Issue 8: Journey to the Centre of a First Draft
Hello Sweeties,
Welcome back to my newsletter where I share short, poorly edited notes about stuff I find interesting.
It’s been a big writing summer for this gal. At the beginning of May, I set a goal for myself to write the first draft of a memoir about growing up poor with a mentally ill single mother in Winnipeg and Edmonton, and the awkward journey I took to escape my circumstances. My initial plan was to write 60,000 words by September. Last week, I passed 100,000 words and called it a few days early.
Working on this memoir has been both painful and rewarding in ways I’m not entirely ready to talk about. I’ve been working on it, in a sense, my whole adult life. But it wasn’t until this spring, when I allowed myself to call it a memoir (as opposed to an essay collection or a novel) that the words really began to fly.
I used to be a small word count writer. For many years as a freelance arts reporter, I’d write multiple articles a week of no more than 500 to 1000 words. I had tricks for generating material. Still, though the overall word count was high, my attention was rarely sustained beyond the length of a newspaper feature.
My previous attempts to write full books, both novels, were like pulling cooling taffy. The first one, my MFA thesis, topped out at 40,000 words, the most I could ever imagine writing. The second one eventually got quite large but only after years of teasing and stretching.
This one was different partly because it’s a topic that’s been percolating for two decades, partly because I’d been consciously working to loosen up over the past few years. This summer, I finally followed the advice I’d given so many students, borrowed from the likes of Mary Karr and Anne Lamott, and learned to shut down my inner critic.
But while my inner critic was quieted, I still kept an eye out for what I was doing—what was working and what didn’t. In an effort to both improve my craft and find new insights to share with students, I’ve tried to pay deeper attention to my writing process. I used to dismiss this kind of talk. Maybe I thought it would take away the feeling that writing was a kind of magic. Maybe I feared that if I started to pay attention to my process, I would discover I wasn’t very good at it at all.
But over time I realized that a lack of process awareness was holding me back. It meant that I struggled to choose what kinds of projects I really connected with. It meant that when I reached the usual difficult phase in a project, I would sometimes give up.
Yes, there is a process of learning that comes with every new piece of writing one sits down to do. Yes, that feeling of pushing your creative boundaries is part of where the energy of creation comes from. But that doesn’t mean you have to set out on every writing journey naked and in total darkness. My understanding of process has clothed me and put tools in my hands that I can rely on in difficult passages. This, in turn, has allowed me to take on projects of greater ambition and to better understand when I’m on the right track without relying so heavily on external encouragement that may or may not come.
While working on this memoir draft this summer, I’ve learned a few things about my process that I’d like to share with you. It’s important to understand that these tools might not work for you–everyone is different. But I encourage you to try some version of them anyway, adapt them as you need.
Silence and Sound
Working alone in my apartment, I would sometimes forget to turn on any kind of sound. After a while, I’d feel my attention wandering, my brain trying to mollify a terrible feeling of borderlessness. This was worse when I was in a group of people because other people added self-consciousness. What if I made a weird noise? What if they were bored and needed me to entertain them? (I know, I know, that’s a whole other impulse I need to deal with)
To solve this, I began testing out different soundscapes. Anything with words would intrude on my thoughts. Classical piano, which had worked for me in the past, would lull me into sleepiness. Jazz or electronica were too angular–one song in a playlist would work but the next one would shatter my concentration.
Someone on Twitter suggested I try a noise generation app called myNoise. For a couple of dollars, I downloaded a soundscape called Cafe Restaurant. It was perfect. Working in real cafes, I tend to zero in on voices and get carried away with eavesdropping. The cafe noise soundscape is like a cocoon. Voices bubbling and whispering just beyond understanding to an unpredictable rhythm of forks clinking against plates. Maybe it’s an ASMR thing–I don’t know–but my brain loves it. Playing it helps me focus for longer and deeper than I have in a long time. It even worked in cafes to drown out the next table’s titillating conversation.
Daily Reflections
I write in Scrivener, so it was easy for me to create a file that I could return to at the end of each day. In it, I recorded the date, the full word count of the manuscript and the number of words I’d written that day. Then I reflected on the section I was working in and on the conditions–what worked, what didn’t.
I’m not a big fan of making daily word count goals–I think that focussing too much on numbers erases how much of writing really is about cutting and rewriting. There were rough days, especially at the beginning when I was working from old notes and trying to figure out the voice of this project. For example, my word total count on June 13 was “36 FUCKING WORDS.”
The entry below: “Working on the section entitled Ballerina—a real slog. Lots of deleting repetition and reorganizing and bringing stuff into a meaningful matrix.” Here, I can see myself struggling not only with the project, but with what I need from these daily reflections. The entries get longer as I go along, and they include a lot of little words of encouragement for my future self to return to.
My longest single day word count was also possibly my most difficult day–July 18. It was a day where I was forcing myself to engage with a really difficult memory, something I’ve never written about before. I wrote that I “felt so shaken, I thought I might cry. But also in charge of it in a way I’ve never felt before. I get to decide what it was. And I get to see it in the context of my whole story. I can’t believe how far I’ve come!” By the end of that day, I’d written 3,267 words, which for me is an incredible number.
These daily reflections helped me to keep track of progress, but they also reminded me of the hurdles I’d already overcome. And they gave a natural ending to my day, which allowed me to put the project aside and move on with the rest of my life. This brings me to my last point …
Ritual
I find it much easier to handle a large project when my days have structure. Over the weeks, I developed a ritual to help me move in and out of the writing mindset. On Mondays, I’d sit down and write a to do list that included the daily exercise I needed to do and any stray deadlines or appointments. In that list I’d include the item “Write Every Day” with boxes to check for Monday through Friday.
Each morning, I’d start with a 1-page freewrite, often before breakfast. Then I’d go for a short walk listening to an audiobook, take a shower and get dressed for the day. Finally, I’d bring a speaker into the office, turn on the soundscape and open up Scrivener. When I arrived at the page, I was awake and clothed as I would be for work. I’d block social media using the Freedom app and write until around noon.
I know that’s not a ritual that would work for everyone for many reasons (and obviously, I wasn’t always perfect), but it helped me to do something to mark the shift from life brain to writing brain and back. I’ve heard of other writers using subtle cues of dress or scent to do this. In a workshop I once attended, the brilliant Esmé Weijun Wang spoke of a friend who chose a particular colour to wear while writing and never wore that colour any other time. Whatever works!
My plan now is to put the manuscript aside for a month or so and let it settle before going back to see exactly what’s there. I’m hoping that the distance will take away some of the sting of turning on the critic brain and allow me a fresh set of eyes. Until then, I’ll be returning to some of my favourite memoirs and craft books, stocking myself up with new tools to try out for the next phase. I know it won’t be easy, but at least I’ve got some skills to light my way through the deepest caverns of the creative process.
I’m curious, how would you describe your writing process? What do you do to get started at the beginning or end of the day? Share your thoughts on process with me on Twitter! If you'd like to read more or subscribe, you can do so here.
~Erika