with the book is a good writing session,  even if it's staring out the window, pondering your climax scene and not coming to a solution in that moment.

The solution will come if you have faith in your own process and let it. It will come, but it might take more than one writing session. And that's okay. 

Sometimes  a writing session is opening the document, staring at the scene, not being able to make the decision, but you've done some really great thinking. Alice Monroe used to say some of her best writing was done staring out her kitchen window.

And I think this is what she meant, that often  there's a great deal of thinking that goes into it. And so that might be why you are slow.

But the odds  are based on all of the writers I've worked with. You could be slow because you were trying to make the book perfect every time you sit down. So you write a scene and then the next day you sit down to write and you go over that scene again trying to make it perfect. And that is really hard to do with a draft.

We have to come to terms with the fact that revision is a necessary process for writing a book we're proud of. And there's a lot of thinking that goes into that revision process. And so you might be sitting there making that scene in chapter seven perfect, only to discover in revision that that scene is not actually required for the book and needs to be cut. It happens. Sorry to tell you. It happens.

But many of us are trying to  make the book perfect every time we sit down. And not only is that impossible, and it's impossible for a few reasons. One is we're trying to make it perfect so that we are immune to criticism and immune to judgment. 

And if you are going to put art, which is what you were writing, I don't care what genre you're working in, you are an artist whose medium is words. And so we're making art, art is necessarily subjective. And if you don't believe it, go look at all of the one-star reviews on Amazon for Ernest Hemingway. Right? Not all books are for all people and that's fine. 

Someone told me once, there was a book that a friend recommended to me and he loved it. And I picked it up as I was traveling and I was in Heathrow Airport and I remember throwing it in the trash can. I could not stand this book. I could not abide it. Like, no, it was a hard, hard no. And I just got rid of it. I don't think I've ever done that again. 

But, oh, I hated this book. And so I was done with it, but he loved it. So the book was for people like him and not for people like me. And that's great. That's awesome. You can think of books that you love to read and books that you didn't, even though other people hyped them up.

I haven't been able to get into Barbara Kingsolver's David Copperfield. David Copperfield? No. Demon Copperhead. Yes. I'll put the link in the show notes. I haven't been able to get into it. There's something about the voice that is very off-putting to me. Other people have loved it. It has won awards. I love other books by Barbara Kingsolver. Okay?

So there is no way to make perfect art that no one is ever going to judge you for so stop trying that but also the act of writing a book, it takes time, it takes attention over a long period of time, it takes focus, it takes all of these things. But speaking in craft terms, it also takes a lot of craft attention. There are many, many things that you are going to need to make work. 

Let's just think about a memoir for a second. You're going to need to choose what is in and what is out. You're going to need a structure. You're going to need to write in scene so that your memoir reads like a novel and not like a private diary.

Because you're writing in scene, you're going to need setting and characters with character arcs and dialogue. Right? And you want all of these things to be good.

There are many things that go into writing a scene. Your brain can hold about three or four things before it goes, gack, no, can't do. And there are many more than three or four things that go into making a book work. And so your brain literally cannot sit down and write a perfect scene in one go.

Can write a good draft, yeah. And that draft will need revision and it will need editing. And that is how books are made. And so please stop trying to finish a book that flies in the face of the truth of the creative process and how books are made.

Please stop trying to be perfect every time you sit down to write. It isn't possible. No human being is perfect. No work of art is perfect. You cannot create work that makes you immune from judgment and criticism. You cannot. It is not possible.

So just come to terms with that. Just be like, I'm making my art and I don't care. You know, I'm doing, I'm creating the thing that is in my heart to create. I'm a writer. I love writing. I love story. I love words. Here I am working in that medium and that makes me happy.

And here I am structuring, creating over time. Something that is as good as I can possibly make it right now. And let that be enough.

I'm not saying that I'm perfect at this. I am definitely a perfectionist in recovery. But I do know that the slowest way to write a book is to write a scene and try to edit it and write another scene and edit it and write another scene and edit it.

In part, this is because your brain has two modes and the part which gets the draft down. And Terry Pratchett said the first draft is just you telling yourself the story. And so the creative part of your brain that just gets the draft down is different than the editor part of your brain that just scans everything looking for mistakes.

And the editor part of your brain will make it really hard for the drafting part of your brain.

And it is the world's slowest way to write a book. So that's the first way that we can end up in a situation where we're telling ourselves, it feels slow. It's too slow. I'm too slow.

But the other thing I want to say is just a practical thing. Sometimes we've spent three, four months on a draft, and we are fast drafting. I'm just, talking about  in this case, I'm thinking about folks in First Book Finish, and they've spent four months, five months, six months on a draft, and they're really frustrated because they want to be done with the draft. They want to move on. They see other writers moving on in the program, moving to revision, and they're like, why not me? This is too slow.

Books take the time they take. We are all different writers. And so you might be a writer who when you sit down, you know, if you spend 45 minutes, you can get 1200 words down. And that happens most of the time. But you might be a writer who sits down for 45 minutes and gets 250 words down. And that is okay. Learn to be okay with the writer that you are.

I think that there is nothing that creates more suffering in life than the resistance to reality, right? A thing is real. You're a writer who writes 300 words a session and you spend all your time suffering because you feel you should be a writer who writes 1200 words a session. The truth is that most of us go back and forth, right? 

The truth is sometimes we do a thousand words, sometimes we do 250. Sometimes we do 50 and shut the laptop with a sigh. That's fine. It's all part of the process. None of it means you're doing it wrong. But what I also want to say is, if you're at that stage with your book where you're like, I've working on this forever, why am I not finished? 

Then I want you to really look at how you've set up your life to finish. Because the truth of it is that the only practical answer to, I want this to be finished and it's going to slowly, is more but in chair time with the book. Books are written with consistency. This 20 minutes on top of this 20 minutes on top of this hour on top of this two hour burst on a weekend and back to the 20 minutes and the half hour and the one hour, right? 

Time and time and time again. Paragraph on paragraph on paragraph on paragraph, scene on scene on scene. This is the reality of it. I often think of it like renovating a kitchen. I renovated my townhouse once to sell it and.

One day we came in and we took out all of the kitchen cabinets and all of the old wallpaper. And  then we had to plaster and we had to sand the plaster. And then we had to plaster again. And then we had to sand it. And then we had to  wipe it down. And then we had to paint it. 

And then we were using IKEA cupboards. So then we had to like put the IKEA cupboards together. I actually had a party where like a bunch of friends came over and helped me put the IKEA cabinets together. It was great. And then the cabinets got put in and then the countertop got put in, the flooring got put in, the appliances got put in. 

Do you hear what I'm saying? And at any given moment, if you looked at it, you were like, this is chaos and it is taking forever. And at the end I turned around and yes, it had been chaos. Right? All of my kitchen, my toaster was on the dining room table. Right? It was chaos for three months. And then it was done.

And the only way when the book feels slow, the only way that we can make it go more quickly is more time on task. So we need to look at our lives. If you've been writing two times a week, can you write three or four times a week? Can you look at your schedule and book a long weekend and go away for a writing retreat that you create for yourself. 

I'm gonna put a link to my DIY Writing Retreat Guide in the show notes for you because I think this is going to be, it's just how I approach doing retreats. I've done these for years. In First Book Finish, we call them Page Booster Retreats and  we do them all the time. And it's that additional boost. 

So if you think the work is going slowly, my challenge to you is how can you make it go more quickly? If you normally write 500 words a session or a thousand words a session, or you mix it up and sometimes it's 250 and sometimes it's 1200, great.

How many words do you have left to do and how can you increase your writing time? That is the only practical answer to this is taking longer than I would like it to take, right? And we know that. 

There's no point in complaining about something without trying to find a solution for it. It just makes us miserable. So if you truly do feel like your book is taking a long time, then it might be time for you to look at what is possible in your writing life.

And sometimes we think, oh, I couldn't possibly find any more time. But then there's that thing that we've been volunteering for that we could take a break from.

I was doing that for years.I was like volunteering for this reading series and that reading series and this magazine and that, you know, like just what about focusing on getting your own darn work done?

Take a break. Come back to it later when the draft is done. When the book is done, when the book is out in the world, you come back to everything. 

What if you got up earlier on Sunday morning and wrote for two hours before the house, the rest of the house woke up? What if you put one long weekend a month on your schedule and went away somewhere to work on the book? Or just went to the library?

What if you started using all the little breaks in your day? Like normally you sit and chat with your coworkers at lunch five days a week in the office. What if two of those days you left the office, went to a coffee shop and worked on your book? 

What if at the end of the day, instead of immediately going home and being drawn into what's for dinner and the kids' homework and have we done the laundry and all the things, you took a half hour, went to a coffee shop, and wrote in your book,  worked on your book.

Where can you find the additional time? If progress on your book feels slow, then that practical notion of more, but in share time, working with the book really is the only practical solution. 

But sometimes it's just a story that you're telling yourself. And it's kind of equivalent to imposter syndrome, where you're comparing yourself to everybody else who feels faster,  quicker, better than you are and telling yourself a story that you are too slow, when in fact, the book just takes the time it takes.

Can we get to a place? How can we get to a place where understanding that books take time and every book takes the time it takes is okay. because  this is art. You are an artist whose medium is words and it takes time and that's okay. 

All right. I hope this has been helpful today and I will talk to you again soon. I'll talk to you soon. Take care.

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes. 

Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that yes, this is a great show, definitely recommend it to other writers. And that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it. And I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.