Let me start by asking a simple question.
How do you brush your teeth every day?
Come on!!! Think. Don’t be shy!
Do you brush your teeth by hanging upside down?
Do you brush your teeth by standing on one leg under an icy cold waterfall?
Do you eat your breakfast and brush at the same time?
Or do you simply vacuum clean your teeth with a high-velocity spray of water (you can even try with whiskey or rum)?
If you are doing none of these things, then you are like me; getting up half-asleep from the bed, banging my head once or twice on the door, somehow managing to apply toothpaste on the brush and then finally shoving the whole thing deep into the mouth, waiting for the “refresh” magic to happen.
Now let me ask you another question.
How do you attend a friend’s marriage?
Do you just wake up from last night’s boozy hangover and show yourself for the occasion all disheveled and reeking of stale liquor?
Do you show yourself for the occasion all dressed up in the oldest possible ragtag dress lurking in the deepest corners of your wardrobe?
Or do you just call your friend and order him to get married in your disorganized house (you are too tired to go !!)?
I am sure as a normal sane person you would do none of the above. You would plan to be your best for the marriage; decked in your best clothes, ensconced in your most expensive perfumes and finally putting up your best possible behavior for the occasion. After all, it is a once in a lifetime occasion and you don’t want to screw it. You want to make the event a lifelong cherished memory.
So why is the difference in treatment here in both the activities? Why is that we treat some activities with disdain and some activities with the highest possible admiration and care?
Any activity about which you are not passionate about turns into a routine chore, a chore which has to be done, dusted and ridden off.
And any routine activity is always devoid of creativity. That is how our human mind works.
And that is precisely what happens when you resolve to write every day: you soon slip up.
If you’re not a full-time writer, this is essentially unavoidable. An early meeting at work, your kid falling sick, an afternoon meeting that runs long — any number of common events will render writing impractical on some days.
And this slip up has disastrous consequences
Your focus changes from writing to “meeting the schedule”. You simply have to meet the deadline somehow, of 1000 words a day, come what may. Your motivation changes to procrastination if you are unable to write someday.
And you soon reach a stage when somehow you strive hard to get the monkey off your shoulders, a routine chore which just needs to be completed.
And this mindset results in a writing which is shit, stale and stagnated. There is no creativity; only an abstract end goal which needs to be accomplished.
That is why “Write Every day” is a flawed axiom, a terrible advice to be given to any budding writer.
Wait a minute, this is not how Great authors work.
Stephen King recommends it in his instructional memoir, on writing that he follows a strict diet of 1,000 words a day, six days a week).
Haruki Murakami gets up at 4 am every day and works straight for 6–7 hours.
Don DeLillo works in spurts of 4 hours every morning, afternoon and night that too on a manual typewriter.
And the list goes on……..
So how do they manage it?
Their secret is repetition. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training.
And This comes with practice and experience. After all, they are professional writers. It is their job, their bread and butter. They simply cannot afford slip-ups.
And as would-be writers, following blindly the schedule of professional writers would be sheer hara-kiri. In my experience as a writer with a day job, I’ve found it’s crucial to avoid rigid writing schedules.
Instead of a rigid schedule, it is best to follow the psychology of the brain and use it to our best advantage. The human brain in large part is driven by its ability to process ideas in smaller, nimble packets rather than one big marathon session.
Smaller ideation sessions get assimilated faster in the larger scheme of things and provide a steady stream of motivation to keep plodding.
In short, you can’t force your brain to generate creativity as per a rigid schedule. It will only do so in small bursts, spread over an interval of time. That is a human flaw and as writers, we need to find out ways to work around that to produce our best work.
And one of the ways I follow is a 3 step process.
• Create a brand new work only once a week. (Once works for me. You may try twice but not more than that.).
• Edit the same work ruthlessly throughout the week. Edit, redo, modify, revalidate continuously as and when new ideas pop up. Remove the fluff and share the work with your peers for feedback. Do not start anything new. The goal of the week is simply to polish the existing work.
• Publish the polished work at the end of the week, once you are satisfied with what you are reading.
Always remember your goal is not quantity writing; your goal is to produce quality writing and improve on and on with every article. Creative and good writing does not need a torturous schedule.
All it requires is a set of small, clear goals that you know how to accomplish, and then approach scheduling with flexibility. Be aggressive, but remain grounded in the reality of your schedule.