1:14 AM thoughts on writing

Let me start this in a strange place, as befits sleepy ramblings.

I believe every writer should, if only for the sake of their own development, give writing advice. I'm not saying others should take it, but if writers want to think deeply and specifically about what they are doing and how it helps them succeed, then being forced to think about what they believe in as good writing practice until they can expound it clearly is helpful. Is this mandatory? No. People succeed at doing things without doing what I think they should all the time. Is this a good idea for certain people? I'm sure there are some very instinctive people who'd overthink doing this. Nevertheless, I will put it out the way it is. It's a rule that is made to be broken, but also maybe to challenge some people who mightn't otherwise believe in themselves. That's why I'm making it absolute, then not.

In my version of advice, I am actually writing my own list. I don't know at what point (if ever) I'll share it (although obviously the feedback given on *your* advice is sometimes the best advice *you* can receive, so I should share it). Something that will be on it is -

If at all possible, form a routine. 

It doesn't have to be 1,500 words a day. It doesn't have to be writing for 30 minutes, and stopping exactly at 30. Whatever works, works. But I can't think of a skill on earth where routine doesn't help. 

Which is why I'm writing this on Thursday. This is when I talk about writing. Even if it is late and I have nothing to say. Because the routine matters. 

However, I will try and milk some thoughts.

In the last week, I've mainly been skipping between projects. It's been a fun way to keep it fresh and get back into difficult projects, like the manuscript that's been stuck on final draft forever. I told my friends I was just going to scrap the redraft and stick with the original and... I didn't. Because I like the redrafted chapter one more. Because there's some vital additions in this new draft that I think need to be there. So I'm stuck weaving them together and making new transition scenes on Chapter Five. But I'm nearly there!

I think it's when you're doing this sort of editing that the advantages of routine really kick in. The initial burst of joy from creation is 'easy'. Plodding through the same words for the nth time, obsessed with the need for them to be perfect, is a long fucking way from it. Here, kinda outta nowhere, I'm reminded of the cafe scene in Heat.

Vincent: So, if you spot me around the corner...you gonna walk out on this woman? Not even say goodbye?

Neil: That's the discipline.

Vincent: That's pretty vacant.

Neil: It is what it is. Either that, or we better go do something else, pal.

Now, we ain't armed robbers or homicide detectives, but we do have something in common with De Niro and Pacino's characters here - and to a certain extent them too. Writers don't always have a regular type life. We're busy tormenting ourselves alone in rooms while everyone else is off socialising. Not that writers don't drink! But we make sacrifices. We make ourselves do things we don't want to do, maybe turn down things we'd like to do, because we want to write that damn story. Like them, many of us don't really know how to live a life where we don't write, and many of us don't want to. I'm thinking of a friend who's speculating that his fatigue condition is linked with his writing, and wondered what choice he'd make if he worked out it was definitely linked. That's a brutal choice. I don't ever want to make it.

But, in making the choice to write - and not just for myself, but in the hope this is seen and appreciated and lives - I have to commit to a discipline. A routine. Do the vacant, painful work. Because it's that or do something else.

There's a lot of stuff out there about how writers should be easy on ourselves. It's not wrong. But it's the flipside of a coin and on that other side it says "because sooner or later we have to be hard". We can't punish ourselves for having lives other than writing, for not always having the energy to do that, because that is self-destructive. That needs to be shouted over and over. But at some point, if you want to be pro, you have to do that murky middle, that last edit, and all the stuff writers hate. And I haven't mentioned query letters yet!

But it is what it is. Either that, or we better go do something else.