Day 34: Some Tips

I missed a writing deadline on Monday – whoops – but then I remembered it was pushed to Friday because of quarantine – whoo! I just hadn’t updated my calendar.

It’s not that long ago that something like this would have felt loomy – you know, loomy … that heavy of something needing to be done mixed with the fog of how to get it done. I’m not talking scheduling logistics here so much as the ambiguous nature of creative work.

Over the past year, I’ve moved from having an awkward relationship with writing to a humming one, and I’m sharing my mode to help any of you who are feeling stuck by those (literal or metaphorical) blank pages.

Memorize the prompt. Creative work is mostly thought work – only a fraction of it lands on the page. The prompt for this magazine article was an original piece about being a boy mom, how you juggle being a parent and a career. I thought about the prompt while walking the dogs, doing the dishes, watching Tommy do math facts, driving to the creek, etc. Turn the prompt upside down. Truth #1: I did not like this prompt (which is probably why I put it off for the last three months). Truth #2: Allusion is key. My 9th grade English teacher gave us a one-pager on how to BS your way through any essay prompt, and I’ve applied its principles ever since. I did it in college when I hadn’t adequately studied the topic, and I do it now when I’m bored by the topic. Basically, you drop your keywords in the intro, treat it like a springboard to topics you can talk about with knowledge and flare, and return to the springboard in the closing. It works, every time, unless the person on the other side of your work was also the recipient of Mr. Michels’ one-pager.Draft. Starts are the hardest – I think because we want everything we write to stick. This is unrealistic. Drafting is like covering your wall in paint swatches. You’re giving yourself choices in a noncommittal way that will prevent you from purchasing two gallons of yellow paint that you thought looked like butter but really looks school bus (and now you’re out of money).Set a timer. I treat early drafting like speed dating. I don’t set aside 1-2 hours but instead 15-minute increments. If I like what’s happening, I’ll keep going. If I don’t, I have only a few minutes left before I’m released to the rest of my life.Pay attention to your procrastination. I was supposed to finish writing the article yesterday but every time I started to work on a couple of paragraphs, I’d Internet surf. After an hour of this I realized the reason I wasn’t interested was because what I’d written wasn’t interesting to me. Delete! I drafted a few more starts for that section, one took, and I finished the article this morning.

That’s how this girl gets it done, folks. Do you notice the lack of self-shaming in these steps? The openness to trying and deleting until something works? That’s a lot of failure, but in the absence of telling myself, “I’m a failure,” it’s not a Jabberwocky anymore. It’s a process, and I’ve gotten more comfortable with it by doing it a lot.

So … go forth! Fill up yer blank pages, me hearties. Not sure why I’m going pirate right now, and if I had more time, I’d scrap this conclusion and write another, but I don’t, which brings me to my last step.

Publish. Sometimes you get it good; sometimes you get it good enough. And sometimes what people like better is the good enough. It’s all good!