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With a whisky and french cigarettes, or not at all!

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Happy Dave Has Left

08:51 / 14.08.06

Someone posted a question at Ask Metafilter about the writing habits of famous authors. I've been clicking around reading various tales of cast-iron word counts, writing standing up, endlessly revising a single page, taking benzedrine, writing long hand then getting out the scissors and a myriad of other oddities that seem to help successful writers navigate the travails of Creation.

Why is this stuff so fascinating? Is it because it feeds the idea that there each person has some ideal routine or way of doing things that will cause them to burst forth in creative ecstasy? Do we hope to discover a way of working that we can appropriate? Is it the tendency of readers and aspiring writers to look beyond the text and attempt to identify with the authors that they love? Or just another expression of the eternal human fascination how our illusions are created for us?

Possible sub-topics:
What authorial oddities have you heard or read about?
How much of this is myth-making, and how much reality?
Might belong in the creation:
How do you write?
Which of the 'great author's' tricks do you think might work for you, or which are are you using already (myself I stand by Stephen King's ten pages per day come hell or high water, works a treat).

Whisky Priestess

09:13 / 14.08.06

Ten pages of longhand or single-spaced, typed A4?

10:12 / 14.08.06

Yeah, but it just says: "All work and no play..." yadda yadda yadda.

10:13 / 14.08.06

Neither, these days. King went digital years ago, like everybody else, so now it's 2,000 words a day—at least according to On Writing. And that's *every* day, including Christmas and his birthday.

Happy Dave Has Left

10:39 / 14.08.06

Ten pages double-spaced - though I'm finding I'm starting to write in text files a lot more, which don't have spaces. It stops me fiddling with ephemera like margins or fonts or what have you, which I can do for hours.

Whisky Priestess

12:06 / 14.08.06

That's more than 2k I think - more like 3.5-4k. In which case, respect.

When I've had a tight timescale I've found it useful to set myself a weekly target - say 10,000 words - and that way I can be more flexible about how much I write per day as long as I hit the overall target.

This is better for me as I don't have King's luxury of the working day in which to write. (I do, on the other hand, have the luxury of cable TV and a social life, both of which eat into writing time ...)

12:48 / 14.08.06

F Scott Fitzgerald apparently used to get through thirty five beers a day, so I try and aim for that, on the basis that after the twenty second or so, the writing will probably take care of itself.

13:29 / 14.08.06

I go for long walks and over the course of a few months hammer out the entire story in my head. I work it forward and then back for continuity then sit down and write it out in a mad rush. Feels like giving birth to Athena then then editing process happens and it feels like I'm sending the work to finishing school.

I don't really see the external world while I'm internally storytelling and shall most likely be smushed by a car one of these days as I'm visiting a faraway land.

I've also found it very useful exercise to make myself write one page stories.

Happy Dave Has Left

13:48 / 14.08.06

I never got past 15,000 word short stories until I tried out NaNoWriMo. Having committed to my friends and relatives that I was going to write 50,000 words in 30 days, I put a lovely tracking spreadsheet together and had at it. Being the geek that I am, plotting line graphs and conditional formatting to show whether I was on target or not really helped, and I hit the date, with about an hour to spare. It's not as romantic as 35 beers a day, but it worked.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

14:28 / 14.08.06

I have to use the greatest of discipline to get any writing done. I refuse to leave the computer until at least 3-5 pages worth of fiction is on the screen.

I continually give myself deadlines to finish things. This is why I cannot look at shiny things. They will distract me.

Whisky Priestess

16:13 / 14.08.06

Only problem I have with NaNoWriMo is what the fuck are you going to do with a 50,000 word chunk of writing? It's a very awkward length: too short for a novel and too long to be a short story, so unless it's in the sci-fi or romance genres (highly likely, admittedly) writers have got sod-all chance of getting it published.

Which is a shame, cos 50,000 is quite a lot of words.

16:52 / 14.08.06

With NaNoWriMo, publication isn't the point. That 50,000 words is an end in itself, not a means. At the end of the month you've got this thing, this completed thing, but it's not for anything. Like a lace doily.

Whisky Priestess

17:48 / 14.08.06

Yeah, I know, I know, I'm going against the spirit of the exercise - but I sort of like the idea that I'm not just writing for myself and a few bored surfers. It spurs me on. I have lovely daydreams of how my story will look in Granta or Waterstones.

And also, it seems a bit lacking in gumption on the part of the NaNoWriMo organisers to only go up to the (assuming average novel length is 100,000) halfway mark. I mean, what the hell - why not go the whole hog and make people write 100,000 in a month? It's only 5,000 words every working day. That'd make the hardcore for whom 50k is the work of a few furious evenings sit up and take notice. That'd sort the sheep from the goats ...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:51 / 14.08.06

I'm determined to do NaNoWriMo this year.

Back to the original topic, though... Philip K Dick used to do monumental amounts of speed and churn 'em out. I have to admit, I can see his logic- since I stopped taking amphetamines, my writing has dropped WAY off.

Happy Dave Has Left

20:16 / 14.08.06

In defence of NaNoWriMo, I knocked out the first 50,000 words of my SF novel during that first month. Granted, the next 30,000 words were put out at a significantly slower pace - but it was the kickstart I needed.

Here's a gag - James Joyce is in his study, sprawled across his desk in an attitude of utter despair. One of his friends comes in.

"Why, James, what's the matter?"
"I.... I only got seven words today."
"But, but James, that's superb for you, a veritable fountain of production!"

"But," he says, slamming his head down onto his arms in self-loathing, "I don't know what order they go in!"

paranoidwriter waves hello

20:33 / 14.08.06

That made me laugh. But then, I'm just frustrated that I can never get past the first page or so of both 'Ulysses' and 'Finnegans Wake' without feeling stupid and lazy. Jealous, moi?

Stoat, I've just been leant "I am alive and you are dead: a journey inside the mind of Philip K. Dick" by Emmanuel Carrére. Looks interesting and I'm hoping to pick up tips.

04:35 / 15.08.06

o, hot buttered, you just made my day! thank you.

reading ulysses at the moment, marvelling in the constant constant word sound play, sometimes even just scat like a dr zeuss rhyme but always so right. fantastic, but exhausting. but i can just see him arrayed in such a moment...

Whisky Priestess

07:49 / 15.08.06

My novelist friend always quotes Evelyn Waugh(? I think) on this subject, who said there were peckers and swoopers. Swoopers do nothing for ages then get it all done in a night/month - whereas peckers peck away at their writing, a little every day, until it's finished.

He's a pecker and hates it. I'm a swooper, and love it (although I've been experimenting with pecking recently). But then again, he's got three novels published and I've got none (and tend to start new things rather than perfect the old ones), so which is best? You decide ...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:16 / 15.08.06

Funnily enough, pw, one of the guys at work has just lent me the very same book...

Happy Dave Has Left

09:48 / 15.08.06

I think I'm some kind of weird peck/swoop hybrid, especially when it comes to the painful business of the rewrite. I can pootle along doing a chapter a day during rewrites, then sometimes I'll sit down of a Sunday afternoon and work my way through ten. On the actual 'shitty first draft' side of things, I'm still fairly inexperienced - short stories are generally a day's solid work. My NaNoWriMo novel first 50,000 was a bit of a constructed environment, so I'm going to be interested to see how it will be different when I try my first non-Nanowrimo novel (which I've sort of started, but haven't gone back to since I started edits on the nanowrimo novel). I would imagine that I will be knocking up a spreadsheet to track my progress. Not as romantic/eccentric sounding as writing standing up in the nude while smoking a pipe or whatever, but it seems to work for me. Damn my day-job for making me think like a project manager, even when in the throes of creativity!
/facetiousness

10:22 / 15.08.06

Do we hope to discover a way of working that we can appropriate?

I think that's what it is for me. I hope to have my ideas of possibly productive modes broadened. I hope that if I know enough about the odd ways other people 'get stuff done' then next time I have an impulse to , say, write in the bath on a sheet of leftover wallpaper with lots of different colours of felt-tip pens I will actually let myself try it rather than dismissing it as a crazy idea.

paranoidwriter waves hello

11:56 / 15.08.06

Stoat, I read the first four pages last night / this morning to try and help send me to sleep, but I had to put it down as it was too bloody good (already!) and served only to get my synapses firing at a faster rate. Indeed, I think my friend's right: I'm going to love this book. I don't know what Philip K. Dick himself would have thought of it (of course), but so far it seems sensitive, witty, revealing, and VERY engaging. I'll maybe start a thread on it, once I've finished it, for more of a chin-wag? Also, if we'd have been born at around the same time and place, I figure Phil would have been my best friend as a kid (I don't care how daft and fanboyish that sounds).

Happy Dave Has Left

13:30 / 15.08.06

Saturn, I think that's definitely it for a lot of people, including me. I know for myself that I've recently realised that while it's kind of fun to try out new ways of going about things, little rituals that might get me in the right place to get something written, a lot of the time it's the classic Hemingway line about the first rule of writing - apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. And staying there. And actually cranking out the work. The concept of the 'shitty first draft' has helped me immensely - chuck it down as fast as you come up with it, do your rewriting later.

13:43 / 15.08.06

Yes, I do love that attitude for cranking out the words. I mostly write non-fiction, but I write to find out what I know, what I want to know, where to start, and then I end up writing the answers to those, including why I have written that there in the argument. I like to see writing as a mode of learning, and getting anything moving into words works wonders.

I can see a lot in what you say about getting on with it - which means maybe the whole fascination with the strange habits is a kind of avoidance, or blocking tactic? Kind of wistful voyeurism rather than the horrible bare truth that it only needs to be done to get done? Reminds me of some of the recent meditation threads in Temple.

Last night I happened upon a great bit of conversation about writing to answer the arguments of others. That writer described a process of writing in spirals down towards the problem in the other person's argument: circling in upon what was questionable, which I thought was amazing & great. I recognise now that I can go through that process but often I abandon it from the fuzziness of the beginning attempt, rather than trusting that the writing will take me where I need to get to.

Whisky Priestess

21:38 / 15.08.06

Also, if we'd have been born at around the same time and place, I figure Phil would have been my best friend as a kid (I don't care how daft and fanboyish that sounds)

You do know he was an utter nutter, don't you, PW?
Read Valis if you don't believe me.

Happy Dave Has Left

09:26 / 16.08.06

I've just found this fucking amazing link on the Ask MeFi thread which prompted this thread. It's the Paris Review's collection of Writers at Work interviews - 300 of the dashed things! Look here. Ahh, sweet cat vacuuming, procrastinating goodness.

B..but, I'm reading about writing, don't you see? It's not avoiding actually writing, it's research! Or inspiration! Or both!

Stop looking at me like that!

Happy Dave Has Left

09:32 / 16.08.06

And here's the New York Times Writers on Writing series. You can get a login with BugMeNot.

Ha, do some writing now! Nooooooo, too much procrastination material - DAMN YOU FOUL INTERWEB

Happy Dave Has Left

14:42 / 16.08.06

And here's Atlantic Magazine's So you wanna be a writer - advice from Atlantic magazine editors article.

What?

Whisky Priestess

16:27 / 17.08.06

Is this what has prompted your transformation from Hot and Buttered to Ecstatic?

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

16:48 / 17.08.06

Generally, my writing method follows in a particular fashion-

1. The first draft rarely reaches past half-way through the story, because I abruptly stop and decide to rewrite from scratch, usually from another pov/verb tense/etcetera. Usually long hand.

2. "The Casualty Draft." Seriously, at least one major character always dies in the second draft, often quite horrifically. This death scene is usually cut and the story reworked afterward.

3. Third draft is usually looking at the whole thing and trying to figure out what the actual, non-death ending is, what's significant, occasionally reworked from a different perspective.

4. Fourth draft is all about the line edits. Often I'll copy and paste sentence by sentence and rework each one as I go.

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

14:49 / 21.08.06

I am in no way a writer, but if I were, I'd be a swoop-person, as well.

I've been forcing myself to write something, anything, in response to whatever word I pick out as the title of my comic, before I look at it (the comic in question). This has been reasonably successful (in that I write 500-1000 words several times a week, now), because the vague parameters let me write about anything, and the word gives me a starting point of some kind, even if I dump it right away.

I also did the whole nanowrimo thing, this one time, which was pretty good. I mean, I had all these exams and things in the middle of the month, so I was writing several thousand words a day when I was writing, but I was amused almost all of the time, which was good. I also work well to deadlines, and not at all, basically, without any pressure.

I think it's probably time I tried to write something again, but I am also one of those people who will get no ideas worth following up on for some months/years, and then be forced to write by an idea which will not leave the head in any other way (i.e. my 'novel', Young Cthulhu's Asian Adventures, which is... a horrible pastiche of pulp stuff and cartoons from my childhood and various other lame things, which sprang pretty much full-formed into my head).
I also abuse parentheses and the word 'also'.

So, Ideas, eh? Where do they come from?

15:45 / 21.08.06

Ideas come from taking not ten, not twenty, not even thirty, but at least forty grammes of teh 'shrooms in a single session, RRF, otherwise you're basically just not trying hard enough.

You have to work at these things, you know?

Happy Dave Has Left

15:51 / 21.08.06

Ahh, that'll be the old pop culture myth that creativity is indelibly linked to chemical stimulants....

paranoidwriter waves hello

16:02 / 21.08.06

I also abuse parentheses and the word 'also'.

Yeah, me too. Has anyone done any decent workshops for people who "Abuse Parenthesis", yet? If it helps, I suppose we all do it in one form or another, but sadly it's often necessary when rebelling, encouraging independence and evolving.....Poor "parenthesis"...

You have to work at these things, you know?

I agree. You have to give it your mind, heart, wallet, and soul. Nothing is free, least of all a good idea, eh? Indeed, I borrow from places I've almost forgotten about and been ripped off countless of times before without even realising it. I try not to though. Indeed, I'm skint and still trying to learn.

Ahh, that'll be the old pop culture myth that creativity is indelibly linked to chemical stimulants....

Well they are though really, innit? One might argue your system is full of chemical stimulants. And look at Syd Barrett (!!!1111!!!!!23!!!33!!!!44!!, or whatever).

23:39 / 21.08.06

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't want to read any book by a writer who didn't drink coffee.

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