Writing Talk: Non-Stop

This is part two of my series with my friend Jennifer McLean, looking at our writing habits. This week: so many ideas, so little time...

Jennifer McLean: The perennial question for writers is the where-do-your-ideas-come-from one. And (while I’m not saying that I wouldn’t like to find out how some authors made their Faustian deal and get in on the room where it happens) I think it’s the wrong question on a number of fronts. At least at this stage of my life, I have hundreds of ideas. It’s non-stop. I always worried about that, but it turns out that the real problem is knowing what to do with them. We’ll probably talk another time about the issue of deciding which ideas are good ones (answer: certainly not the recurring ones I have about musicals), but our topic for today is what we in our chats have been calling Too Many Projects, Not Enough Time.

​It feels pretty appropriate, this week, for both of us. Certainly, I’ve been in one of those phases where I almost need to leap out of the shower to find a pen because yet another thing occurred to me. Cry me a river, right? It sounds brilliant, but between all the different projects we have on the go, and the necessity of occasionally getting dressed and earning some money, and all the Improving Practices I like to fix upon… Well, without a bit of prioritising, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of helpless, anxious unproductivity. 

I don’t think I’m in a position to pronounce on a solution, so I’ll be interested in what you’ve got to say on this. I’m just going to throw in a couple of things I’ve been pondering.

Without a bit of prioritising, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of helpless, anxious unproductivity.

Firstly, I think I like having different projects at different stages. If something’s being planned, and something else written, and another thing being researched, and a further musical being imagined, then I can be productive in a range of ways, which is good for my soul. There’s an extent to which I’ll never be satisfied - that is, that any fresh idea will have the shine of the new, making the current project feel like a slog. Giving myself permission to address some of these ideas by researching, or writing a Edgar Allan Poe rap mashup, means that I’m more likely to finish a few of them. Or take a break, as necessary; I’m prone to doing everything at once and therefore never feeling like I have downtime, when in fact so much time is unproductively wasted. I have to remind myself to wait for it - to let an idea rest, and take the time to address it properly, rather than always looking to what comes next.​

Maybe I’ll come to some of the other points, but what do you think? Should one project be enough, or is there value in the many-pronged approach? How do we avoid burnout? How many of the Hamilton references in the above did you spot, and will we ever be as productive as Lin-Manuel Miranda?

Patience is the name of the game, and being patient sucks.​

S.E Lister: As you know, on an average day I am a jumpy bundle of nerves and manic, unsustainable creativity. I am also at that stage (which, yes, it seems churlish to complain about) of having too many ideas. The biggest challenge in my writing life at the moment is holding these ideas in tension with the amount of time and energy I have to pursue them - which, unfortunately, not very much.

I work three days a week in a job which is quite intense and draining, and by the time I get to the tail end of the week, which is designated as my writing time, my head’s already spinning. Becoming easily overwhelmed can be part and parcel of being a creative type, because you’re always noticing small stimuli and processing things deeply. I’ve learned that it’s important to respect your own limits and not overload yourself, which can be kind of excruciating when you’re in love with six different novels in your head and you want to write them all today. Patience is the name of the game, and being patient sucks.​

The way I get through is to tell myself that projects can wait - and in fact will be better for the waiting. For me, the process which follows the initial idea for a book is effectively years of daydreaming about it while I’m getting on with other things. The longer you do that daydreaming for, the richer the story becomes, so that by the time you sit down to write it you’ve got layers and layers of stuff to draw on from your subconscious. 

Currently I have around three different projects living in my head, making demands of me, aside from the thing I’m currently working on. In terms of sticking with things and finishing them, when you’re tempted to jump ship for the new shiny thing, my best advice would be to treat it like a worthwhile relationship: you won’t always feel the romance and sometimes other prospects will look more appealing, but if you commit and put in the work, good things will happen. Does that make sense?

JM: It makes complete sense, and leads neatly to something which we’ve been talking about a lot: that this isn’t an issue confined simply to writing. It’s the essence of privilege to worry about having too many exciting things to cope with, but it goes a little deeper than that, for me - we’ve talked a lot about this, but part of my experience of living with chronic pain (which I’ll probably go into, some time) is that I need distraction to cope. I agree that being overwhelmed is something of an occupational hazard, but for me it’s also necessary to walk that tightrope in order to get anything done. Nonetheless, I do have a massive problem (and again, we’ve talked about this a lot) with becoming deeply, temporarily obsessed with things, and I think that carries over into the writing issue; just as I have several projects on the go, I’ll be waking up with a particular song in my head for weeks, and obsessing over it, then move just as intensely into something else. 

All that said, I was talking to a couple of other friends (what? I know!) about The Zone - you know, that thing that happens maybe once in a blue moon, where you’re so focused and everything’s coming out just right, and the minute you notice, it all falls apart. Like suddenly thinking about your tongue. I still haven’t decided what the ideal conditions for that state are. Is having a number of projects on the go preventing that kind of laser focus, or does the deliberate cultivation of productive distractions actually create space for it? 

 The first rule of productivity for me is consistency - do it, do it again, finish it. 

​I haven’t got the answer to that, yet, but I do know that the first rule of productivity for me is consistency - do it, do it again, finish it. I’ve always been very good at dealing with tasks as they arise (inbox zero represent), but that kind of reactive discipline is exactly what leads me astray in terms of rounding things off. You’re definitely at a different stage to me, in that sense, and what you say about committing is very wise. Did you have similar feelings about finishing things? Or did it always come naturally to you? Do you have any hard-won wisdom about focus and commitment?

S.E:  In some ways, yes, finishing things does come naturally to me. I really relate to what George Orwell said about writing being a sickness: the closest I can come to a cure is just getting the entire thing out of my system. My vice is impatience, really, the temptation to finish something slapdash and fast rather than slowly and thoroughly. I’m about 2/5ths of the way through the book I’m currently writing, and though I’m enjoying it, the thought that I’m not yet halfway there is terrifying. It feels like there’s a marathon ahead, and summoning the mental tenacity to stick with it feels beyond daunting.

​Magical things happen when you lift away the burden of duty and expectation in writing. 

​Conversely, the best way I’ve found to get the job done is not to double-down on the discipline, to make demands of yourself or push yourself to breaking point: it’s to take a breath, relax, and reintroduce the element of play. When I sat down to write Hideous Creatures it had been years since I’d last finished a story of any length, and the constant terror of the distance left to travel seemed to loom over every page. But when I told myself that I was here to play, here to enjoy it, something clicked. I made it fun for myself. I wrote in my favourite cafes and gave myself afternoons off. I told myself that all I had to do was finish this paragraph, this page, this chapter. 

​Magical things happen when you lift away the burden of duty and expectation in writing. To bring this full circle and quote our current creative icon Lin-Manuel Miranda, ‘I try not to think of writing as a burden at all. My job is to fall in love.’