18

METHODS

In this chapter and the next few I outline some methods, tips and tools that help me and other writers. I use most of these – some frequently, some rarely. You may never use any of these. You may find your own. Or you may, ten years after finishing this book, remember something that proves to be the winch you need to get you out of a hole. Different methods work depending on where you are in a project.

Let’s start with some tried and true methods – core practices that I have found effective.

THE DEVENY METHOD

1.Think about how much you would like to write today – either the number of words or the length of time.

2.Halve it.

3.Halve it again. Write down this figure as your target.

4.Think of four things that would make you more comfortable: having a shower, eating some breakfast, making a coffee, going to the toilet, putting on a cardigan or brushing your teeth. These should be things you have a strong urge to do – not things you would just like to do, like take a walk, eat chocolate or go shopping.

5.When you have completed 25% of your goal, do one of the things to make yourself more comfortable.

6.Repeat every 25% until you have met your target.

For instance, you might want to write 1000 words – halving that and halving it again makes your target 250 words, which is easily achievable. As soon as you’ve written 75 words, you can pull a cardie on; after 150, you run to the loo. Soon enough you’re having that coffee and brekkie. Easy: done!

This method works because it gives you an instant sense of achievement. Because your target is so achievable, you will find yourself whizzing towards your goal. You’ll often find yourself so pumped you’ll keep going.

DECLARE YOUR GOALS

Set out your goals. Say them aloud. Use your words.

Write down, voice-record or video-record your writing intention: ‘It’s now 9 a.m. My book is at 45,209 words. I will get to 48,000 by noon. After every 500 words, I can have five minutes to check the internet. After every 1000, I can have a drink, something to eat or do something fun for fifteen minutes.’

Formalising your goals and hearing yourself say them aloud makes it less likely you will break them.

UNPLUG

Turn your internet off for 90 minutes. There are many ways to do this: disconnect from wifi, go somewhere without internet connectivity, or use an app (see Chapter 20 for suggestions).

When you turn off all distractions and focus on your achievable goal, your monkey mind will attempt to distract you by bombarding you with millions of things you simply must do now and even more things you need to check on the internet. Keep a piece of paper and a pen next to you as you write, and jot down the thoughts that keep interrupting you.

You will have plenty of time to clean the vase cabinet after you have finished your writing. And hours and hours to research the latest and most efficient vase-cleaning methods and tools. And I guarantee you won’t be nearly as interested in cleaning your car, doing your tax, walking the dog or calling your grandmother after you have finished your writing. These things you have jotted down won’t seem nearly as urgent when you’ve completed your writing for the day.

Trust me!

RUN FIRST

Exercise can be used as procrastination, but it can also be very effective in setting your brain up for a writing session. If you regularly run before you write, you will start to associate running with writing. Your body will start to know that after you run, it’s time to write. This works on the same principle as techniques for insomnia. When people are having trouble sleeping, health professionals suggest they create a set ritual before bed: turn off screens at 9 p.m., have a bath, put on pyjamas, read a chapter of a book, turn the light off. Following the same series of tasks each time sets the brain up to do what it’s told. Apparently.

Exercise is very important to writing. Not because sitting down gives you back problems (newsflash: you don’t need to sit down to write!), but because it gives you access to parts of your brain you can’t get to if you are sluggish. Chess players exercise for the same reason. To get the wriggles out, think clearly and remove the sludge off the top. To get into the ‘good rooms’ in their brain.

When I was writing weekly Wednesday columns for the Age, I would get the kids off to school on Monday, then go for a run. Before I left I would have no idea what I was going to write about that week, but by the time I arrived home I’d know exactly what it was. On my run, I would immerse myself in the world around me, just absorbing and not consciously hunting for that week’s topic. That Monday run was when my brain would reveal what was next in line in the vending machine.

Running first works well for me. I come home in my stinky running gear, grab a glass of water, open up my current document and tell myself I can’t get out of the grotty clothes until I have written 500 words. Running first also means I don’t have to run later: there’s no ‘oh I can’t write until I’ve had a run’.

Run first and play your music. Then knuckle down. Rest – completely rest – when you’re done.

UP AND AT ’EM

It’s important to find what works best for you. I am far more likely to write if I start as early in the day as possible. I am most productive between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. If I get to 5 p.m. without having written yet that day, chances are I won’t. I work quite effectively early in the day if I wake naturally. I’m much more likely to write at 6 or 7 a.m. during the warmer, lighter months. I creep out of bed, put the coffee on and get cracking. It’s very peaceful. I have a very busy and noisy household, so I find the time and space where and when I can.

People ask me all the time: ‘When is the best time to write?’ And my response is always: ‘Whenever. My preference is as early as possible. But whenever you are writing is the right time.’ But I have been proven wrong. Thanks a lot, science! Recent studies have proven that first thing in the morning is the best time to write: it’s when our willpower is strongest. Author Laura Vanderkam explains: ‘There’s some research finding that our supply of willpower is strongest in the morning (diets are broken at night, not at breakfast). Choosing to devote early morning hours to things that are important to us – exercise, strategic thinking, creativity, nurturing relationships – means you devote your most focused hours to these things, before other people’s priorities invade.’ The earlier in the day you write, the more likely you are not only to meet your goal but to keep going. Start how you would like to continue. If you have Burger Rings and a beer for breakfast, are you going to have vegetable soup, kale pasta and a peppermint tea for lunch? Chances are no, you’re not. How you start your day sets the tone for the rest of your day.

When I suggest you write first thing in the morning, I don’t mean you have to write at 6 a.m. or as soon as you wake up. The last thing I want to do is be prescriptive: I hate all the creative and self-help fascism around these days. I am not saying you have to get out of bed every morning and write for three hours after a one-hour run. What I am saying is if you want to give yourself the best possible day, one you feel happy about, start well. Be mindful that if you open the computer and go straight to Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy or a porn site, and there’s no reason or incentive to change your course, you may well still be there at 1 p.m. thinking, ‘I could have spent at least 30 minutes of that four hours writing. What would I have missed?’

You know when there’s something you’ve been meaning to do – sort the bookshelf, tidy the pile next to the bed, store your winter clothes, finish your tax return – and you keep walking past it briskly, shuddering? And you know how you finally accidentally start doing a bit and next minute it’s done? Yeah, that. Start with half an hour’s writing and then give yourself the rest of the day off as a reward. There is a book called Eat That Frog! I haven’t read it, but I’ve downloaded it, so it’s sort of the same thing. Fun fact: did you know 52% of books purchased are never read? Where’s this statistic from? The PIDOOMA Institute: Pulled It Directly out of My Arse. Read it somewhere. Can’t remember. But there’s no doubt a huge whack of books that are purchased but never read. It’s so common that there is a Japanese word for it, tsundoku: ‘buying books and not reading them’. Anyway, Eat That Frog! is a book about procrastination. The basic idea is that if you have to eat a frog every day of your life and it’s the worst thing you have to do all day, you should eat the frog first thing in the morning. Get the hardest thing out of the way first. You get a fabulous adrenaline rush and sense of achievement after doing something you’ve been dreading or have been very reluctant to get stuck into.

MORNING PAGES

Morning pages is a fabulous tool from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a twelve-week program for unblocking, encouraging and reassuring creatives. When I started running Gunnas, a lot of people mentioned Julia Cameron’s book to me, so I got hold of it as an audio book and listened to it. It’s well worth a read or a listen, even if you don’t decide to follow Cameron’s program. My favourite quote of hers is: ‘Leap, and the net will appear.’

Morning pages is the practice of getting up in the morning and, before you do anything else, writing three pages. As soon as you wake, you write whatever comes into your head: fears, dreams, gibberish – blurt it all out. Cameron advocates writing by hand, but I never handwrite. So when I do morning pages, I type them on computer. Whenever you read any of these self-help, ‘how to’ manuals for writing, remember you never have to do exactly what they say. Take bits and pieces and use them in a way that makes sense to you. These are not rules or commands – they’re simply tips for getting to the best possible place with the least amount of damage. By damage, I mean wasted time, procrastination, negative thoughts, self-loathing and obsession with perfection. These ideas help you get on with it and get it done, without all the overthinking, hand-wringing, stress or worry.

Whenever I have started the day with morning pages – which, to be honest, isn’t that often – my head has been clearer, my thoughts more creative and lucid and I have been more likely to write during the day. When you dump out all the flotsam and jetsam, it frees your unconscious mind to dig deeper.

Try it. Just blurt on the page: ‘I slept badly, why didn’t someone else do the dishes, when will that person pay me, my back is sore, I wish I were dead …’ Write for twenty minutes or so, then get up and go about your day. Those little annoying thoughts that roll around in your head all day take up a lot of your thinking time. Write ’em down, get ’em out and move ’em on. You’ll be surprised how clear-headed you are.

HATE WRITING

Sometimes when I sit down to write but I don’t feel like it, I tell myself, ‘I’ll just do two hours of Hate Writing.’ Yep, I call it Hate Writing – because I expect to hate it. For the whole two hours. Reframing writing as nightmarish torture instead of a fun, creative, magical, satisfying adventure time with words and ideas takes the pressure off that time. Say I sat down optimistically and thought, ‘I am going to have a fun, productive writing block. I’m going to write 2000 words and I’ll be fizzing with fabulous ideas.’ I would sit down and discover it’s just grind as usual. I’d feel outraged: ‘This was meant to be fun! Why isn’t it working properly? This isn’t how writing is meant to be. This is bullshit. I’m no good and this is horrible.’ But if I call it Hate Writing, I know what to expect. Anything else is a bonus. If you have a shitty birthday, you feel ripped off. If you have a great day at a job you detest? It’s a bonus!

THE FIONA METHOD

Fiona was one of my Gunnas. Fabulous woman. Makes knitting patterns for a living. It’s the only job she’s ever had. She wanted to write a book about the history of some knitted garments she had come across. I hope she’s done it. It came to light that she was adopted and when her parents got her she was wearing a layette hand-knitted by her mother.

Fiona had a fabulous method. When she woke every morning she wrote two lists: one of things she wanted to do and one of things she needed to do. When she finished something from the ‘need to’ list, she got to do something from the ‘want to’ list.

WRITING ABOUT DRY SUBJECTS

In their day jobs, many of my Gunnas have to write about fairly dry subjects – or subjects that they feel are dry because they have to write about them again and again so they get cook’s mouth. If you find yourself in this situation, these are a few formats you can use to ‘sexy up’ a dry subject. Run your idea through the format and see if it spices things up, loosens your writing up a bit.

Top 20 things you need to know about (SUBJECT)

Mythbuster (Set out myths about the subject and prove them wrong)

The best things about (REALLY SHIT SUBJECT)

Fake interview (e.g. ‘God interviewing NAME about SUBJECT’)

(Subject) for Dummies; Get across (Subject) in five minutes.

Translating (SOMETHING INCOMPREHENSIBLE) into English

What I wish I didn’t know about (SUBJECT)

The Ten Commandments of (SUBJECT)

The questions no-one is asking (NAME) about (SUBJECT)

(SUBJECT): The good, the bad and the ugly

A letter to (SUBJECT or NAME)

Also take a look at Buzzfeed-style list articles – the ones that have clickbaity headlines like ‘what happened next blew them away’, ‘30 hacks to change your life’ or ‘this will change your mind about everything you ever thought about (SUBJECT)’. Some of those structures are very fun to play with. The drier the subject, the more fun they are to use.

Or try fisking. Fisking is a blogosphere slang term for a point-by-point criticism that highlights perceived errors or disputes the analysis in a statement, article or essay. It’s a bit like giving a running commentary on an article.

THREE QUICK WRITING HACKS

1. Start before you start. I studied music at high school. One of our teachers used to recommend that as soon as we got home from school we get our instrument out, our stand up and our print music open to what we were going to practise that night. It’s a great habit to get into: prepare your materials so it’s easier to get started. Prepare to write. Open the document and find where you were up to (never leave a piece at a difficult point – always start somewhere you’re not stuck). Write ten words, then have a little break and go for a walk.

2. Give yourself the good stuff. Think about the time of day when you are most naturally productive. When do you get most things done with the least amount of effort? It’s important to give yourself some of that time to write. Not just the scraps at the end of the day. Some prime time. Don’t waste your best brain time on things that require very little of your imagination, energy and willpower.

3. Don’t kid yourself. You know yourself. You know the best way for you to write. You know the time of day you work the best and the things you are easily distracted by. For me, I need to exercise first, turn off the internet (or use it as a reward) and get cracking by noon at the latest. I also find it easier if I am alone and wearing earplugs. I can write under other conditions, but this is how I work best. Give yourself the best chance by setting the conditions that work for you, and being the hard taskmaster: ‘Righto! Internet off, document open, timer on. Go!’