How to Spend Less Time Writing (and Why It’s Good for You)
Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash
I used to have a sign in my office. It was a photo of a cat lazing on a sunny windowsill, and the caption read, “The fun isn’t in doing nothing. It’s in having lots to do and not doing any of it.”
I admit, I’m certainly contrary that way. I’ll spend time doing anything I’m not supposed to be doing, but when you tell me I have to relax, or laze around in bed – whaddaya know, all I feel like doing is jumping up and getting stuff done.
It’s reverse psychology at its finest. A well-known human paradox that as soon as we have to do something, that’s the very thing we resist doing.
But still, you may be asking, Why would I want to spend LESS time writing?
As I mentioned, resistance plays a big role. We’re so over-scheduled, over-stuffed with things to do, that anything that isn’t an immediate crisis feels like “just one more thing to do.” This includes writing. Writing takes effort. When you’re burned out on a million other things, it’s hard to muster the mental energy to focus on writing.
Also, we tend to think we need more writing time than we do. When we think we need a huge swath of time to write, paradoxically we scare ourselves into not doing it at all. If you give yourself a limit that seems doable – say, 15 minutes a day, or 250 words, 5 days per week – it tricks your brain into thinking it’s not that big a deal. It becomes just something you do as part of an ordinary day.
But, you may say, it takes time to get into the groove! I can’t just sit down and write!
This is where consistency is key. You have to make it a habit to at least look at your project every day, or even on a 5-day schedule. This keeps it top of mind, but also keeps it percolating in the unconscious. Your brain gets the idea, “oh, we’re working on this story now.” It’s amazing how the muse shows up on schedule, once it understands what the schedule is.
Also, writing expands to fill available time, a.k.a Parkinson’s Law. As much as we might want six hours to write, we’ll likely drag our feet for much of that time. Whereas if you have 15 minutes, or a half hour, or one hour, you tend to focus and settle down faster, and get more done. Not that daydreaming isn’t a big part of writing.
Which is also why it’s good to let yourself take the time to dream a little. Not every writing session has to be a sprint. Sometimes you need to take a walk, or doodle, or do some free association on the page. If it’s just about hitting that word count, it can become a chore. You also may focus more on the goal than the process.
Less time to write means less time to stress about how good or bad the writing is. Especially in first-draft mode, focus on just getting words down. Editing every sentence as you go is usually a recipe for stalling out in the middle of a draft. You start overthinking it, when you just need to write what excites you now. This goes for discovery writers as well as outliners. No outline should be a rigid straitjacket at this stage. The real writing happens in revision, when you can take your time and get it right.
It also allows you to set goals that align with the time you have available – not the time you wish you had. If you’re committing to 15 minutes per day, you’re not going to hit 1,000 words, unless you type really, really fast and don’t care what comes out.
Finally, you need time to fill the well. In Refuse to Be Done, Matt Bell talks about the necessity of Art Life and Lived Life. Art Life is filling the creative well with art, music, books, theater and movies... all the cultural input that feeds your work, and creates the conversation between your work and the rest of the literary world. Lived Life is, well, actually living your life – all the experiences and encounters we draw from in our art.
Take time for what Julia Cameron calls artist dates, fun solo excursions or activities that feed the inner artist. Without regular input, writing becomes drudgery – boring for the writer, and thus boring for the reader.
So, write less, but be intentional about your writing. Have a set time and place to write. Understand what stage of the writing process you are at, and allow yourself to fully inhabit that stage:
Generation – when you are between projects, and playing with words, scene, and story.
Pre-Writing – planning for the story you want to tell. This includes a lot of noodling, research, thinking, scribbling scenes that may or may not make it into the story, perhaps doing an Inside Outline...
First Draft – when you are just figuring out the bones of the story, getting scenes on the page, developing characters and plot points.
Revision – the multi-draft stage when you are first, figuring out what you need to change or fix, then working through the manuscript to make it happen.
Final Polish – Line editing, proofreading, preparing for publication.
Understanding the stages allows you to decide to create goals that are geared toward the correct stage – word count goals, time goals, chapter goals, etc. When you’re Pre-Writing, you’re not jumping the gun and trying to force the story before it’s ready. When you’re drafting, you’re not trying to edit at the same time. And so on.
Then, you take just enough time to work each day or week, to accomplish the daily or weekly goal you set for yourself.
Committing to writing less may actually lead to more writing! Who knew?
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