Moderation in all things

[swan_tower]

The more time passes, the less patience I have with the notion that “a real writer writes every day.”

Try subbing in some other words there and see how that sentence sounds. “A real teacher teaches every day.” “A real programmer programs every day.” “A real surgeon performs surgery every day.” These are all patently absurd. The teacher, the programmer, and the surgeon are all better at their jobs for not going to work every day. For taking some days off.

I wonder if what’s going on here is a weird collision between the romanticization of ~art~ and the #@$*%! “Protestant work ethic.” On the one hand you have this sense that writing, or any art, is a ~calling~. And if it doesn’t call to you every day, why, then, you’re not a real writer, are you? On the other hand you’ve got Max Weber frowning over your shoulder and questioning whether what you’re doing is Real Work — so you have to silence him by keeping your nose to the grindstone every day, without respite, because otherwise clearly you’re just a good-for-nothing layabout.

(I’d like to pause and appreciate the value of the tilde for indicating a kind of vaporous awe around a word. Italics just don’t convey the same effect, and neither do quotation marks.)

Writing is Real Work. It may be fun work (a thought that would probably horrify the Calvinists Weber had in mind), but it requires effort, concentration, hours of your life. Some days it’s easier than others. But it’s also weird work, in that sometimes the most vitally useful thing you can do is go for a walk or wash some dishes, because while you’re not looking, your brain sneaks off and figures stuff out. When people ask me how many hours I work each day or week, my response is to give them a baffled shrug, because there aren’t clean boundaries around it; I’m definitely working while I’m drafting a story or answering emails or going over page proofs, but I also may be working while I’m vacuuming the rug or brushing my teeth or reading a book. Which means that days in which I’m not at the keyboard may still in some fashion be work days — but thinking of them that way is pernicious. If an idea comes to me, awesome, but in the meanwhile I’m going to have a life.

Because contrary to what corporate America wants us all to believe, we can have lives outside our jobs, and we should. We will not just be better employees for the time off; we’ll be better people, too. And that’s just as true of writers as it is of anybody else.

Comments

[sovay]

sometimes the most vitally useful thing you can do is go for a walk or wash some dishes, because while you’re not looking, your brain sneaks off and figures stuff out.

+1. I don't function as a writer if I don't get significant chunks of time when I don't have to be working, which includes trying to write as well as my day job.

[yhlee]

This, so much this.

[sholio]

Letting go of the "write every day" advice and learning to work with my natural tendency to write hard and then need downtime for recharging was perhaps the single best thing I ever did for my writing career.

I think for some people, it is necessary, because they have to keep the habit and lose it easily. And especially for writers who are first starting out, I think it's important for them to explore their own work process and try different things 'til they figure out what works. And a lot of beginning writers do have more trouble sitting down to write than writing too much and burning out (which is my issue), so on that level it's good advice ... sort of. But it doesn't apply to everyone, and it also doesn't recognize that (as you point out) a lot of the real work of writing does not involve actually writing.

[green_knight]

Programmers get it in spades, too. In your spare time, you're supposed to work on your side projects, and build your github profile, and work on Open Source software - if you're only programming 9-5, you're not a real programmer.

Yeah. 60+ hour work weeks for programmers are just as productive as you'd imagine.


And yet. I did go through a phase where I made myself write code every day to break through specific issues. Even a single day off gave the brainweasels room to play and threw me off course for several more, so I learnt from that and wrote code every day without fail and finished the first draft of an app that I'd wanted to write for a long time and solved a couple of complex problems along the way; solutions that had eluded me when I coded mainly on weekends and needed time to get back into that headspace every time. I did this for about three months.

And then I stopped coding every day because that's no way to live, and I wanted time to do art (same headspace, go figure) and write more and pursue other hobbies, but it gave me a much-needed breakthrough and I can NOW spend three weeks not coding, open up the file, and know what I'm doing and how I solve the next problem and have no weasel attacks.

I'm no longer convinced that there aren't some writers (especially new writers) for whom 'write every day' is exactly what they need, and for whom writing five days a week doesn't cut it, but that doesn't mean that 'in order to build your practice, try writing every day' has a right to morph into 'you're not a real writer if you skip a day'.

I also don't feel that it's healthy to aim to do this indefinitely, because sometimes we need time off to be human, and it's one thing to vanish into a cave for a few weeks during a particularly horrible deadline, and another to prioritise any one thing - however important to you - over caring for your fellow human beings and for yourself.

[pameladean]

I cannot emphasize enough how much I agree with this post and how pernicious I find the causes of that aphorism. I like the way you teased out the probable origins.

My husband is a software engineer, and for ten years when he was doing contract work, we shared an office. We were amused and often surprised by how much the one resembled the other, including the fact that "Staring blankly out the window IS working."

P.

[swan_tower]

Yes, I meant to add to the original post that I do often write every day when I'm drafting a novel, because it helps a lot to keep the momentum going and my train of thought fresh. And for people who are just getting serious, then practicing that kind of discipline can be good. But even then, if their plan is "write six days and take one off" or whatever, that's also good discipline and worth applauding.

[swan_tower]

Right, see a reply above re: the benefits of practicing some kind of discipline, and also the maintenance of momentum when I'm in the middle of a novel draft. But when I'm done with a draft, you damn bet I take time off -- or sometimes I need a day to recuperate in the middle, or something's scheduled that doesn't leave me time for work that day.

[swan_tower]

Any kind of mental labor can share that trait, I think. My sister loves to mention a philosophy professor of hers who was once late to class because he was busy thinking. <g>

[mrissa]

I think one of the things the people who are pushing back with "but maybe some people need that" should consider is:

For how many hours?

Because sure yes momentum joy blah blah blah, I've done it myself and will do it again, our culture is VERY good at finding the reasons why working every second is the right thing and VERY bad at finding the reasons why ever taking a break is good.

Except.

I've also seen pretty convincing studies that productivity DOES NOT INCREASE above a certain number of hours a week, and that number is not 80 or even 60 hours. Or...even close. More than that and you're getting the same productivity out of more time spent. Especially in fields that take any amount of thought and creativity. So if you're working every day, make sure you're not working enough hours every day to drag your actual productivity per hour down. That's a real thing, and we are culturally conditioned to act like it's not, like working twice as many hours automatically means twice as much produced.

[varidog]

Amen.

I usually take weekends off. I write about an hour a day, and the rest of that time is my brain perking away, or not perking away, depending. Some things only resolve when I sit my but down.

[pameladean]

That's a great story. And yes, anything involving mental labor is going to have times when the laborer looks like they're just dinking around.

P.

[swan_tower]

Yeah, the math is not a straightforward "twice as much time = twice as much result." Maybe you get one and a half times as much result instead. And the longer you try to drive yourself at that higher rate, the more likely it becomes that twice as much time = less result total, because you're burning yourself out.

[swan_tower]

One of the hard things about this job is figuring out when the right answer is to apply boot to ass, and when the right answer is to take some time off.