How to get your book half-written in 15 days
I hit 30,000 words last week, 15 days into starting the rough draft of my first book, “Nobody Knows Anything, And Other Adulthood Secrets.” I know there will be many drafts after this, but the first draft is important.
It’s been a slog, so I thought I’d explain some things I’ve learned so far.
Setting goals isn’t always about hitting them
My goal was to write 3,000 words a day. I averaged about 2,000 words a day, which is still pretty good. Even though I got sick with pleurisy (what fun!) for a few days of that time, I still managed to keep my word count up.
But even though I didn’t hit my daily word count goal, I still got words on the page. And yeah, my goal was kind of insane. But having a goal meant I was at least attempting to push myself toward it.
You can’t edit what you haven’t written
As you may be thinking, “Wow, Andy, 30,000 words! How many of them are any good?” No clue. I’m not at the editing stage yet. Right now, it’s all about getting my ideas and thoughts out there, according to the book proposal’s outline.
Occasionally I go back and read what I wrote a bit the day before. Then I cringe and hate myself and don’t want to write that day. Because I think it’s all awful and bad.
Then I remind myself I need to write awful and bad so I can edit it and make it less shitty and better than bad. I’ve stopped reading what I wrote the day before, and focus on the day’s work instead. Makes it easier.
Set writing appointments
My calendar has time blocked out every day for me to write. It’s 6:30pm to 8pm, Monday through Friday. Because it’s in my calendar, I usually don’t schedule something on top of it. Or if something amazing comes up that I must do, I move that day’s writing time.
It’s still on the calendar. It’s still something I’m planning on doing. Having a regular time where I know I will be writing gets my brain to start thinking, “Oh shit dawg, it’s 6:30? Time to start being creative as hell and get them words out.” (My brain talks real cool.)
I also have a scheduled weekly writing appointment with my friend Mel, where we Smash Words Together. Sometimes we chat. But mostly, we sit across from one another and write. So far, these have been my most productive writing days.
On the weekends, my writing is less appointment-based. I just try and hit my word goal throughout the day. Because of this, it’s been much more miss than hit. So guess what I’m going to do going forward? Make weekend writing appointments for myself.
Get rid of distractions
When I sit down to write, it takes awhile to get into a rhythm. One text message is all it takes to get me distracted. Now I’m out of it, forced to get back into my rhythm again, if at all.
I now turn my phone to airplane mode and turn off my laptop’s iMessage when I’m writing. A few times I used various apps to block websites (Facebook and Twitter and Gmail) during my writing appointments.
This seems obvious, but so much of our lives are spent tethered to our communication devices. To turn them all off feels isolating, but that’s the point. I gotta be in my brain to write, all by myself. If friends are texting me cute memes, I’m no longer stuck up there. So I gotta kick everyone else out of my head.
Understand it’s a process
This has been the hardest part so far. Whenever you read a book you love, you see the final version. You don’t see the first draft, the second, the 18th, the draft after an editor went through it, the 5th draft after the editor’s changes, the edits after a copy editor fixed your dumb grammar mistakes, the edit after it went through galley proofs.
So it’s hard to wrap my brain around the fact that this is all a work in progress until it goes to press. Which means, for a long time, my words on the page are going to be dreadful.
But I know, having worked in the news business for a long time, that dreadful words can be coached into something better. My recent piece in Esquire, for example, went through a shitload of edits. My editor on that ruled and made my words less bad.
Because that’s how the process works. So I’ve been spending more time focusing on getting my ideas out than making my writing perfect, knowing I’ll be working on it for months and months. My rough draft has lots of notes to myself, such as “PUT IN GREAT METAPHOR HERE, ANDY.”
I’ll put in that great metaphor when I have time to think of it. But I know that, for now, I just gotta get some dumb words on paper so I can make them smarter later.
