Looking back over my writing records, I have come to the conclusion that it is perfectly normal for me to write a novel over 45-60 days. The problem is… they aren’t consecutive days.
I can look back and go “Right, over this 4-month span, I had 48 writing days on that novel.”
The poisonous voice in me tries to say things like “If you’d just get your act together, you could have done it in half the time. You should be able to do that reliably every 48 days, and 365/48 novels/year! IF you weren’t lazy and irresponsible, look at what you could accomplish! This is the standard you should hold yourself to!”
The somewhat less poisonous but still actively self-destructive says: “If you wrote 5 days a week like it was a Real Job, you could have accomplished so much more! Let’s go over the year in fine detail, looking for all the reasons you failed, so you can avoid them coming up!”
The weary, tired voice of analytics and data goes, “No, that won’t accomplish anything but a bad mood. What we should do is figure out how many writing days you accomplished last year, and try to improve on the number this year.”
But the voice of reason looks at the list of medical procedures and amount of time down for illness, starts cackling with black-humoured laughter, and then making soothing noises. “You’re alive! It’s a good day, no one’s shooting at you! Remember, it’s a hobby, and it’s supposed to relieve stress, not add to it! Do what you can, with what you have, from where you’re at, when able.”
There is a threshold of chaos / stress / pain, above which, the words don’t come.
This is not the same thing as Writer’s Block.
And while you may or may not hold that Writer’s Block doesn’t exist, I absolutely guarantee you that lack of ability to function when under too much pain/stress/illness/chaos is absolutely a thing.
There is a reason why, when I went to the company Director and said quietly, “Next Wednesday, my husband’s going to be having kidney surgery”, they immediately gave me the full day off. Technically, I could have gotten him home from the hospital and only been an hour late…
But absolutely nobody was expecting me to be able to show up and be effective that day. They were iffy on the idea of me showing up the next day, and checked in to see if I was doing all right, or needed to go home early.
So, I am doing what I can, as I can, with what I have, when able.
Right now, since managing the illness is dictated by appointments for testing and surgical follow-up, I’m focusing on managing the chaos that induces stress.
This includes not only the normal trying to clean, but sitting down and thinking through the little things that irritate. Because if something irritates me every time I walk past it, 2-4 times a day, then that’s roughly 1000 times a year. Fixing the thing reduces the ambient stress, even if it doesn’t lower the acute major stress.
Therefore a couple small things got patched and painted that were neither critical nor urgent, but I had the time, materials, and skill to do so. (Or at least I did, after 2 runs to the hardware store.) I asked a couple friends for help on different projects, and they managed with tools and physical ability to do a couple things in 30 minutes each that I hadn’t gotten done in 3-4 years. (I have the awesomest friends.)
And in the midst of all this, I managed two writing days last week. Yes, 2 out of 7.
I’m not going to beat myself up about it. That’s two writing days closer to the end of the book.
Sic itur ad astra!
Mad Genius Club 
7 responses to “The 45-60-day novel”
As a hobbiest writer (I guess), I just write when I have something to say. I don’t write every day, and I don’t feel guilty about it. When in the middle of one of the four novels I’ve written and I stopped, it’s not because of “writer’s block.” I suppose I’m in the “no such things as WB” camp. I leave a work lay because I don’t like what I’ve written and I’m waiting for my subconscious brain to work it out. Besides, there’s also plenty of work at home to do and take care of the pre-teen.
Little irritations, when added to everything else, can be huge things. And fixing little irritations 1) removes them and 2) gives you and others a wonderful “I accomplished something useful” boost.
The WIP is coming much slower than I had hoped. But I am also surrounded by Day Job and what proved to be a minor medical stress (spot removed, possible problem prevented). Now I’m writing a bit, moving things or sorting papers, writing a bit more, and dealing with several stressors all at once, whittling them down. It helps. The story is flowing better, and I might be easing out of the draggy middle into the faster “prep work’s done, now build the thing” part.
I’ve had seven decades to understand how my mind works (it’s even sardonically interesting (for certain values of interesting) to observe the mental aging process, from the inside, as it were), so I know when the problem is writing-specific vs life disorder-specific.
I don’t have “writing-specific” issues any more (famous last words, I know) — I have enough experience now to (first) not be scared by an unexpected problem and (second) actually grateful for an excuse to broaden/repair an issue that had been too subtle to observe while it was in the process of creation.
But (boy howdy) what I do have is an environment problem, both physical and mental. I want (and need) a clean(-ish) desk, both in my mind and in reality. Significant non-writing projects like (short list) wills, memory-aids (while I can still remember how some of my tech & procedures work), financial accounting, running a Barbershop Quartet, etc…. these all suck down my attention and nag at me. If I glance around my desk and observe unpaid bills, 2-year-old folders that need filing, urgent tasks that must take priority in the real world… those are what interfere with getting my writing done. (I can be willfully blind to disorder in the physical household as needed, but not at my desk, where I write.)
So periodically (esp. circa Tax Season) I have to weed the larger backroom tasks and bring them to completion or at least up to speed, just to get them out of the way (mentally) and off my desk (visually). I can tolerate a certain number of them, but not unmanaged neglected growth. And while that happens, writing doesn’t.
On the other hand, the relief of having finally done/planned whatever-it-was each time is terrific. I can physically feel the lifting of tension. One less distracting task.
I feel your pain. I thought once I retired that I would have more time to write, and become more prolific. Men plan and the Gods laugh. Now some of that’s on ME. I spend several hours a day on correspondence (like this one) that I could spend writing. In my defense, some of that is places that my ideas for my blog, etc. come from. This is a piece that ScottG mentioned above.
But I also spend a lot of time doing the stuff that I couldn’t get around to when working full time, work desperately needed on the house if we want to sell for the best price and move to somewhere friendlier to our politics.
And I spend time dealing with “I’m too exhausted from the latest: project, illness, death in my close circle (two of those in one week is a bitch) and so on… As you said, when terminally stressed writing stories just doesn’t happen.
I don’t have a solution, but I sympathize with the problem.
I understand perfectly. We do what we can.
It’s very difficult, though, to stop berating myself for not doing better.
I spent a decent part of last summer beating myself up about how slow the then-WIP was coming, only to pull up the writing tracker in excel and see that I’d actually spent a big chunk of late 2022 and early 2023 getting the book prior to WIP ready for release. I still have more red days (nothing writing related done) and orange days (brainstorming, blogging, or bookbinding than I have green days (actual writing or editing), but all I can do is all I can do.
I need to give myself more grace for the effects of pain on productivity. sigh