J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Tag: Stephen King

Success Will Break You (Until It Forges You)

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On April 23

In Life Purpose & Goals, Metaprogramming

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Conor McGregor just threw a wrench in his own works (if you haven’t been following the drama, McGregor refused to show up for a press conference in Vegas, was cut from UFC 200, and subsequently tweeted his own retirement). He probably didn’t mean for things to grind to such a complete halt, but as he posted on Facebook, the demands of press and promotion were detracting from his training regimen.

Basically, he cracked. He couldn’t handle the pressure of simultaneously training and promoting, and he chose training. Unfortunately for him, the UFC demands both.

I don’t bring up the example to pick on McGregor. Everyone who pursues a dream will break at some point.

It’s too much. I can’t do it. I’m done.

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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.

Creative Output — Setting an Effective Quota

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On May 15

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

Ideal distraction.

Creative work is like sex.  If you always wait for the perfect conditions, you just won’t end up doing it very often.  Are you and your lover both incredibly horny, fully awake, and have unlimited time, a comfortable bed, and total privacy?  Excellent — you’ll have some great sex.  But if those are your prerequisites for doing it, you’ll have sex a lot less than the couple who goes for it even when one or both are sleepy, there’s a loud truck outside, somebody’s parents are stopping by any minute, and the only available surface is the kitchen table.

While there are plenty of possible reasons for regretting having sex, lack of perfect conditions is rarely one of them.  You’re almost always happy you did it, right?

Same thing with creative work.  If you wait for massive inspiration, a giant stretch of free time, complete funding, and a perfect workspace, you’re going to reduce your productivity by 99%.  Waiting for all the stars to align is a crap strategy.  To produce on a regular basis, you need to be able to push through less-than-ideal conditions (both external and internal).

Hemingway -- mirror boxer and quota user.

Work Ethic

Ideally, you’re so inspired by your idea that you lose track of time and the work flows like a cold mountain brook.  You wake up at 6am, get right to work, and are pulled away from your desk only by loud grumblings of your stomach or a fierce need to pee.

That happens to me a few days a year, but more often I have half an idea that I’m halfway interested in, and I need to push myself to poke around the space of possibility (to see if there’s anything in there worth pursuing).

Why push myself at all?  Why not take the path of least resistance and work only when I’m totally inspired?  After all, it’s not the like the world needs more electronic music, or novels, or blog posts.

The answer is simple and selfish.  I feel better when I produce.  Creativity is part of my identity.  It’s part of who I am and who I want to be.  Also, when I go too long without doing any creative work, I go nuts.  I become less fun to be around, and less fun to be.  I get irritable and cynical.

If you’re happy and fulfilled without pushing yourself to do the art (whatever it is), well, lucky you.  For the rest of us, it’s worth coming up with a system for not going crazy.

Creative Quotas

I’ve been experimenting with a new quota system for personal creative output.  Is it jarring to see the words “quota” and “creative” in the same sentence?  Many artists and writers use a quota system to help motivate themselves and set a standard and expectation for daily production.  Stephen King has used a 2000 word daily quota.  Hemingway’s was only 400 to 600 (but with his terse style that was enough).  Other writers (and artists and musicians) set a time quota — work for x hours a day.

I’ve tried both methods, and for me the productivity quota works better than “time worked.”  For a couple months I carefully tracked how many hours I was spending writing and working on music.  The result was interesting (I wasn’t working as many hours as I would have guessed), but not motivating.

In terms of music composition and production, I’m capable of spending many hours on a track making minor edits and tweaks, while not getting any closer to a workable draft.  On the other hand, if I have a clear quota to meet, I’m motivated to make the major changes that need to be made (writing new parts, working on the arrangement).  Even if the end result isn’t usable (I don’t publish everything I write), at least I can call it done and move on to the next project.

My current creative quota is to finish or draft a track or chapter a week, plus one blog post.  I’m in between novels at the moment (I’m outlining, but not yet writing), so my main focus is music.  My current project is a solo EP with apocalyptic and transcendent themes.  I’m also finishing up a Momu album, and working on some dance singles with Spesh.  Each week, either a rough draft or final master of a track gets done.  It’s a fairly easy quota to meet, but so far it’s been effective.  It helps me both in terms of getting started, and also not engaging in endless noodling once I have started.

A good guideline for setting a quota is to consider how much work you can get done under ideal circumstances (abundant inspiration, plenty of free time, a great studio with no interruptions) and then cut it in half (or one-third, or less).  Don’t set your quota at your maximum output — it’s unsustainable and you’ll just end up feeling discouraged when you don’t hit it.

Put in your time.

The Other Side of the Equation

A quota system will help on the quantity side of things, but a quota does nothing for quality.  How to keep the bar high?

1.  You might find that you make better work at a certain time of day.  Work then and only then.  Neal Stephenson noticed that his writing was good in the morning, and crap in the afternoon.  He stopped writing in the afternoon.

2.  Don’t make crap and try to fix it later.  Make it as good as it possibly can be, from the very start.

3.  Shoot for great, not good.  You may not hit it, but you may manage to avoid making crap.

4.  Show your work to just a few people with impeccable taste.  Pay attention to what they say.  If they note problems, those problems are probably real, and you need to deal with them in your work.

No One System

This post isn’t meant to be prescriptive.  Quotas may not work for you.  There are a million ways to kick yourself in the ass.  It’s also perfectly legitimate to refuse to game your own motivational system, and simply work when and if the urge strikes.  You may get less done, but maybe you’ll make better work.

The risk of waiting for inspiration is that the gears do get rusty.  If you work every day (or at least multiple times a week), then everything is lubed up.  It takes less time to get from a blank page (or sequencer, or canvas) to something halfway cool.

What’s the big payoff?  For me it’s that feeling when I look at or listen to what I’ve created and I’m surprised.  I made that?  Really?  Chasing that feeling is worth a little auto-ass-kicking.

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