Saturday, August 18, 2012

Confessions of a literary sprinter

Everyone who writes, or wants to write, is interested in how others do it.
    I think of Graham Greene as one of the great professionals among the writing class. He made it his game to get up every morning and meet his daily quota - sometimes 500 words, sometimes 750 - regardless of what he was doing the night before or what he had to do in the rest of a day. He was also one of those who made constant use of his dreams, keeping a dream journal over many decades and using his nocturnal adventures to fill gaps in a story, flesh out characters and generate themes and dialogue. I write about the role of dreaming in Greeneland in my Secret History of Dreaming.
    I have a novelist friend, Terry Persun, whose discipline awes me. He tells me he gets up very early and spends four hours at the keyboard, writing drafts, before he begins his day job. He has managed to publish half a dozen novels with small presses, including Wolf's Rite, has more "in the trunk" (as editors used to say) and will no doubt win a larger audience over time. He is a marathon writer, good for the distance.
    I am willing to confess that I am not a marathon writer, and don't follow Graham Greene's example, though in my dreams Greene has urged me to do so. I write almost every day, journaling, blogging and committing poetry, but don't sit down to work on a book draft until I feel a strong wind of inspiration. When that wind is up, I go with it, writing as fast as I can until exhaustion or the calls of the outside world cause me to pause.
    I am a sprinter when it comes to writing books, not a marathon man or a steady slogger. Of course, successive sprints, with pauses, can carry you the distance of a marathon. To start a sprint, I need to hear a starter's gun, somewhere in my being. It's also helpful to me to see a finishing line in the near distance, which is why I like to have a fierce deadline - near impossible suits me well - with people waiting, eagerly or anxiously, for me to cover the distance.
    Which leads me to a more general reflection on the writer's trade.
    As writers, we do well to draw on habits that served us well in any kind of work we have undertaken. If you once worked on a farm, for example, you know how to adjust to the seasons and natural rhythms in a writing cycle, and may have the patience to seed your creative earth, in due time, and wait for things to sprout. If you have thrived on a 9 to 5 schedule, then set yourself regular hours to produce. If you have prospered in group work situations, with lots of meetings and interaction, then you will probably want to be part of a writing circle. 

    If you were good at pulling all-nighters to get a term paper done, as a student, you may find you are just as good at pulling all-nighters with a current writing project. If you were a journalist, as I was earlier in my life, then you may be geared to giving everything it takes to meet a deadline, and ready to thrive on crisis. That's one of the reasons I am a sprinter when it comes to writing, even if it's a matter of delivering 400 pages rather than 400 words.
    I like to write a book in about three weeks, six weeks tops. It may take me years to hear the starter's pistol and get running, though. So I am always liable to be overtaken by the steady person who covers some of the distance every day. When I hear the fable of the tortoise and the hare, I feel for the hare.
 
 
     

9 comments:

Stacy Allen said...

Excellent. Loved this. I am a writer and live in a world peopled by writer friends, and I recognize myself, and others in your wise words.

Amy Brucker said...

I've always wondered how you've managed to be such a prolific writer!

Question: I remember you posting something about sleep patterns and waking in the middle of the night for a couple hours and then returning to sleep. I just read a similar statement in Seth Speaks and Seth highly recommends this pattern as a way of increasing dream recall, creativity, intuition and consciousness. Do you ever employ this sleep method? If so, does this influence your writing, creativity, dream experience, etc.?

Robert Moss said...

Amy - Very briefly, I have been a biphasic (and sometimes polyphasic) sleeper all of my life. I write in the introduction to my "Secret History of Dreaming" about how a "two sleeps" daily round was characteristic and natural for humans until quite recently. I can't remember a night since I was very young when I have slept without rousing - often to write, research, play in the hypnagogic state or simply play - for more than 3-4 hours. So yes, to put it mildly you could say that there is a strong connection between my creative life and my sleep/dream/HG cycles.

I must add that when I am in the midst of a burst of creative writing, I sometimes forget to sleep in the conventional sense for long periods and enter a time of continuous conscious or lucid dreaming, whether in bed or walking about or in my study. And will then grab an hour or two of relatively dreamless regenerative sleep to replenish my body.

Amy Brucker said...

Thanks for the explanation Robert. My intention is to experiment with this sleep patter, but I'm finding it difficult to wake up enough to get out of bed. It seems like it's been a natural cycle for you ... for me it is like torture! :) I'm sending myself daily and night intentions to make the change though. We shall see what happens ...

Robert Moss said...

Amy -"sleep patter"? I would pay attention to what's showing through that interesting slip! Above all, I would absolutely NOT try to shift my body into a state it resists. We have different natures and different cycles, and must not try to corral ourselves into some notion of what is correct for others. So if your body wants to stay in bed, let it! My body wanted to stay in bed for a lot longer than is typical for me this morning, and I listened to its needs :-)

Richard J Reeve said...

Finding a steady rhythm with a writing practice has been elusive here as well, though an attempt to align with the tides as of late has been surprisingly useful.

Robert Moss said...

Richard - I have always liked William Stafford's comparison between writing and swimming the Australian crawl, not only because I am an Australian who likes to swim in that style. Swimmers in open waters would certainly need to pay attention to tides.

Roger Z. said...

"As writers, we do well to draw on habits that served us well in any kind of work we have undertaken."

Love this, use what you got, very helpful, thanks. i'm a panic and be pushed person myself.

Jeni Hogenson said...

My husband and I made a sincere attempt at Seth's sleep suggestion a number of years ago. We kept it up for a month, but failed miserably as we found ourselves both becoming increasingly irritable. When we were both just about ready to bite the other's head off, we had a good laugh and returned to the standard pattern. I suspect that we failed because we tried to make the pattern work with a 9 - 6 work day. That ultimately meant two unnatural patterns; working all day combined with a forced early bed time and then another un-natural mid-night wake up. Ultimately it didn't equal greater creativity, dreams or consciousness on less sleep. Just a couple of grumps in the middle of the night. But it did result in some interesting dinner conversations!