The myth of the writing routine

Second books are hard

I’ve been making a living as a full-time writer for over a year now and in that time I’ve written almost 100,000 words that have ended up in the bin. Now, I’ve almost finished the first draft of my second novel and I’m finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I hope I’m not jinxing anything by saying this, but I think this is the one. Or at least, I think that I’m going to finish it. There’s no guarantee that anyone will want to buy it, or that my agent will even like it, but thems the breaks! I hope that I've got to a place where I’ll be proud of my work even if nobody wants to pay me for it, but honestly, I’m not sure.

So, I’ve been writing my second book while living off the money from my first book, in the hope that someone will like the second one enough to give me money to write my third. It’s a bizarre and confusing way to make a living, and one that involves a lot of adrenaline and emotional highs and lows; going on submission for my first book was probably the most anxious I have ever been in my life, and it only lasted three days. If it wasn’t for the writing part, I probably would have given up by now. The publishing industry is a trip, and it is not designed for girls like me who have low self-esteem and an aching need for validation.

I wrote my first novel as part of a masters degree in creative writing, and I was also working part-time. It took me fifteen months to write Gender Theory, and I did everything ‘wrong’, if you listen to popular writing advice. I did not do a first/second/third draft, I did not plan and I had no ‘routine’ to speak of. I was used to inconsistency: writing in dribs and drabs, not opening my word document for weeks at a time and then spending a whole weekend glued to my laptop. I refused to move onto the next sentence until the one before was perfect, and so I would often work all afternoon and come away with a piddly three hundred words. Despite this, my experience of writing my first novel was incredible. I didn’t suffer with writer’s block, I knew exactly what I wanted to say (maybe because I was writing so slowly, so I had lots of time to mull things over) and I wasn’t thinking about marketing or ‘what the industry wanted’, because I had no plans to publish it. Writing was enough.

Because of this, I found it very difficult to adjust to full-time authorship after I sold Gender Theory. I was used to having to fit writing around work, and now it was my work. That’s the dream, right? NO! I looked at my friends with ‘real jobs’ and I felt guilty about how free I was. Nobody wants to hear a self-employed work from home-r moan about how much control they have over their own schedule. I had no boss, no office, just my flat and my cat and dog and as much time as I needed (or until the money ran out). On the surface, it sounded like heaven, but for me it was an anti-creativity rut of my own making.

For the first few months of this new life, I did fuck all. I went for long walks, I obsessed about my debut coming out, I became obsessed with checking niche subreddits about writing, I read a lot, I obsessed about my debut coming out, I drank wine and I felt guilty all of the time about not writing. I worried that I would never have another idea that would hold my attention long enough to turn it into a novel. I worried that my first book was a fluke, and my writing wasn’t commercial enough to sell traditionally but somehow also not experimental enough to garner acclaim in literary circles. I was suffering from stage fright/writers block/the depressingly common phenomenon known as ‘second album syndrome’. I felt paralysed by indecision, anxious about delivering a manuscript that was better than, or at least as good as, my first, and feeling the pressure of expectation. I had an agent now, an editor, a few readers; all people who had the capacity to be disappointed by what I wrote next. I was unsure of my writing ability in a way I hadn’t been with my first novel. I had been so sure that Gender Theory was good, and this surety (although, I suspect it may have been the confidence of someone completely unacquainted with the publishing industry. A fool’s confidence!) had bolstered me through the stress of the publication process. But now I was adrift and unsure, and the only thing that my free time was doing for me was convincing me that I wasn’t good enough. Writing is a solitary job and so it can be difficult for overthinkers, which is ironic because all writers are all overthinkers.

Eventually, I decided that the answer to my creative block was to start being disciplined. I told myself that if I kept waiting around for inspiration to strike, I would never write again. I decided to start treating book two as if it was a normal job with deadlines and working hours. I cleared my desk and vowed to sit down at it at the same time every morning and work until five, telling myself that if I didn’t succeed then I was wasting the opportunity I had been given. But this isn’t how writing (or work, for that matter) has ever worked for me. I like being creative, I like being flexible and I crave change. I want every day to be different and I need to work flexibly due to my chronic illness and occasional need to spend the afternoon in bed. Instead of developing a routine that served the way I liked to work, I had become brainwashed by the girl-boss, hustle-culture mentality (if you haven’t heard these words before then I assume you don’t use social media and therefore I am jealous of you) that told me that the only way to excel was to work until you burnt out. I was constantly falling short of the goals I was setting myself: not writing enough words, not spending enough time at my desk, and any writing I was getting done was stilted and uninspired. My work was suffering and so was my mental health, because I was trying to stuff my creative process into the inflexible mould of a 9-5. It took me a good few months and about 40,000 words until I realised: You can’t gamefy creativity; that’s what makes it creative. By trying to ‘win’ at writing, I had removed the thing I loved most about the craft itself, which was the unpredictability of it. The beautiful thing about writing a novel is the time you put into it. It’s an antidote to the world we live in that prioritises instant gratification and black and white answers over long-term projects and nuance. Novels are shifting, tricky things, and the skill of writing them is impossible to distill into a bottle and sell. No matter how disciplined you are with your writing, sometimes you will sit down at your laptop and everything you write will be shit. It’s frustrating, it’s impossible to control, and that’s what makes it magic.

I started writing this book in July, and since its inception, I have tried to write a thousand words every day. If I miss a day, for illness or other reasons, I try to write two thousand words the next day. Sometimes this takes me an hour, sometimes two or three, but the crucial detail is that I write my thousand words without looking back at what I wrote the day before. This is difficult for me; as you read above, I wrote GT with the mentality of not starting the next sentence until the previous one was perfect, but I’ve found this method invaluable with the second one. It helps silence my inner critic (who is loud and relentless and a real bitch) and prevents me from spending hours every morning ripping apart the pages I wrote the day before. It also means that I’ll have to edit and work with drafts, which is exciting because I’ve never done that before. But this is a routine??? I hear you shout, and you’re right, but it is a gentle one, and there’s lots of space for flexibility. Sometimes I don’t manage my one thousand words, or I do but I’m not happy again. I still go for long walks and read a lot and sometimes (often) I spend Monday afternoon in the pub instead of at my desk. I am thinking about the novel I’m writing almost all of the time, but I’m not killing myself over it, and I’m trying to enjoy the experience of writing it instead of what comes next. Maybe I’ll sell this manuscript, maybe I won’t, but whatever happens, it feels good to know that I’ve found a creative process that works for me. At the moment, my life is centred around the pleasure of reading and writing instead of the anxiety of stripping myself for parts and trying to see what I can sell. That seems like a good life to me, and a lucky one. But we’ll see, maybe I won’t finish the manuscript and I’ll be back here moaning about it in a couple of weeks. That would be just like me.