3 Ways To Find Your Book Writing Rhythm
Learning How To Write For Long Hauls
Why Writing A Book Isn’t About The Book
Over the past few months, everything about my writing practice and process has begun to shift. This isn’t unusual. I’ve been writing since second grade (although I didn’t write *serious* stuff until fifth grade), but the uncertainty that accompanies the inevitable shifts messes with my head at times.
Developing a trust in the unseen variables of the creative process is a requirement when we undertake the task of writing a book. It isn’t an enjoyable aspect of creativity, but it is one of the most rewarding when what we thought, felt, or believed to be true (without having proof at the time) turns out to have a life of its own.
For me, the process of writing a book differs from the process of other types of writing because book writing must be approached as a sustainable act where I invest energy every day, in some way. I need to feel connected to the work to be reminded of where I’m going with it. Poems, essays, blog posts, and articles? They come in fits and starts, finding finality over a series of drafts.
Books, not so much.
Writing a book is a nebulous act that begins as sparks and sputters in the brain and mind, then settles in the bones and bloodstream. The patience required for this alchemical process—when one knows that they are writing a book but has no proof of this except the sense that the entirety of the text exists somewhere— can be excruciating.
The Need For A Sustainable Writing Process
I am currently in this space where The Book is a felt sense to me. My muse allows glimpses of chapters and subtopics. Whole, fantastically-scribbled pages (by hand—always by hand) come after morning walks, between household chores, and before teaching evening yoga classes. When I do sit to write, not only do I pull in threads that I am weaving into story, but also, even more slowly, discovering the routines and habits that will sustain me for the duration of the book-writing process.
Last week, I discovered my still-blossoming process requires a minimum of one hour a day, seven days a week dedicated to typing those ink-blotted pages into my Google doc manuscript draft. This discovery both excited and disheartened me. I am confident this hour of writing can accomplished even on the days where I feel most rushed, yet there’s a disappointment in not being able to write five or six hours a day.
After all, more time spent writing means I’m a better writer, right? It means I can do all the things that validate writers—improve productivity, progress toward agents, editors, and readers—sooner. Sure, but it also means that I’d burn myself out before I get halfway through the manuscript. Awareness and acceptance of my energy, ability, and limitations are just as (arguably, more so) important as speed in finding sustainable flow.
That’s why this piece by Caroline Donahue totally called to my heart. I love it for a number of reasons: I love when what we read speaks to our creative soul. I love that Caroline has the ability to step back, see her process, and share it in a way that resonates. Most of all, I love the awareness of one’s natural pace being at the heart of every writer’s process. Not ideas, not output, but the rhythm and rate at which our creative self navigates projects—that “Manageable Yet Meaningful” label she gives to the flow of her own writing process.
Our Creative Rhythms Are Unique
Like life and everything in it, creativity exists as a unique and universal innate rhythm. Unfortunately, this isn’t how book writing is taught or explained. Often, much of what we believe to be true about the creative process is based on unconscious acceptance of presumptive information spewed from systems outside of our writing world. If we don’t finish our work as neatly and quickly as other authors, we’re not a good writer. If we don’t sell our work for a huge advance, we’re not worth reading. If we don’t have thousands of social media followers, we’re not likable.
But if we can conform our process to the ridiculous expectations of these irrelevant, systematically-created rules, we can certainly create the products they desire to fuel their capitalistic and materialistic goals.
Alas, creative processes do not flourish in conformity. Our writerly rhythms are born of things that move us deeply, in places we cannot touch or see. My own rhythm relies heavily on the internalization of nature’s companion rhythms absorbed over the course of my life: waves lapping the rough Lake Erie shoreline, long stretches of mid-summer weeks watching clouds shapes float by, walking abandoned park paths lined by January snow-heavy pine bows, losing all sense of time while admiring the frilly pink frippery of crabapple blossoms on the tree outside my window.
Like nature, our individual creative rhythm will unfold of its own accord. We simply need to step back and observe. But unlike nature, the conditioned human compulsion to equate time with production throws a wrench in our process.
3 Ways To Find Your Unique, Sustainable, and Creative Rhythm
So how do we step back and find a flow that will nurture us when we lack absolute certainty on where we’re headed? Here are a few things that have worked for me:
1. Give Yourself Permission to Explore
Over the past three decades, many of my manuscripts endured painful, premature deaths. Some died in outline form. Others found their ending after a few drafts. A few lucky ones that survived through to that elusive final draft stage now languish in my basement in cardboard boxes with pretty labels.
The process then was something like this: As soon as a book idea bubbled up, I’d immediately run with it as far and fast and hard as I could. This method was foolproof for one reason: it ensured that burnout and disappointment came twice as quickly.
The problem wasn’t a disconnect with my ideas—it was a disconnect from my creative self. My life (at the time) bursted at the seams with being a wife, mom, and teacher. No matter how strongly an idea pulled at me to write into book form, my life (and creative mind) did not have the bandwidth to allow that book to take up the space it needed in my daily existence.
Many times, I questioned if I had the permission to be a writer. There was barely time to decompress and breathe while taking care of others, lesson-planning, and scheduling the upcoming week at the end of the one before, let alone take time every single day to devote to something that existed only in my imagination. It wasn’t an excuse or a cop-out, it was a matter of having no energy for myself at the end of the day. I loved the idea of how writing a book felt, but the reality was that the creative process and timeline I was accustomed to writing for on freelance pieces did not work for book-length ideas in my life.
This time, when the edges of this book began tugging on the periphery of my creative awareness, I made a deliberate choice to approach the writing process differently. I gave myself permission to collect and play with thoughts, ideas, and images that come to me without the need to produce anything. I am allowing my writing process to be a place of joy, feeling it unfold for me each day rather than needing to pump out work like an Olympic sport.
If you struggle with taking up creative space, give yourself permission to explore your process and search for what brings you joy there. Prime the pump by reading about authors and their rhythms, their processes, their inspirations. Start documenting what sounds interesting to you (and what doesn’t). Tap into all of your feelings during writing: when you feel accomplished, apathetic, or inspired. Our feelings are a path to our truths, and our creative process is our truth. Your rhythm is there, waiting to be discovered. It’s your job to unearth it.
2. Refine Your Sense of Awareness
Writing a book isn’t about the book. It isn’t even about the story you’re telling (I imagine I’ll get pushback on this). Writing a book is all about the act of staying in touch with to your creative rhythms—which, in turn, connects you directly to your process.
Read that again: writing a book idea to a draft completion is one hundred percent the result of being in tune with your writing process. And if you can’t detail the elements of that process, words will be a struggle.
The key to finding and staying in touch with your rhythms is developing and refining a sense of your creative awareness. In the times I failed to follow an idea into a complete manuscript, I was connected to the idea of finishing that book to prove something to others. I was not connected to the idea of what I needed to be able to nurture this idea over the long haul.
An easy way to develop a sense of awareness of your creative rhythm is simple: keep a notebook, a log, text yourself—however you choose to document—each time your writer Self is engaged with work related to your idea/process. Document the day, time, what you were doing, what you were working on, your result, what you felt. Note patterns of energy, people who drain you, locations that inspire you. Be curious and open.
Using this method (combined with my Morning Pages practice from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way), I came to realize that the seeds of some of my chapters arrived as random thoughts on my two-mile morning walk. It took a few voice texts to myself when ideas popped up before I started recording myself. When I arrived home, I had orally worked out parts of chapters ready to be transcribed. I never imagined I’d brainstorm full chapters while out chasing the sunrise, but by expanding my creative awareness into all the parts of my day, I’ve found where some of my best ideas linger, keeping me connected to my process through actions that are already where I spend my time.
3. Choose A Minimum Daily Value
Any discussion of the rhythms of creativity that doesn’t address the lowest of lows is simply invalid. We are all enamored with the creative process, but if we don’t acknowledge the moments where that creativity bottoms out and how to stay afloat in those times, we’re creatively bypassing the truth of the matter.
That truth is that there will be days, perhaps weeks or even months, where we are not inspired to write. It might be physical, mental, or emotional blocks. It might involve our job, our loved ones, our sense of security and peace. It might even be moments where we feel our creative vein has completely collapsed and will never again flow with the ideas that once brought our writer soul to life.
Regardless of the cause, we can honor our creative Self by acknowledging that these moments will happen. Just as the sunrise returns to the sky each morning after the darkness of night, so too will our sense of creative direction.
Using what we find in the refinement of our creative awareness can help us build a bridge now to transverse that future, inevitable gap in inspiration. We do this by defining for ourselves the Minimum Daily Value (MDV) of what we can expect from ourselves to remain connected to our sense of creativity.
Our MDV is an act that we can commit to achieving EVERY SINGLE DAY in order to stay in touch with that rhythm and flow we are trying to build to carry us through a big writing project. Establishing an MDV is an act that empowers your connection the flow of your work with minimal effort.
Our MDV is a molecular-sized creative habit. It is not designed to get us to finish a book in a year, or meet some other external goal. The goal of the MDV is to keep our creative heart afloat in times of stress that threaten to distance us from what we are working hard to achieve. What small, creatively intentional act, can you can do day in and day out, without hesitation, when your energy or mindset or emotion or life will not allow you to do anything else?
I have two MDVs. My first is a series of habits that I built when I became a widow and struggled to get out of bed each morning. I designed it to help me function not as a writer, but as a human. Wake up, watch the sunrise, meditate for six minutes. Perhaps that’s what your MDV is: six minutes of something.
For my book, my MDV is basic: I write for one hour, every single day. Even on my busiest days, even when my heart is heavy, even when I doubt that I have a creative bone in my body, I still write one hour a day. Practice and a knowledge of my creative cycle has taught me that I can manage that.
Your MDV does not have to be words or word count. Maybe it’s journaling. Maybe it’s a walk with your pet. Maybe it’s watching a sunrise and connecting to yourself. But it is a promise to your creative soul and to the work you’re doing that for as long as you can, you will show up for it.
What Creative Rhythm Nurtures You?
Finding our way through life challenges to stay connected to our creativity is no easy feat. Even for the most seasoned writers, coming back to the page when struggles pull our attention away from our work can be difficult. This is especially true on the journey of writing a book idea into life. But by giving ourselves permission to explore our unique processes, more finely tuning our sense of creative awareness, and establishing a minimum daily value for our work, we can discover the nuances of our creative rhythm to sustain our writer soul through the process.
What current elements of your creative rhythm nurture your process? How do you remain connected to the act of writing a book when life tries to intervene? I’d love to hear in the comments, or share with me in a DM. The more we allow our creative self to shine, the brighter the world becomes.