8

DO LESS TO DO MORE

What is the biggest mistake writers make? Having expectations of themselves that are too high. Typically, writers expect themselves to produce a ridiculous amount at a ridiculously high standard. Team that with the human myth that we need perfect conditions to create a masterpiece and add in some self-loathing, guilt and a general feeling of inadequacy, and bingo. Nothing gets done. If your expectations are too high, you fail before you even begin. You feel overwhelmed by the task ahead and suffer what I call ‘daunting’ paralysis. You conk out and give up on the Herculean task you’ve set yourself. Self-sabotage? Absolutely.

My advice? Get down low and go, go, go! Lower your expectations. Fuck excellence. Just have a stab. Make your goals small, simple and achievable, and embrace the reality that there is no such thing as perfect conditions. Plonk yourself down in the mountain of clothes that need folding and write!

Many Gunnas tell me they can’t write until they have certain conditions: three months off, uninterrupted eight-hour blocks of time six days a week, a place in the country, their special chair, complete silence, a story structure, an advance, an ending for their book, a contract, or a guarantee that everyone will love what they write, it will be a huge commercial and critical success and no-one will get upset with them. Oh, and a place with no internet or contact with the outside world. And did I mention a full-time housekeeper? I have no idea how they know they need these things to be a writer. They have never written before, but they know exactly … hang on! It couldn’t be that they are putting ridiculous obstacles in front of their writing to give themselves an excuse not to do it, could it?

Remember the mantra ‘perfect is the enemy of good’. People who aim for completion, not perfection, are the ones who actually write the things they set out to.

Wannabe writers are like: ‘I’ll cook all the food on Wednesday after work and put it in a box in the fridge. On Thursday, before work, I’ll pack everything non-perishable into the car. After work, I’ll grab the perishables from the fridge and then drive three hours to the house in the country with no internet. After I’ve unpacked the car, I’ll write for six hours straight. Then I’ll have a three-hour sleep. When I wake at 5 a.m., I’ll walk along the beach making voice memos about my project, until I find a place where I can journal about my writing for an hour or two. After I’ve watched the sun rise, I’ll worship the earth, salute the sun and jog briskly back to the cottage, eat some bircher muesli, then write for another six hours, until 2 p.m., when I’ll have a power nap for fifteen minutes. After some light stretching I’ll grab a bowl of kale, beans and activated superfood salad and then write for another six hours. Standing. To improve my core muscles. Oh, and while I write, I’ll do my pelvic floor exercises.’

Need I go on?

Seriously?

You’ve failed before you’ve even started. You are never going to do that.

Writing’s not that hard. You’re overthinking it. Do less.

Just start writing.

The first exercise I get my Gunnas to do is to write non-stop for five minutes. I say: ‘Write like no-one will read it. Write like you are on fire. Don’t look back. Don’t edit. Assume you are going to delete the whole thing or burn those pages as soon as you finish.’ And they do it. They write for five minutes – just like that. People often tell me days, weeks and months after that exercise that they found the act of writing without thought, preparation or warning transformative. It revealed to them they can write, when they choose to. It’s all there, waiting to come out. They just have to force themselves away from the distractions and excuses, and ignore the voices in their heads.

*

I tell my Gunnas to ‘do less’, but it is more accurate to say ‘plan to do less and you will do more’. When you set yourself a goal, the more achievable it is, the more likely you are not only to complete it but to do a little more. You feel good about yourself, so you keep going.

Someone once ran an experiment about expectations with two groups of soldiers. I can’t remember where I heard about it, but go with me. One group were told they had to run five kilometres. When they got to the five-kilometre point, their commander told them they had to run five more. Most of the soldiers conked out and said they couldn’t go on. The other soldiers were told they had to run ten kilometres. When they got to the five-kilometre mark, their commander told them they could stop. They didn’t have to run anymore. But they all did. They happily completed the ten kilometres, because that’s what they had been mentally prepared for. Of course, running five or ten kilometres is pretty easy for young, fit soldiers. But if they had been told they had to run sixty kilometres, many of them would have bailed before they even began. Or conked out only a few kilometres into the run.

There are some helpful lessons here. One: it’s important that goals are achievable. It’s better to set a small goal and meet it, with the possibility of doing extra, than to set yourself an impossible task. Two: you can give yourself a boost by halving your target. Want to write 1000 words? Try writing 500 first. Or even just 250. Then you might find you can keep going!

With some of my blocked and muddled Gunnas I tell them to do the Ten Minute Flush. The Ten Minute Flush means you can only write for ten minutes a day. You have to lock that time in at the start of the week. Ten minutes a day, five days a week. I tell them to choose a time as early in the day as they can and lock it in for the week. I say ‘go to bed ten minutes early and wake ten minutes early. Say you choose 7 a.m. to 7.10 a.m. You are only allowed to write then. If you miss that little window of time, bad luck. You have to wait until tomorrow. If you start at the designated time and when it’s time to stop your brain keeps going, you can pick up a dictaphone or record a voice memo on your phone. But you cannot write. It’s a bit like those magic lands in Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree that you could only get into at certain times.

What the Ten Minute Flush does is it sets a very low goal so people don’t dick about or get distracted. They actually get a remarkable amount of work done. It also means they can let themselves off the hook and not spend the rest of the day beating themselves up about not writing long enough or well enough. It’s quite cathartic.

Blocked? Muddled? Overwhelmed? Try a fortnight of the Ten Minute Flush. It will reboot you. I guarantee it.

*

No doubt you’ll have read about some super-disciplined professional writers who write at their desk from nine til five every day – or who say they do. I don’t believe them. Pants on fire. They may be sitting at their desk from nine til five, but I can guarantee they aren’t writing that whole time. Or, if they are, they must be a bit shit at it. Writing is much easier than that.

Christos Tsiolkas. Heard of him? He’s one of Australia’s most successful writers. His books include The Slap, Loaded, Dead Europe, Barracuda and Merciless Gods. He writes pieces for highbrow journals, broadsheet newspapers and intellectual magazines. He’s been a full-time writer for many years now. He makes a good living. Readers adore him and critics applaud him. He has a huge body of high-quality award-winning work. How many hours a week do you think he writes?

Have a think.

Put some background music on, if you like.

Sixty hours? Forty? A hundred?

Sixteen.

Christos Tsiolkas writes for just sixteen hours a week. This is his schedule:

imagesMonday, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

imagesTuesday, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

imagesWednesday: Paperwork. No writing.

imagesThursday, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

imagesFriday, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

That’s it. It’s worth noting he doesn’t have access to the internet where he writes.

I know a woman with three kids under five who wrote a PhD in five-minute increments. There are heaps of us like that, just chipping away at things when we have a scrap of time.

More often than not, the ‘I sit at my desk from nine til five every day and do nothing but write’ writers are just bullshitting to convince you they are special and tortured.

Some people genuinely love the idea of being a creative martyr suffering for their art. They make it much harder than it needs to be. These writers are constantly burnt out, stressed and stale. They think they have to suffer to produce. For many people, suffering is preferable to just getting on with it and writing. It gets them off the hook about other things they’re meant to do. It discourages others and protects their status as ‘special’, ‘superior’ and ‘chosen’. It’s bullshit. Why are so many people invested in this stereotype of the tortured artist dedicating their whole life to their art and suffering for it? Because if anyone can apply themselves and write, those ‘special’, ‘superior’ and ‘chosen’ writers will look like losers, wankers, fakers and posers. Their romantic façade will be blown. Their attempt to convince you writing is really hard and you can’t possibly do it will have failed. The truth is those people are not writers. They are penholders. They love the idea of being a writer and see themselves as heroes of their own keyboard. Do us all a favour: prove these annoying, insufferable, pompous people wrong.

(Of course there are also the freaks, loonies and uptight units who are just insane and try to use ‘but I’m a writer’ as an excuse for being crazy, annoying, unpredictable, unreliable or drunk. They’re not writers: they’re pains in the arse. Call it when you see it, people!)

Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.

MARGARET ATWOOD

*

I often meet people who tell me they can only write at 2 a.m. after heaps of coffee and alcohol. They assure me they have to feel like a rat in a cage with their back against the wall in order to write. I assume they spend the next day sleeping, then Facebooking about how they spent the whole night writing. When I hear this, I respond, ‘Why don’t you do what the rest of us do? Get the kids off to school, have a run, write for a bit. Have some lunch and flick through the paper, write a bit more, and after the kids get home from school see if you can squeeze in a bit more between sorting dinner, busting up the fights and dropping kids off at activities? If you’re lucky, you may get an hour of editing in between dinner and bed.’

Writing is a grind much of the time but it doesn’t have to be torture. It doesn’t have to be middle-of-the-night angst. If you are making it torture, ask yourself what you get out of that. Actually getting stuff done and being happy certainly isn’t it. Just be a tradie. Turn up, do the job, finish, knock off. But when you are doing the job, do the job. Don’t get distracted by Facebook, emails or unnecessary research.

I got this great letter from one of my Gunnas, Andrew Heaver, a lovely man and a fabulous writer. He has been kind enough to let me share it with you.

Hey Dev,

I hope you’re well. I did one of your Gunnas classes in Melbourne in December, and just thought I’d give you an update on how things are going. That five-minute non-stop writing exercise has transformed the way I write – it’s made it possible for me to make use of all sorts of gaps in my schedule. For so long, I thought that there was no point in trying to use a two-hour window (or whatever) for writing, because I’d need at least a day to produce anything worthwhile. Well, that counterproductive attitude has now gone, and I’m really pleased with some of the material I’ve produced in those gaps.

Another thing. I’ve really kept in mind the mantra about making this a summer of writing, rather than a summer of reading. I love reading, but whenever I’ve thought about grabbing a book, I’ve reminded myself that this is my time. My time to tell my stories.

Last week I had a free afternoon. I was going to go to the pub with a book, and lose myself in someone else’s story. But I decided to take my laptop instead, and do some editing on one of my projects. On the tram ride to the pub, the idea for another piece sparked in my mind, and when I got there I just sat down and got on with it. No nonsense, no ‘let’s workshop this idea’ procrastination. Just a couple of beers, my laptop, and the resolve to just type and type like my life depended on it.

Within a couple of hours I had a down-draft done. Later that evening I returned to it and edited it a bit. The next day, I gave it a sober look over, edited it some more, and decided to send it to a website that had previously published some of my work. They ran it.

It is far from a perfect piece (it could be briefer, it could be neater), but I’m pleased with it. It means something to me, and (I’ve been told) it has meant something to some of the people who have read it. If I’d still been hung up on the idea of ensuring everything was perfect before I shared it, or on the idea that a few spare hours could not be put to meaningful use, then the piece would not have seen the light of day.

So thank you, for helping me de-clog some of the attitudes and misconceptions that have been holding back my writing. I hope your Gunnas students this year have a similar experience, and I look forward to reading whatever stories they have to share.

Writing in the gaps. Oh how my heart sang when I read that! That’s what I’d been trying to say!

Just set out to do something simple and small. Open the document. Write one word. Or one sentence. Write for ten minutes.

When the boys were little, I would be knackered after lunch when they were having their afternoon nap or ‘quiet time’. Their dad would usually be around, as we were both freelancers, so we could both take an hour or so to recharge. I knew I had three choices. I could try and have a nap, but I am crap at napping. Chances are I would go into the bedroom and come out an hour later with an eye mask, smelling of lavender, screaming ‘I wish I could nap!’ I could have a cup of coffee and half a block of chocolate and read a book. Or I could go for a swim. The swim was the thing most guaranteed to work. It would relax and energise me. But then I’d be hit with CBF syndrome: Can’t. Be. Fucked. The pool was outdoors and it would be cold. It would mean getting my gear together – towel, bathers and goggles. It would mean not eating for a couple of hours before I swam, as I can’t exercise on a full stomach. It would mean getting in the car and driving to the pool. I knew I would feel better for it, but swimming all those laps in the cold … it just felt like so much effort.

So what did I do? I said to myself, ‘Just get down there and put your bathers on. That’s all. You don’t even need to get in the pool. You can sit outside on the lawn in your bathers and read a book. Drink some coffee. Mars Bar? For sure. Knock yourself out. Just put your bathers on first.’

So I would get my swimming bag, hop into the car and drive down to the cold outdoor pool. I’d walk into the change rooms and put my bathers on. Then I would say to myself, ‘Just jump in. Get wet.’

Once I was in, I’d inevitably start swimming. I’d do my laps, have a shower and drive home. Then I would make a coffee and three cheese-and-tomato toasties, because I’d said to myself, ‘If you swim, you can eat whatever you want for lunch.’

Start simple. Start small. You know how I told you not to write while reading this book? Well, one of my rules is stuff the rules, so if you are up for a dare, try this.

Find a timer – on your computer, in your phone or from the kitchen.

Got it? Good.

Okay. Now open a blank document or grab a sheet of paper.

Terrific.

Now set the timer for two minutes and write.

Go!

…

Great! So you’re back. That wasn’t so hard, was it? And wasn’t it cathartic? Imagine if you wrote for two minutes a day for the next week. Don’t imagine what you will produce – just imagine how fabulous you’ll feel!

I am a fan of the ‘drop dead’ writing approach. In this approach, you only allow yourself a certain window, say twenty minutes, in which to write, and when it’s over you are not allowed to write any more for the rest of the day. I suggest this method to people who are chronic procrastinators overwhelmed by guilt. I tell them to give themselves five, ten or fifteen minutes a day and that is the only time they are allowed to write for the day. After they finish, no matter how inspired and motivated they are, they are not allowed to do any more until tomorrow. It’s a bit like a short exam. I don’t know why it works, but it does.

Often, you can do 80% less work and achieve the same result – remember the law of diminishing returns. There comes a point where the energy and effort you are putting into something is not equal to the benefits and gains you are getting out of it. More is often less. Don’t sit at the desk for eight hours, getting stale, exhausted and burnt out. Write for an hour and then exercise, do some chores or do something pleasurable – anything that will make you less distracted in your next writing session.

If you need somewhere to start, turn to the back of this book and try the Gunnas Challenge. Or read on for more basic principles, tools and techniques.