First Draft Thoughts: Mindfulness

Today I dread writing.

I’m 60% finished with this book, square in the saggy middle, and aside from a few tentpole scenes, I have no idea what comes next.

Years ago, when I was much more inexperienced with this feeling of dread, I would let the anxiety win. I would stop returning to the page. I would finish nothing.

Now I see it for what it is: a necessary but temporary discomfort on the way to having a finished draft.

Doesn’t mean I feel it less, or that the duration is shorter than before. Often not. Often it feels worse than it ever has. Often I toil for days or weeks before I finally break through.

But I know now that if I keep working and sit with the discomfort long enough, there’s a finished book at the end of it all.

This process-this sitting with discomfort thing–is actually what made meditation and mindfulness make sense for me.

I’ve practiced meditation for years. Sometimes I find it helpful, but often I’m just going through the motions, meditating because I said I would meditate, but not really finding the flow.

Now I get it: it’s not about finding the flow, it’s about learning to sit with discomfort. Practicing sitting with discomfort, even.

Writing first drafts (this is the year of first drafts) is a whole lot of discomfort, in my experience. And I’m hoping that by learning how to sit with that discomfort, day after day, a little bit at a time, I’ll also get better and faster at drafting, and treat it with understanding and compassion rather than judgment and dread.

Unanswerable Questions

I started 2024 with big ambitions, hopes, goals, and all that other stuff that comes with the start of a new year. Three days in, I was hit with a debilitating migraine. Now all of those carefully made plans for January need to be re-assessed.

This is annoying, but it's also life.

I'm also hitting the midpoint of a book, and I'm wondering if I have made a disastrous mistake 13,000 words ago. Is it better to write through this draft as-is, or will it be better to go back and rewrite the book from that point forward.

This is also annoying. It's also life.

I've been taking a lot of stock of my writing life recently. I've been in this industry for over a decade now. Many of the writers I started with have moved on to new lives, new hobbies, new careers. I, myself, have also tried on new lives, new hobbies, new careers. I don't get excited about things the way I used to. Or panic the way I used to. I've hit a stretch where there's a comfort in the routine of writing. Even on the bad days.

I always thought I would hit a place where I had all the answers, if not through experience, then through osmosis. But the truth is, I don't know how to write a book today any more than I did twelve years ago. I've been agented for eleven years, and I still get nervous sending things in.

I still stress about whether I've made a mistake 13,000 words ago, and fret over if it's better to fix it now or continue as-is and see how it plays out.

The difference between me now and me then is that I now know it doesn't matter. There is no wrong choice. The best choice is the choice that gets the draft finished. And if it needs work after the fact, even a substantial rewrite, then that, too, is just life.

2023: A Year in Review

Goodbye, 2023!

My word of the year for 2023 was Deconstruct, and I don't know if I did that intentionally or if it just sort of happened, but a lot of structural things happened this year that allowed me to really look at the what but also the why and the how.

I've talked openly here and also on social media about my health struggles, and 2023 was also a challenging year in that I've had a frozen shoulder since July. There's some neck and spine stuff, too, that have made it pretty awful to sit at a desk and type. So one of the challenges I had to contend with this year was deconstructing my writing process and rebuilding one that wasn't entirely based on fingers-on-keyboard typing.

Let me be the first to say: dictation did not come naturally or easily to me. It really got to a point where it was either learn how to write books in a different way or come to terms with not writing them at all. I'm glad that toward the end of the year, I settled into a new process and it felt like it wasn't entirely wasted effort.

I also had to deconstruct how I think about my books, and publishing, and all the things that can go wrong when you're a writer. There's a never-ending supply of shit to worry about, and I was burned out from worrying about it all. So now with the help of a therapist, I worry about it less. Or try to, at least.

In addition to choosing a word for every year, I also choose one aspect of writing to study for a whole twelve months. In the past, I've studied character, queries, pitches, and intimacy. This past year, I studied and practiced dictation. (I will practice it even more in 2024.)

In 2024, I'll be studying fast drafting, finishing, and discipline.

I didn't finish any books in 2022. I finished 2 books in 2023. I want to finish more in 2024. I want to reset that habit of finishing, because the past few years have messed it up a little bit.

If you're on the fence about whether you should choose a word of the year or an area of focus for writing in 2024, I can't say enough good things about it. Especially if there are areas that you know needs work--Taryn and I both groaned when I told her I was thinking of making drafting/finishing my focus for the year, because we knew that was an area I needed to focus on.

Anyway, on to the stats!

2023 Stats:

Words Written: 105,567
Books finished: 2
Books published: 0
# of days written: 212
Longest writing streak: 5 days
Average words per day: 733
Average minutes per day: 43
Most productive days: Mondays and Wednesdays
Least productive day: Sunday

Pep Talks

Lately I've been starting my writing day by asking myself:

What is the pep talk I need to hear today?

It turns out that every day, this answer is vastly different than the day before.

Not only that, but sometimes the person I need to hear it from is not even me, but someone else, someone I may or may not have access to, which can get really tricky.

For example, a couple of days ago, the pep talk I needed--ridiculously enough--was encouragement from my fifth grade teacher, who is not only deceased, but also wasn't my favorite person and also not the nicest or most encouraging person when she was alive.

It was a situation where my brain told me I wanted something I was literally never, not in a million years, ever going to get.

This, friends, is what therapy does to you. It not only makes you aware of situations like this, but it also makes you aware of situations like this, if you know what I mean.

Because I think without therapy, I would go through my day, not really knowing what it was I thought I needed, only knowing I was never going to get it. But because I've gone to therapy and I've done the work and I can put the name to the thing and process through some of it, I feel like I'm required to then untangle some of those knots.

Lucky me.

My fifth grade teacher...I'm sure she had her own demons. Some of those demons, no doubt, were fifth grade kids. Have you met fifth grade kids? They're brutal. But let's just say...she was in the wrong profession for her temperament.

I have always been an avid reader and writer. I was that kid with a notebook when I was nine. The I-won't-bother-you-if-you-don't-bother-me type. The kind who would rather sit in the library than play outside. We could have just been cool with each other. But no.

One day a kid named Travis jerked my notebook out from under me, held it up for all to see, and announced to the class that I was writing a book and I wanted to be published.

The class laughed.

And then Ms. Sade joined in.

"That's ridiculous," she said.

She could have just said nothing at all. She could have said, "Dude, stop touching other people's shit." But no.

This isn't really a sore spot for me now, but it gutted me at the time. I was eight years old. I didn't know any better. All I knew was to be hurt.

So when I have these moments where I need reassurance but from a specific person or a specific point in the past, I try really hard to perk up and listen to what it's really asking.

This particular instance was asking for someone to stand up with a piece of my work, like Travis did, and ask: Could this be something? Or will someone laugh at it?

And the solution was simple: I sent a chunk of work to my agent, whom I trust will not laugh at me, and asked for feedback.

There's a whole big can of worms that comes with asking for what you need, too, instead of waiting for someone to magically guess, but I don't have time to get into that today. I have a kitten sleeping on my lap, and my coffee is fresh, and I have more words to write before the kitten wakes and the coffee goes cold.

So I will leave you with this, fellow writers and future me: don't be afraid to ask for what you need when you need it.

Writing Sprints

Today I am doing writing sprints to get my word count in for the day.

What are writing sprints?

Writing sprints are when you take a big chunk of time, ie: your writing time for the day, and you split it up into writing time and resting time, so that you get stuff done but you also don't burn yourself out or stress yourself out.

For me, today, this looks like 15 minutes writing followed by 15 minutes resting. You can write or rest for longer or shorter, depending on how you're feeling. The only rule is that you make the rules.

(If this sounds a lot like the Pomodoro Technique, you're not wrong! It's pulled directly from that, probably!)

Writing sprints are probably one of the best tools in my writer toolbox. Also, I think, the most intimidating, for me. Because what do you mean you just sit down and write for fifteen minutes, without stopping? Do you know what kind of crap I can come up with in fifteen minutes of writing without stopping?

One of the things that has tangled me up this year is this weird sort of stuck headspace, where I'll spend hours going over and over and over one chapter, one scene, without moving on. I know better. And still I get caught in this endless loop.

Writing sprints are what help me move forward in times like this, without too much mental frustration. Fifteen minutes on new things, and then I can fret over the old words for a bit. Then fifteen more minutes on new words... And so on.

Therapy has taught me over the years that when your mind gets "stuck" or "hooked" on certain things, it's likely for a very good reason, usually to protect you from something, even if that something or its methods don't make sense. It would be easy for me to say, "Going over old words is a stupid, useless, waste of my time, so I just stopped doing it!" But the reality is, it's likely a manifestation of something much greater, like anxiety, which isn't so easy to quell. So I just roll with it, and try to find a happy medium in the meantime.

Another thing that has been really helpful is to remind myself that every book I've ever finished, every book I've ever loved, every book I've ever submitted, every book that's ever been accepted, every book that's ever been anything has been written sloppily, in little bursts at a time.

Every. Single. One.

So my anxiety over the clean-up process--whether I can do it, whether it will be too hard, whether future me will be capable--is fear-based, not fact-based.

I can do hard things, because I have done hard things.

P.S.: If you would like to join me in writing sprints, beginning Thursday, December 28, 2023, 9PM-11PM EST, I'll post threads here and on Threads and Instagram where you can join in weekly!

Same Liz, New Books

Many (many, many) years ago, when I was a college student writing my first book, I started a writing blog as a way to help me stay focused. The logic went: if I was blogging, then I was writing, and if I was writing, then something would eventually get done. And if something got done, then I had something to edit. And on and on.

Really, it wasn't a bad plan. It got me through two majors and five (5!!) books. I learned a lot (from other writers and trial and error) and I shared a lot and then...man, I just got tired. I got a job. I co-founded a non-profit. I started doing some ghostwriting. I developed a stress-related auto-immune disorder that causes my immune system to eat my organs whenever I get really excited or really scared or when it's Tuesday or I have to pee... Basically, I finish a book and go into liver failure. Eat a bagel, go into kidney failure. Wake up five minutes late, have no hemoglobin. It's fine. Totally fine. Everything is OK.

Point is, after a ten year hiatus, I miss blogging. Not so much for the accountability, because I don't need that anymore. But because I miss connecting with other writers on a more-than-120-characters level. And because, more than anything, I miss getting in touch with my process, that writer part of me that is always evolving, that doesn't get a proper check-in often enough.

(Sorry, writer me. You're important! You matter! It just doesn't always feel like you matter when there are other less important but more pressing responsibilities breathing down my neck! We're going to do better, you and I. I promise!)

Today I started a new book, which I love and think is great, except that right now the writer part of me is struggling with finding balance and being OK with not writing ALL THE THINGS! ALL THE TIME! The past few months have been the most creatively fulfilling months I've had in years, and it's been a fight to share my time with other responsibilities. Like, you know, work. And sleep. And self-care.

Twenty-two-year-old writer Liz would not have let those things get in the way of the words. She would have found a more accommodating job, loaded herself full of cigarettes and Red Bull, and powered through. This is probably why thirty-six-year-old writer Liz has no hemoglobin. :)

I just have to keep repeating to myself that small chunks of time are just as important as larger ones, small word counts add up just as quickly as big ones, and books that get continuous work will always eventually get finished.

That's the only way I have ever finished a book and the only way I ever will.

Do the work. Every day. Beginning with day one.

And all you have to do on day one?

Just start.

Required Reading for Writers

Back when I worked for The Bank, there was a stupid rule that we had to read this bohemoth of a policies and procedures book every year before December 31st. Every year, I'd put it off until the very last week, hoping I could somehow get out of it. And every year, my boss would swish past my desk, wearing a look on her face like she'd just swallowed a toad, and I'd know my plan had been foiled. Again.

I don't rightly recall why I had such an aversion to reading the policies and procedures handbook, except to say that half the stuff was either outdated or outlandish or both. But I do remember how it felt to come back in the middle of December, after my winter vacation, and see that 5" maroon binder staring me in the face. It's the same feeling I got last week, when I looked at my history final and realized everything I knew about the Civil War came from True Blood.

But as I was tidying up my office, the thought occurred to me that maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to spend what little bit is left of 2010 re-reading some of my favorite writing books.

Here's a short list:

• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• The Fire in Fiction and Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass
• The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
• See Jane Write by Sarah Mlynowski & Farrin Jacobs
• On Writing by Stephen King
• Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing by Evan Marshall
• The Plot Thickens by Noah Lukeman
• Save The Cat! by Blake Snyder

I have others on my shelves that I turn to periodically, but these are the ones I find myself going back to over and over again.

How about you? Which books are your favorites, and which would you deem required reading for writers?

The Idea Store

Earlier this afternoon, I asked a friend of mine, "Where do your ideas come from?"

"I buy them from an ad in the back of Rolling Stone," she told me. "I dunno. All over."

This morning I pulled up a book I finished in September to get it ready for an edit the size of a rewrite. I don't know how to explain what it feels like to read your own work except to say that it's different than reading someone else's work. The flaws are more pronounced, the characters more familiar. Sometimes I run across things I didn't even know I knew, and I'm amazed I even knew it to begin with.

Growing up, I was never one of those people who had to ask, what should I write about?  What should I draw? What should I play? What should I wear? I had to ask those things a lot. (I still do.) But I always had an idea for something to write, even if I didn't know how to execute it properly at the time.

So how do you open your own Idea Store?  I have no idea clue. But here are a few rules that have helped me over the years.

Give up on your muse.

I hate to break it to you, but muses? They don't exist. What does exist is hard work. If you really want to be a font of ideas, stop waiting on them to find you and start looking for them. Everywhere.


Don't panic.

Every now and then, the thought occurs to me that I might never have a good idea ever again and will somehow die of writer's block. 

(I know it's not really possible to die of writer's block, but sometimes it feels like it is, and that's all that matters.)

The cure for this is simple: step away from the computer and do something fun. Play mini-golf. Do the dishes by hand. Read a book. Take a nap. Play with the kids/dog/cat. Acknowledge a loved one with more than an annoyed grunt. By the time you're done relaxing, you'll most likely have had an idea. Crisis averted. It's only when you let yourself go into panic mode that all hell breaks loose.

Stop window shopping.

Keep a notebook and pen with you everywhere you go, and jot down ideas as they come to you. If you lollygag around waiting for validation, probably you're going to forget the idea you were ambivalent about in the first place. It's better to write it down now and analyze it later.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Challenge yourself every day to craft a story in your head about a song, a painting, a picture or a building. Whether you put it on paper is up to you.

Don't expect every idea to be a good one.

Most of the ideas I have are crap, and I mean that in a Battleship-Earth-meets-Dumb-and-Dumberer kind of way. You could bottle some of my ideas and fertilize your farm for years to come, that's how crap they are. But I jot them down anyway. You wouldn't believe how many good ideas come to us dressed in a suit of poo.

Mix-n-Match

Take two been-there-done-that ideas, shake them up, and see what happens.

Those are just my tried-and-true favorites, and as always, your mileage may vary. So how about you? How do you go about generating ideas?