Fiction Friday

Why it’s ok to be a slow writer

Photo by Morgane Le Breton on Unsplash

Like molasses

My brain likes to take its sweet time percolating through characters, plots, connections, or a good hook. I used to spend weeks on the unpaid blogs entries I contributed to an online journal. Until I realized that I just couldn’t worry so much about it.

I’m a slow writer.

So it was with great effort (and more than a year), that I finally finished the first draft of a novel, over 100,000 words. Mind you, it is only the first draft. I have a long way to go.

If you’re a slow writer too, you’re not alone (and if you’re a fast writer, I salute you and send you on to finish your tenth writing project this week).

Slow is not bad

I have to remind myself that slowness can become a sort of resistance to the cultural values of productivity and success. Cultivating attention by slowing down is a vital discipline in a world that rewards short attention spans.

Every writer’s process is unique

While I love Stephen King’s book on writing and this list of writing advice, we are not all looking to terrify people prolifically like he does. Prescribing a time or day or amount of words to another writer can be helpful as an example, not a rule.

If you’re a seat-of-the-pantser (with a tiny bit of plotting here and there) like I tend to be, then there is a sort of joy—and a lot of terror—in the creativity of discovery. Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to plot everything beforehand or you will lose the thread of your story. Some of us just don’t work that way. I’ve tried, believe me.

If you’re a plotter or something in between, I’d love to be you…how do you do it? Can we have coffee and you share your secret knowledge with me?

Faster writing is possible but it is not necessary.

Sometimes, the more you write, the more you will recognize what is important and what is not.

Unless you’re a poet or Toni Morrison you do not have to make every single sentence a work of art.

On the other hand, if you’ve always been a slow writer and you always will be, take a page from, well, many famous writers who spent years or decades on their seminal works.

• Toni Morrison took a year and a half to write Beloved.

• To Kill a Mockingbird took Harper Lee 2.5 years to write.

• Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables in 10 years.

• J.R.R. Tolkien took 16 years to write Lord of the Rings.

You don’t have to get away on a writing retreat (although I really want to someday). You can write in a corner on the floor of your bedroom.

When my youngest was a toddler, I finished the edits of my second book while sitting on the floor and using a bench as a desk. And while it was terrible for my back and shoulders, it was all that I had at the time

Sometimes we write in our tiny bedrooms. Sometimes we have a desk in the corner. Sometimes we have an office. Sometimes we have children crawling all over us. Sometimes we have demanding jobs or responsibilities.

But we can all write, even if it’s in the nooks and corners of a day.

Whatever kind of writer you are, I salute you and wish you well on this maddening beautiful journey of the imagination.

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One writing tip

A great piece of advice I’ve read recently is to start a word bank for your writing.

Dear Writer author Maggie Smith suggests bringing a beloved book or poem with you to the writing desk. Before you begin writing for the day, read a poem or a page and make a list of the words that stick out to you. Try to use a few of those words in your own writing.

Here are a few words in my bank from Galway Kinnell’s poem Daybreak:

• daybreak

• mountain pool

• tidal mud

• receptivity