Examining a more holistic approach to writing can produce tremendous benefits to your craft
I have a really weird sickness when it comes to writing. The more words I have in a given piece of writing, the further I feel I have to go in order to finish it.
So I let longer drafts of writing just fester for long periods of time.
It’s as if, in my mind, the blank page can be a finished piece of writing within 5 minutes of me sitting down to write. But if I have to open up a piece that already has 1,000 words and a few hours put into it — I feel like I’m days away from finishing it.
As if this feeling alone weren’t odd enough, it is backed up by evidence. And by evidence, I mean the performance of the pieces I’ve written. Of the 20 top-performing pieces I’ve written, over half of them were written in under 2 sessions. A few of them were completed in a single feverish session of writing.
What this shows me is that there is very little correlation for me between the time spent physically writing a piece and how good it is. So I have decided to stress out less about how much time I’m spending writing particular pieces. I’ve adopted a view of writing that’s more holistic.
Writing Is More Than Putting Words on the Page
My view of writing is this: the quality of your writing is a function of time spent on it. However, it’s not simply a function of the time spent hunched over a keyboard or notebook. The time we spend physically putting words on pages is just one portion of the time we spend writing.
The truth is, we’re working on writing much more often than we often give ourselves credit for.
Did your mind wander to a topic during your morning run today that is now part of a draft you’re working on? That time counts.
Did you have a revelation after a long phone conversation with a friend that provided great fuel for a piece of writing? That time also counts.
The point is, our time writing goes far beyond the time we spend putting words on the page. It includes the time we spend thinking, discussing, refining, agonizing, vacillating, and any other verbs you might use.
Writing is Like Fitness
Part of what helped me rethink what writing looks like was my experience with physical fitness. As it turns out, getting better at writing is not too different from getting fit and healthy.
Getting in shape — building muscle and burning fat — doesn’t just happen when you’re working out. In fact, most fitness coaches will tell you that your diet and resting habits are just as important as what you do during your workouts. Many top athletes will tell you that it’s the time they spend outside of practices, workouts, and competitions that contribute the most to how well they do at their chosen craft.
In the same way, the time you spend reading, thinking, discussing, and even resting your mind from active thought are all valuable parts of the writing process. The process of creating that new piece of writing is inclusive of many of things we do each day.
We create artificial separations between typing on the keyboard and taking a quiet walk around the neighborhood —but those separations aren’t real. If you thought at all on our walk about something you have written or will write about — you were writing!
Own Your Writing Process by Making it Inclusive
This means two important things for us writers:
- Don’t beat yourself up for the amount of time you’re writing or not writing.
- Start thinking about your writing in a more inclusive way, which includes the time you spend thinking and resting.
If you do these 2 things, I promise you your writing will become better. And as a bonus, you’ll probably come to enjoy writing a lot more.
The first point is true of anything you’re pursuing. You shouldn’t beat yourself up about how much time you’re putting in or not putting into writing.
Should you try to spend as much time as you can on the writing process? Sure. Should you try to structure your schedule your time so that you can devote more time to you craft? Absolutely. But if you’re going to keep track of the time you put into your craft, make sure you’re not being unnecessarily restrictive in what counts as time “put in”. That brings us to the second point.
Unless you’re a master of mindfulness and mental compartmentalization, your mind is regularly working on things other than the actual activity you’re engaged in. I wash the dishes almost daily, and in most cases, I’m also thinking through problems, or honing ideas that I’m writing about. I’m guessing that you do, as well.
So own that! Embrace your wandering mind as a tool for your writing. Your environment affects the kind of ideas you come up with. You‘ll have different kinds of thoughts while cleaning your home than you will while you’re sitting at your desk.
There’s a reason why there’s an entire community on Reddit devoted to the weird things we think of in the shower. There’s also a reason why the titular doctor on House, MD always seemed to think of a tough diagnosis when he was doing something seemingly unrelated, but not while actively thinking about it. Our minds work differently in different settings. Use that to your advantage!
I can trace many pieces of writing back to activities where I wasn’t putting words on the page. I was running, cleaning, driving to work, or various other tasks that don’t require my full attention. To pretend like that’s not part of the writing process is absurd — and it shortchanges how much work actually goes into the craft of writing.
You’re Writing More Often Than You Think, So Keep it Up!
Hopefully, this piece of writing has helped you to see that writing is more than just sitting down to add to the word count. Writing includes the time you spend thinking, talking, reading, and even resting your mind. They’re all a necessary part of the process.
It’s not about how often or for how long you sit down to put words on the page. It’s about the depth and eloquence of what shows up on the page. And more often than we think, it’s the time away from the keyboard or the pen that contributes a great deal to that.