J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Writing Page 15 of 18

No Rest Days (Until I Crashed)

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On September 2

In Creative Work/Career, Lifestyle Experiments, Metaprogramming, Writing

Turns out I do need rest days.

Turns out I do need rest days.

Over the past few months I’ve been experimenting with writing fiction every day. Sometimes, because of work and family obligations (and/or my own procrastination), I’ve missed a day. But most mornings, I write.

Writing every day — benefits:

  • Writing every day keeps my subconscious mind engaged with my fictional characters. Ideally I wake up thinking about them, knowing what they’re going to do next.
  • Writing every day keeps my momentum going. If I hit a roadblock I’m forced to find a way to blast through it (instead of pausing progress to “think about it”).
  • Writing every day becomes habitual. It’s easier to write every day at the same time and place than it is to “find time to write”.
  • Writing every day creates the expectation among my family, friends, and clients that I will be unavailable for a certain amount of time each day.
  • Writing every day means that I will be writing from a variety of different emotional and energy states … not just energetic inspiration. Ferrett Steinmetz has a good post on this topic.
  • Writing every day provides me with a daily sense of accomplishment, bolstering my self-worth.

My writing routine looks something like this:

  1. Get set up at my standing desk (laptop, coffee*, water).
  2. Meditate for a few minutes.
  3. Turn off wi-fi.
  4. Start entry in writing log.
  5. Open current work document (I use OpenOffice). Revise previous day’s work.
  6. Write until quota is met (my current quota is 808 words). Take breaks only to exercise (free weights to generate lactic acid which in turn adrenalizes the brain) or to use the bathroom.
  7. Complete entry in writing log.
  8. Backup work to DropBox.

*As per this post, I don’t start drinking coffee until I’ve started writing.

Harnessing the Subconscious Supercomputer

We all have access to supercomputer that is constantly churning the available data looking for solutions to problems, new possibilities, and potential realities. Our conscious-awareness is a tiny spotlight that only captures a small fraction of what our brains are “doing.”

If you wake up with an idea or a solution, that’s your subconscious mind at work. Salvador Dali went so far as to develop a ritual to capture the surreal images of his subconscious imagination.

But it’s easy to waste this brainpower. We can waste it by overthinking disputes that are not important, or trying to control situations that are clearly out of our control (like what other people are thinking or feeling), or by obsessing over scenarios that are unlikely to occur.

How can we get the subconscious mind to work on behalf of the interests of the conscious mind? In other words, how can we direct the supercomputer to work on relevant problems and scenarios?

I think the most reliable way to do this is to take up a daily practice that is relevant to our major life goal or vision.

All Good … Until I Crashed

My daily writing system worked well for a long time. But gradually I began to notice diminishing returns. Though I always felt a sense of accomplishment after writing, sometimes I was feeling a sense of dread before starting, a feeling not unlike starting a long work day at a job you don’t like. Once again, Ferrett Steinmetz describes the feeling well:

Since I have arranged my entire life around avoiding that feeling, I knew this wasn’t a good sign. I don’t mind hard work, or giving myself a little kick in the butt to get started, but I didn’t want writing to feel like drudgery.

Last Thursday I went on vacation with my family to Camp Towanga (near Yosemite). Arriving in the mountains, I realized I was exhausted. Not just mentally, but also physically — I’d been lifting weights every day as part of my writing routine, and my entire body ached. I decided it was time to end the experiment and take a few days off.

Judaism takes Shabbat — the day of rest — very seriously. As I participated in the rituals surrounding the Jewish sabbath, I reflected on what a “rest day” means to be me.

What I concluded is that even though I thrive on structure and discipline, rest and relaxation and unstructured time is just as important. I’ve learned that waiting for inspiration is unreliable, but this doesn’t mean that I should always be driving myself hard. It’s OK to rest, to come down, to lie fallow. For me, it’s probably essential.

Not every successful writer writes every day without fail. And those that do pay a price. Stephen King, sticking to this 2000-words-a-day-no-matter-what writing habit, fueled himself with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol (as he describes in gory detail in On Writing). Correlation is not causation; not every drug user is a best-selling fiction author. But there is always a price to pay if you don’t rest.

Fear of Getting Out of Shape

From November to mid-March I took time off of fiction writing to wait for feedback from readers, revise my first draft, and work on music projects. During this time my writing “muscles” atrophied. Despite plenty of ideas, it was a real struggle to get back into a productive flow on the next novel. Now that the flow is back, I’m scared to lose it.

But there’s a difference between taking a day or two off every week, and taking a few months off. If I don’t let myself rest on a regular basis, I might end up with a dry well for years. Bill Hayes has a great essay on this topic.

I’ve made a five year commitment to developing fiction writing as a skill and a new career. That doesn’t mean I have to sprint the entire five years.

Going Forward

Basically, I’ll be observing weekends and holidays. This doesn’t mean I won’t produce on Saturdays and Sundays, but it won’t be quota-driven production. I’ll work on whatever I want to, as inspired.

When I’m writing a first draft, I’m going to aim for 15,000 words a month. That should give me a first draft in six or seven months. With editing, revisions, and breaks to work on other projects, it might take me 18-24 months to complete a novel. Since I’m also working for living, running a music label, blogging, and being a parent, this seems like a good pace. Any faster and I think I’d risk burnout.

Buyer’s Market

Kurt Vonnegut, in the intro to Bagombo Snuff Box, mentions that there was a strong seller’s market for short stories in the 1950’s. These days, there isn’t. For various reasons we now have a glut of fiction writers at the same time the publishing industry is struggling. It’s a buyer’s market for fiction of all kinds.

What this tells me is that it’s more important than ever to focus on quality over quantity. Of course, you have to produce huge quantities of work to get to quality, but at some point you have a choice: work more selectively and carefully, or churn.

Churn has its place. Churn can break you out of inaction. Churn can make you realize you are capable of producing far more than you ever thought possible. But churn won’t get you to great. Great requires multiple drafts, throwing out bad work and starting over, and listening to that annoying whisper in your head that lets you know you can do 10% better if you’re willing to put in 100% more time. Heck, good might even require all those things.

How to Increase Your Daily Word Count by 75%

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On August 11

In Creative Work/Career, Fiction Writing, Metaprogramming, Writing

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Recently (twenty-one days ago), I modified my morning writing routine according to advice by Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit. The change I made was simple: swap out one behavior (fiction writing) for another (surfing the internet) in response to the trigger of preparing and drinking coffee.

My previous routine was something like this:

  1. Make coffee.
  2. Morning meditation (just a few minutes) and journal writing/day notes (also very short).
  3. Shower and dress, have first coffee.
  4. Breakfast with family, get daughter ready for school or camp.
  5. Drink coffee while reading the entire internet, until heart is racing and mind is full of bad news and cute animal pictures.
  6. Force self to begin writing. Write for 30-60 minutes until it’s time for lunch.
  7. Record word count and other variables in writing log.

This actually wasn’t a bad routine. I completed the first half of my current novel this way! I always felt great after meeting my tiny word count quota, and the writing process flowed once I got started (no writer’s block, no shortage of ideas).

But I knew that I was wasting time and that I could do better. In fact, I did better last year, averaging 726 words a day from May 2, 2013 through August 10, 2013. Recently, I knew I’d been writing much less than that. What changed? Part of the problem was that I was writing a sequel, and thus having to check the previous novel frequently to maintain continuity. I was also working with a looser outline this time, writing more by the seat of my pants. I had also lowered my daily quota. But the main problem was that I was getting a late start and wasting time.

Watching the Jonathan Fields interview with Duhigg provided the tool I needed to change. Coffee was a major behavioral trigger for me, but the behavior it was triggering wasn’t productive. So needed to substitute one behavior for another.

At first, effectively, this meant withholding coffee until I had actually started the writing ritual (opening documents, recording my start time, reading previous day’s work, etc.). But over the last few weeks I’ve noticed that the first sip of coffee now propels me into my work. Weird, freaky, easy. I’m back in a good groove.

I wanted to wait a few weeks before reporting any results to make sure the behavior change and productivity boost wasn’t a fluke. Here are the actual results.

Twenty-one days before starting “coffee trigger” experiment:
Total word count: 6,481
Average daily word count: 309
Average start time: 11:33am

Twenty-one days after starting “coffee trigger” experiment:
Total word count: 11,437
Average daily word count: 545
Average start time: 9:20am

Feel free to check my math, but that’s a 75% boost in word count, and I’m definitely getting an earlier start.

The new morning routine looks something like this:

  1. Make coffee.
  2. Morning meditation and journal writing/day notes.
  3. Shower and dress.
  4. Breakfast with family, get daughter ready for school or camp.
  5. Check email, quick look at most interesting news items.
  6. Drink coffee and write fiction for 1-2 hours.
  7. Record word count and other variables in writing log.

What’s Your Trigger?

What I recommend is not necessarily that you tie your creative process to caffeine intake, but rather that you note what environmental and chemical cues already exist in your routine and then tie your creative process to those cues. If you have a bad habit you’d like to substitute with a new behavior, think about what triggers the cigarette smoking, doughnut eating, or internet browsing. Waking up? The startup chime of your computer? The whistle of the tea kettle? What do those particular sights, sounds, and smells propel you to do?

If Duhigg is right, we can’t just “turn off” our reaction to the cue, but we can modify our behavior so that we do something else in response.

Should You Use a Word Quota? What’s the Right Number?

My daily word count may look laughably small to some professional writers. Stephen King’s quota is 2000 words per day, every day. My quota is 600 words/day, most days (weekends and holidays I still write and revise, but without a quota).

My current monthly goal is 15,000 words. That gives me a rough draft in approximately 6 or 7 months. That’s slower than King recommends for a first draft (in On Writing, he states that he likes to bang out a draft in 3-4 months), but it’s where I’m at right now.

Last year, when my daily average word count was higher, I was working with a higher quota (1000 words a day), but missing it a lot. I lowered my quota with the thought that meeting an easy goal provides motivation and ultimately increases productivity, but maybe I made it too low.

Ideally I’d like to consistently hit 1000 words/day without expending too much willpower. Maybe I just need to type faster. As a first step I’m considering raising my quota to 800 words/day.

At the moment I have ideas and rough notes for 17 novels. I’d love to achieve a pace of one novel per year. I realize I’m getting ahead of myself; I haven’t published any fiction, I don’t have an agent or connections. But what I’m doing now is working the process. If I succeed at fiction writing the reward will be more fiction writing, so I might as well get a good system going.

After I finish my current draft I plan to write music for a couple months while it’s being read. Ideally I’d like to get into some kind of regular production schedule where fiction writing is the main activity but there are breaks for immersion into music production, other kinds of writing, collaborative projects, and the like. While I haven’t yet worked out the details, what is clear to me is that I need a daily creative practice (with some intensity and pressure and measurable output) to maintain my mental health, wits, and love of life.

Please share your own thoughts, questions, and experiences in the comments.

Habit Bending — Manipulate the Trigger and the Reward

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On July 21

In Lifestyle Experiments, Metaprogramming, Writing

Coffee is the trigger. Chocolate is the reward.

Coffee is the trigger. Chocolate is the reward.

As regular readers know, I’m in the process of establishing a daily writing habit. I’m doing decently well; on most days I write between 600-1000 words of fiction in the morning. Keeping a writing log has been very helpful on a day-to-day basis, and having a 5-year commitment has been equally helpful in terms of big-picture thinking and motivation.

Still, I’m ironing the kinks out of the system. My biggest issue has been starting work in the late morning (usually after 10am, sometimes as late as 11:30am) when there is nothing preventing me from starting as early as 8:45am. This doesn’t always mean I’m wasting time. Sometimes I’m productive during that morning time (just not writing fiction), but sometimes I am wasting time (on reddit or other online distractions).

I’ve tried using site-blocking software, or just turning off my wi-fi. This works well once I’ve started, especially in terms of preventing tangential “research” that can so easily lead to checking email, clicking on links, etc. If my wi-fi is off, I’m more likely to make a note like “look up native species of evergreens in Harz mountains” and then continue with the actual writing (instead of going to wikipedia and then making a left turn to Facebook or Twitter).

So my problem was really how to start “first thing.” Sometimes I managed to do it, but I was having trouble establishing a consistent habit of starting my work early.

Watching the video below provided some excellent clues.

Duhigg offers some real gems in this video, based on a thorough review of the latest neuroscience. Some of the highlights:

  • Most of what we do during the day is habitual and automatic. To do something that isn’t already a habit requires willpower, which is a scarce and depletable resource (Duhigg uses the analogy of willpower being like a muscle: you can exercise it and it gets stronger, but it also gets tired over the course of a day).
  • “Keystone” habits like exercise and journaling tend to ripple out in terms of their positive effects on other parts of your life (I’ve found this to be true; taking quick breaks to lift weights during writing sessions helps maintain concentration and tends to boost both word count and quality).
  • Once your brain has established a trigger and a reward for a habit, it’s more or less impossible to get rid of it. What you can do is “swap out” one behavior for another.
  • Taking control of your triggers, queues, and rewards is pivotal in terms of establishing new behaviors to replace the ones you want to “overwrite.”

I watched the video, thought about it, and a few hour later got out my P-Touch labeling system and printed out two labels:

  1. COFFEE IS THE TRIGGER.
  2. CHOCOLATE IS THE REWARD.

I stuck them on my computer monitor and went to bed. This morning, I woke up, had breakfast with my family, got the kid ready for summer camp, and waited to have coffee.

At 8:37 I poured myself a cup of coffee, started to write, and had met my word count quota by 10:06. A much better start time than usual. Then I ate some dark chocolate.

I realized that coffee was already a trigger for me: a trigger to turn on my computer and start surfing the internet. So all I had to do was replace the behavior that followed the trigger.

This is only Day 1, but I’m excited enough by this new technique to share it immediately. I’ll write a follow-up post in a few weeks and let you know how it’s going. In the meantime, let me know if you have any success modifying your own triggers and rewards to change behavior.

 

Radical Responsibility and the Creative Process

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On June 24

In Creative Work/Career, Metaprogramming, Writing

I'm starting a new company called "BoozeSnap."

I’m starting a new company called “BoozeSnap.”

Yesterday morning I showed up at my writing desk not quite ready to work. I was in a foul mood, a little tired and lazy, and feeling distracted. Not just feeling distracted but actively looking for distractions (which, on the internet, are not hard to find).

After an hour or two of wasting time and wallowing in my bad mood, I figured out (for the eleven-hundredth time) that I had nobody to blame for my mental state but myself. I could have said no thank you to the 18-year-old Lagavulin my friend brought back from Scotland and poured freely at the D&D game. I could have attended one decadent social event instead of two. I could have eaten better, exercised more, and gone to bed earlier.

Radical Responsibility is a form of self-empowerment. To me the phrase means looking for solutions and possibilities instead of excuses, and never passing the buck. It means being ready, brave, and confident. It means exercising my free will (and rejecting fate, powerlessness, and inertia).

Of course, having an ideal and living an ideal are not the same. But the point of having an ideal is to stop pounding your head against the wall before you hurt yourself.

So … I acknowledged to myself and my family that I was in a terrible head-space (I had kind of been taking it out on them up to that point). I sat down and meditated for five minutes. I turned off the wifi on my laptop, opened my working document, reviewed my notes, started writing, and kept writing until I had met my daily quota.

Immediately my mood lifted. I read the work and felt excited by it. 27 days in a row working on my current novel (“don’t break the chain” in full effect). There’s no better reminder that emotions don’t have to control you than pushing through and doing the work anyway.

But There’s a Better Way …

Ideally, I shouldn’t have to expend so much willpower to get rolling. I wasn’t ready but I could have been ready. Artists can choose to be ready physically by being reasonably rested and fed (but not overfed — less is usually more when it comes to food and creative productivity). We can be ready emotionally by not getting entangled in other people’s drama (Polish saying: “not my circus, not my monkeys”), by avoiding disputes and the need to always be right. We can be ready with an abundance of ideas by paying attention to the subconscious mind, by meditating, and by consuming brilliant work by artists we admire. If depression is holding us back we can do something about it. If we don’t have enough time or a fancy working space we can fit in bits of work here and there; we can create a distraction-free zone in some little nook.

We could make an excuse for not being ready, but do we want to? Why not just be ready when it’s time to work?

The Perfect Excuse Guy

When I was in my early twenties I had a shitty temp job at a warehouse packing boxes. I also had a few techno and house tracks signed and published (one with a major label) and I was working on music about twenty hours a week. There was a guy at the warehouse, probably in his thirties, who was interested in electronic music and frequently asked me questions about how to get into it. I told him my story: I had saved up money to buy a keyboard, figured out how to plug it into my computer, taught myself MIDI sequencing, sent demos to labels, and so forth.

Anything I told this guy, he had a perfect answer for why he couldn’t do it himself. A keyboard was too expensive (I had saved over a year before buying mine). He didn’t have time because of his job (I was currently working the same job and producing music nights and weekends). I would try to explain to him how he could get around the obstacles he was setting up for himself, but he always had an answer ready. I would give up trying to convince him, but then he would start asking me about music production again. He clearly wanted to get into it himself. He wanted me to talk him into it! I tried, but the excuse part of his mind always won out, and finally I just refused to talk about making beats with that guy.

A different guy from the warehouse was a DJ. He heard I was producing tracks and asked if he could come over and check out my home studio. I said yes and we had a great production session — we exchanged quite a bit of knowledge in just a few hours. It didn’t turn into an official collaboration, but it left me wondering why the first guy never asked to check out my studio and see what it was all about (I had done the same thing with Josh Davis aka DJ Shadow a few years earlier when we both worked at Steve’s Pizza in Davis, California — Josh showed me his four-track + turntables recording setup which was an eye-opener for me at the time in terms of ways to make music).

I want to be the opposite of the Perfect Excuse Guy. I want to be able to produce and create even when I have shitty tools, no time, not enough money, no great ideas, inadequate skills, and a lack of natural genius. Because I just jump in and start. And then keep going. And then get better. And then keep going. That’s the guy I want to be, forever, no matter the field or the game.

So what’s your story? Are you ready to be radically responsible for your own mental state and creative output?

Daily Writing — Track Your Progress!

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On February 18

In Creative Work/Career, Fiction Writing, Writing

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“What gets measured gets managed.” – Peter Drucker

About eight months ago I started using a writing log to track my daily work. The practice has been so successful that I feel compelled to share an update, even though I have already written about this topic in an earlier post.

The basic practice is this: in a spreadsheet or text document or a notebook, track your daily writing progress. As a minimum include date and word count (or number of pages if you prefer). I also include start time, stop time, and few other details. The exact details aren’t important; the key thing is keeping a written account of your work.

It occurred to me at some point that writing (and other creative work) was one of the few life areas where I wasn’t keeping daily notes. I was tracking my work hours on client projects (I’m a freelancer, so I have to track time if I want to get paid). I was also tracking my weight, mood, exercise, and various aspects of my health. But I wasn’t tracking my creative work! I wasn’t exactly “waiting for inspiration” — I was still attempting a daily writing habit. But tracking the details dramatically improved my output and quality.

Getting Started, The Ritual

The transition from “lazy brain” (reading, internet surfing, working on easy tasks) to “power brain” (solving difficult problems, almost any type of rigorous creative work, doing anything that involves active learning) is difficult. The brain wants to conserve energy. A work ritual can help with this transition. My own ritual includes:

  • get rid of distractions (work alone, turn off wi-fi and phone)
  • set session goal and estimate time (what do I want to get done and how long do I think it will take?)
  • appeal to subconscious/Other/The Muse (acknowledge that my conscious mind is not fully in control of the creative process)
  • physical stimulants (black coffee, brief bouts of intense exercise to generate lactic acid, the ultimate brain fuel)
  • record-keeping (entry in the writing log, backing up work after session)

I would love to tell you that I’m merrily working away at 6am every morning. The truth is uglier. I get up at 7, get the kid ready for school and out the door, clean up the kitchen, read email, drink some coffee, take a shower, look at reddit, read the New York Times online, drink some more coffee, look at Facebook, take my laptop out to my studio, check my calender, check email again, listen to demos for Loöq Records, maybe master a track or two or work on some album art. Then maybe I’ll get started on writing. Or maybe I’ll procrastinate some more! 10:30am is often when I actually get started, though there’s nothing in my schedule preventing me from starting at 8:45 sharp. I try to avoid the self-loathing that might go along with the procrastination. I get started when I get started. Writing requires concentration, and I can’t blame my brain for trying to conserve energy. Looking at the log is encouraging: a long list of days where I actually worked. Don’t break the chain, says Jerry Seinfeld. Even if you take weekends off, and occasionally take a vacation, having a system that generates steady progress beats waiting for inspiration. Working on average less than two hours a day, I’m on track to complete a 100K word novel a year (including multiple revisions).

Sidebar: Writing As A Career

Writing, like music production, is a long tail career. A very small percentage of writers earn the vast majority of royalties (or, in the case of self-published authors, direct income from book sales). The GINI coefficient (a measure of income inequality) among writers is over .70. This makes the United States (with a very high GINI coefficient of .41) look like a socialist utopia! Here’s a graph of writing income among authors. The majority of authors make less than $1000 a year, and the vast majority (even including only those authors who have been traditionally published) make less than $30K/year. Definitely not enough to live comfortably in the Bay Area.

In January of 2013 I made a 5-year commitment to becoming a novelist. Looking at the graph above, I can see that even if I’m successful (published, good sales), I still may not be able to support myself via writing income. This doesn’t dissuade me. My main motivation is wanting to contribute to the world of ideas, to envision and describe possible and fantastic scenarios for the future of humanity.

So wish me luck — I’ll need your support. And good luck to you in your own creative endeavors.

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