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.

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!