Struggling for three days

"I didn't write 46 pages today, I wrote one page 46 times" Walter Mathau said it some movie where he was a writer.

I work in fits and starts, which is to say I will struggle —agonize — over a story for three or four days, only then I will sit down and write it. I do believe that I need that time for my understanding of a topic to come together. The thing is that at the end of those germinating days, I look at my "current projects" documents and feel like I wasted the day.

So the challenge for this week is to make those days where ideas are germinating look productive.

My friend Jeremy was in town this weekend. Over coffee we talked about our respective short-comings writing. He is an engineer and one of the most systematically productive people I know. On the other hand I work from my laptop wherever that might be, I get distracted, I procrastinate, I can't multi-task and tend to focus on the trees not the forest. I am not good at thinking about the next project if the current one is not done.

He is working on a fantasy series. Right now he is focusing on laying out his universe, characters and plotlines — and is not written anything yet. He's ok with that. Anyhow, this was a pretty radical idea for me.

He suggested I make lists, to prioritize, yes, but particularly so that I knew what to do with myself when I hit a wall, so that maybe at the end of those germinating days, I would have at least planted seeds for the next project.

So I spent the morning making lists. The whole morning — LISTS. At the moment it seems like a lot of time passed that has not gotten me any closer to finishing a story, but I will keep faith and see what kind of payoff I get when I reach end of the week staring down a Friday deadline for the mag and Tuesday deadlines for the paper.

Monday is my 730AM hockey game so its not like Mondays are very productive days anyhow.

The debrief

First a recap, last week I did sit down and write 300 words — not just any 300 words — 300 very good words. And then I got up and drank a glass of water, did a waltz around my living room and I sat down and wrote another 350 words. All done. In about an hour and a half. Six hundred words I had been struggling with for three days.

I did have very good interviews to work from on that story. I also took a lot of time over the previous two days to go back over my interviews, pull out the important quotes and figure out where I had to flesh the story out for myself. I loath going through my interviews. As useful as it is to hear the interview, I dread hearing my own voice on tape. I usually only go back to the interviews as an act of desperation. This is a good reminder that there is a payoff to doing it properly. The more I use quotes the fewer words I have to come up with myself.

So, the "just do it" approach worked this time.