Let’s talk about creative procrastination. The fine art of putting something off while it simmers in your brain.
This is an essay I’ve been putting off writing for some time. Seriously. I wasn’t sure I’d studied it enough, but maybe it’s time to start working on it, before it reaches full ripeness. Besides, I received a request from Cynthia over at A Writer’s Diary to explore this notion in more detail.
A few days ago in her blog, Cindy made the following comment:
Jenny [author Jennifer Cruise] also talks about being productive. She says not every writer is a “put your butt in the chair and write” kind of person. She says she’s tried to do that and it doesn’t work. What works for her is waiting for her story to come together in her head. While waiting for the story, she stares out windows, apologizes to her editor, etc.
This also comforted me, because I do that, too. Well, I don’t have an editor to apologize to, and the view from my windows sort of sucks, so I just work on something else. Yesterday I sent a query to RWR and another one to Health magazine. And then I went to lunch with my sons.
Anyone who has spent any time here in the Foundry knows that I am a “park your butt in the chair and do it” kind of guy. I often tell writing students that the most important muscle in the writer’s body is the gluteus maximus, which belongs in a chair in front of a keyboard. This has less to do with “just doing it” than it does motivating yourself to sit down and do the work. In either way described, Jenny’s daydreaming or my slogging through, the motivation is there to put words on a page.
In any event, I was amused by Cindy’s entry, and I made this comment:
…technically you *are* a “park your butt in the chair and do it” sort of person. You’re just working on something else.
Actually, I think we all do our share of staring out the window or at a fish tank. I’ve long wanted to do a piece on creative procrastination because, in theory, the longer you let a book sit and ponder it, the better it gets. So do you wait forever or decide you’ve had enough and write? It’s a good question. Every one of my books would have been better if I’d waited. But if I’d waited I wouldn’t have written them and wouldn’t be the writer I am today.
Enough. I’m scaring myself.
Apparently this scared Cindy, too, because in today’s entry she asked for clarification:
I’m intrigued by something Joe said in his comment the other day. That his books would have all been better had he waited to start writing them. Joe, when you have time, could you explain why? How? In what ways?
(I know, she was intrigued, not scared. Forgive me for attempting a witty segue.)
Here is my explanatory:
For some time I’ve been aware of the way that ideas continue to grow for a writing project that has been delayed. This is only reasonable, I suppose. If the project-in-progress is important to a writer, their subconscious is going to keep bringing it up as a festering reminder for the writer to park their g.m. in a chair and keep working on it.
Some of these ideas are deliberate and would have come anyway during the writing sessions. But other times, things happen in the outside world that translate into material for the project you’re working on. And it turns into material you never would have had if you hadn’t been delayed – or procrastinating. I remember things happening and thinking that I could use them in the book I was working on – and was behind schedule on. I recall how stunned I was when I realized that if I had been on schedule, this marvelous notion that I’d just been gifted would never have been in the book. Or if the book had been finished, I never would have thought to incorporate one into the other.
The first time that happened, it was an eerie feeling: if I hadn’t been delayed in working on this project, I never would have had this bit to use.
Maybe this is serendipitous, maybe it is the subconscious making lemonade out of lemons, or maybe it’s a gift from God. Indeed, maybe some things need to percolate a little bit more, need a little more time to develop than perhaps we’re willing to give them.
Several years ago, when Bill Clinton was in his first term, I came up with a dandy notion for a political thriller; a tabloid reporter gets the goods on a presidential candidate that would stop his campaign in its tracks… but nobody believes her because she works for a tabloid magazine. I thought it would be great to have the book out in time for the 1996 campaign cycle. My agent liked the idea and agreed about the timing, so I dropped everything to write Trust.
I did it fast. The first draft was done in five months, the fastest I had ever cranked out a 100,000 word manuscript. And I was working full time then, too (that may have been when my wife coined the phrase ‘novel widow’). Editing took another couple of months, then one more round with my agent’s comments. Then I put together 10 copies of the manuscript, and it was off to be shopped around.
You will note that my bibliography does not include a novel called Trust. It wasn’t for lack of trying on my agent’s part. The interesting thing was, as the rejections began to pile up, they all had a familiar ring to them. “This is an exciting novel with a fascinating premise, but it lacks something that I just can’t seem to put my finger on.”
What was the je ne sais quois that Trust lacked? I know not what. But I have a theory.
I think it didn’t have enough time to percolate. I think now that perhaps I wrote it a little too fast, and that as a result of my race to get it out in time for Campaign ’96, it lacked all of those little bits and pieces that come from pondering… those little bits and pieces that make up a good novel by Joe Clifford Faust.
(Interestingly enough, I would later crank out the Boddekker’s Demons half of Pembroke Hall in five months also, as a full time – read ‘laid off from my day job’ – writer. The difference between the two books, one published and the other un-, I think is the fact that BD had been pondered for a couple of years by the time I wrote it. Plenty of percolation time to get all the ducks in a row.)
Will Trust ever become a viable project again? I doubt it. I could fix the results of the hurried write, but the plot line is damaged goods now; after a presidency that involved a semen-stained dress, a bombed aspirin factory, and carte blanche for a sworn enemy to go nuclear, the problems of the suspicious candidate in Trust seem rather tame. Although in the best spirit of Good Authors Never Throw Anything Away, the plucky heroine will appear in another project.
Back to the point now, with a disclaimer. I realize that everyone out there has their own way of writing, and part of the process, especially among first novelists, is discovering how you work. So what I say here works for Joe Clifford Faust, but may not for you.
However, I think there is some truth to the fact that ideas need some time to properly develop and become fleshed out. Some people might do this by taking the book through interminable numbers of revisions and drafts. Others by staring out a window or looking at the fish tank… or (perhaps subconsciously) letting Real Life get in the way of that 7-pages-a-day-five-days-a-week writing schedule. I suppose that all writing time – even when you’re not wiggling your fingers on the keyboard – is golden, because unbeknownst to you, you have some gray cells inside of your head that really are working out the book for you.
In retrospect, I think it’s interesting that all the novels I have published up to this point with the exception of Desperate Measures (actually the first novel I wrote; it just took a while to get whipped into publishable shape… more time to percolate, perhaps?), have been “old” ideas. In several cases, I had actually gone so far as to write a first chapter or some material that turned into an embryonic scene, and shelved it… then came back to it when I could hear the pages calling my name.
On the other side of the coin, some things can percolate for too long. After enough time, a project percolates into sludge. The subconscious takes it off the stove, puts it in a Tupperware, and sticks it in the freezer under the perch your uncle brought back from Lake Erie three years ago.
I found out early in my writing career – I think I may have been in high school or college – that I tended to lose interest in writing something once I had completed the instructor-required outline. One of the reasons for writing is so I can find out how things are going to turn out. But if I find that out early on (as in the case when outlining first), I lose interest in the piece. The mystery is gone. So I don’t outline, not until I’m deep into a book (usually past the 200 manuscript page mark), and then only because things have percolated so much that I need to be writing it all down so I don’t forget.
That’s me, but I think the principle holds true for other writers. I know of more than one writer or would-be who has researched or outlined a book project to death. Notebooks were filled with characters and events and back-story. What was there was sometimes brilliant… but there was no interest left for the person to write the book. Perhaps the thrill was gone.
So how do you tell when it’s time to get off the pot and write?
Good question. Would my published novels have been better if I had thought about them a little bit more? Sure. Was there something that might have happened to me that would have made a wonderful moment in the book if I had just waited a little longer? Undoubtedly. I know this for a fact because when I open any of my books, I see things on every page that I would change if I could. This happens even when I hold my newly-published book for the first time.
There’s a nice paradox there. See, writing is one of those things you get better at the more that you do it. One reason I can’t look at my own books when they’re in print is because I continued to write during the submission and publication process, so I’m a better writer by a year or more.
So what you’re faced with is a) not writing the book until you’re convinced that the idea is at its peak for maximum effect, versus b) going ahead to complete the book, and improving your skills by the very act of writing.
Wait for the idea or work for the talent to convey the idea? It’s a tightrope I think we all walk, even though many of us might not be aware of it.
How to walk it successfully?
I don’t know. At least, I don’t know what to tell you. I have some kind of internal mechanism that tells me what book to write next; it usually speaks to me when I’m in the home stretch of the current project (which means I’m expecting to hear it again any time now). It’s a good thing that it speaks, too, because if it didn’t my notions would get procrastinated right into that freezer.
You have to develop a sense of when the idea is ready to write. Not ripe enough, and you lose that je ne sais quois that editors look for. If it’s too ripe, a lackluster writing experience is in the offing. In each idea there must be a point of optimal ripeness, when you pluck it from the tree to begin work; the idea finishes ripening as you work on it, and reaches its peak as you hit yours. Hit that balance, and you have created something rare and unique.
How to find that for yourself? Hey, that’s what we’re all looking for. That’s why we do it.
NP – Michael Hoenig – Departure from the Northern Wasteland
joe clifford faust 