I just finished my eighth novel. Yes, I’ve only published one. No, you’ll never see the earlier ones. It would be more charitable to call them novel-shaped objects. But they sure taught me a lot about getting things done. This is not about the writing, particularly. There are some universal truths about work I’ve learned through this process that I hope you’ll find at least interesting if not helpful.
(That should be the new tagline of this newsletter! Hopefully, this is interesting if not helpful…)
1. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PROCRASTINATION
Don’t get me wrong, I am a master procrastinator. Witness eight novels. It took active work to not publish after a while.
But the more I work, the more I realize delaying work, writer’s block, fear, and all of these tactics are rooted in good instincts in my brain. It usually means something is wrong with the work itself and if I resist writing something, it shouldn’t get written. Sometimes it means I’m terrified of the marketing side of things and I need to shrink those tasks. Sometimes it means I’m just exhausted and I can get things done later if I just take a nap.
So now, if my brain is telling me no, I figure it has a good reason, and I just have to figure out what it is.
2. HOW I FEEL ABOUT THE WORK DOES NOT CORRESPOND TO THE QUALITY OF THE WORK
This is another thing that I believed for a long time. There are a lot of days I’m very lucky, and when I sit down, I’m inspired and things go quickly.
Then there are some days where every word is like pulling teeth. I’m not inspired. I don’t like what I’m doing. I don’t have faith in what I’m writing but I can’t think of anything better to write. And so I’m just slogging through a scene that I’m sure will be terrible and deleted.
Looking back over what I’ve done, that isn’t the case.
In fact, sometimes the slog is better, because I’ve had to go slower and be more careful and it reads better than the inspirational word vomit. And sometimes it does happen and I have to delete some dreck that took me way too long to write.
But this is my point, whether I hate every minute of it or whether I love every minute of it does not correspond to whether I’m going to like it or keep it later.
This is really important in being able to keep going.
3. SITTING DOWN TO WORK AND ACTUALLY DOING THE WORK ARE TWO DIFFERENT SKILLS
Writing is a skill. Making sandwiches is a skill.
Showing up to work is a different skill!
Managing your time and energy and distractions and pain to be able to sit down and be productive is just as hard to learn as where to put a beautiful adjective.
It’s helped immensely with the pants-in-chair struggle to separate out the skill of sitting down to work and the skill of actually working. On any given day, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you which was more challenging, but it gets easier when I treat both like the truly challenging skills they are.
4. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE PRODUCTIVE, BUT IT CAN BE FUN
I feel like there are two kinds of articles in the productivity space. First are those that say buck capitalism! You’re just here to beeee. Versus those that say: how to get forty-five things done before 5 AM!
Both of them miss the fact that, yes, modern productivity culture can kill you if you let it. (Ask me how I know.) But at the same time, most of us like producing things. We’re a generally industrious species. Work is a huge source of pride for most of us, even if and perhaps because it’s so bloody hard.
5. CREATING A SCHEDULE IS NOT THE SAME THING AS PERFORMING THAT SCHEDULE.
Just like sitting down to write and writing are a different skills, sitting down to write (and exercise and eat and relax and socialize) every day is another different skill.
I am a champion schedule maker. I used to be a project manager, so you better believe I can make a schedule like nobody’s business.
Am I capable of performing that schedule every single day? No!
And that’s okay. Work is hard. Sitting down to work is hard. Sitting down to work consistently is the absolute bloody worst!
I used to make the big mistake of thinking if I planned, it was real. There’s some evidence that this is how your brain works. If you think about something, your brain reacts as if you did it. That’s really cool in the imagination department, but really hard when you’re trying to build a life you like.
Now I know that if I make a change in my routine, it’s going to take time for me to practice and get good at that routine, even if individually it’s made up of things like making lunch or writing a scene that I have done 1000 times. Putting them together on a regular basis is hard and I’m not going to do it every day starting tomorrow.
But I can eventually get there if I keep trying.
6. IT’S IMPOSSIBLEISM, NOT PERFECTIONISM
This deserves its own note, but it’s worth touching on briefly that the expectations in your head are fantasies. They’re not perfect – they’re impossible and naming it perfectionism still makes it a little bit attractive.
The inputs that went into your vision aren’t real. Whether they were from the culture at large or your family of origin or the really inspiring entrepreneur who is probably gonna be dead by 40 given his schedule, just because you dreamed them does not mean they’re possible.
Real life is always chaotic and much messier than that, and if you have not lived up to your expectations, step number one is to examine your expectations not upbraid your imperfect human squishy toy of a body for failing.
I mean, yes, it’s possible your expectations were reasonable and you didn’t live up to them, but in my experience, 99 times out of 100, it’s my expectations, not my performance that was the problem.
7. THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS WASTING TIME
When I was younger, books were all I really cared about. And everyone said there’s more to life. But I really didn’t think so. And if I didn’t do this, I felt like I would have wasted my life.
There’s no such thing as a waste of life.
Having spent a great deal of the last year unproductive, dealing with vertigo, that lesson was hammered home. Whether you spent the day binging the latest TV show or writing a novel or working your dead-end job or playing with your kids or just waiting for the world to stop spinning, there’s no jury out judging your day.
8. FINISHING SOMETHING, EVEN IF IT’S BAD IS REALLY SATISFYING
There are lessons to be had in completing something, even if you don’t end up putting it out, even if it’s not good, and even if it is a novel-shaped object rather than a novel.
Finishing it is delicious.
And with that, I’m done🙂