Processing

So it turns out that I can write a book and also do other things, but writing a book plus anything else equals total disaster for the rest of my life. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on the new column for Redbook (the first one will appear in the January 2010 issue), so I neglected some other matters. Like remembering to eat, or talking to people. Also writing in this here blog.

And. And I just stared into space for about fifteen minutes while I tried to think of something else to write. Listen. I know you didn’t need to know that. I realize you are not reading this as I write. I thought I’d take you along for a minute on my mind journey. If it’s going to go blank for a bit, why shouldn’t you know? Don't you want to join me in my fugue state?

When I say I spent the last couple of weeks writing my Redbook column, what I mean is that I spent one week hiding under the duvet insisting that I have nothing worthwhile to say to anyone, and another week hiding under the duvet, emerging to tap out a few words, running around screaming that I’m a worthless hack, and then diving headfirst back under the duvet. You think I’m exaggerating, don’t you? I can see it on your face. All right, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, shut up.

I don’t know if writing is this way for anyone else, but when I’m faced with a deadline, the few days beforehand are torture. (And yet I could never get anything done without a deadline. And meeting a deadline is an unparalleled relief.) The only way I can get anything done is the following: I must 1) wear a hooded robe or sweater, hood up, and 2) put a blanket over my head, so as to create another hood over the hood, and if that’s not enough I 3) close my eyes while writing. Is that not utterly pathetic? I have to squirrel myself away in a cocoon of emotional comfort so that I can (sometimes tearfully) bang out the last few words I require to get the job done. But for whatever reason, this works for me.

I mentioned some of my bizarre habits to my Redbook editor (on whom I may have a burgeoning girl-crush—but I won’t admit to anything, except secretly when I whisper it in my pillow), and she seemed unfazed. She said brightly, “Well, that’s your process!”

So I am not insane. I have figured out my process. And you? Do you have one? Come on, admit it.

Comments

[Daddy Scratches]

Oh GAWD, can I relate.

Hell, I'm in agony just trying to come up with something to write in this "Comment" block. I feel all the eyes of all the writers in the world looking at me and the worthless drivel I type as I'm typing it and it makes me want to highlight the whole shebang and hit the "Delete" key and crawl under my desk so I can contemplate pursuing a career in hamburger-flipping or some other suitable vocation that doesn't involve writing things that obviously suck more than anything has ever before sucked in the history of sucking.

So, yeah, like that.

[LPC]

Anything horrifying can be mitigated by calling it a process. Luckily.

[Spring]

My process is SO MUCH LIKE YOURS but with less hiding and more not writing. And some walking around swearing to anyone who asks that I'm NOT A WRITER, I HAVEN'T WRITTEN IN WEEKS, HOW COULD I BE A WRITER?

But still. I want to write. I want to do it more than I want to do anything else. Which is mostly to say that I don't want to do anything at all.

[Anita]

Have you read Anne Lamont's Bird by Bird? Is there any other process besides what you just described?

I'm an academic, I have to write constantly and it's absolutely no different. it's why we have conferences, so there is an actual deadline to do something.

Read Bird by Bird. It's great.

[Holly]

Okay, I love her too now that she said, 'Well that's your process!'

Process? What is my process?

Did you have food with you under the duvet? Portable DVD player?

Oh yeah, process, ummm?

Wait, what was the question?

Ummm, to distract people enough so they forget what deadline means?

[Erin @ Fierce Beagle]

My process involves ignoring, putting off and denying. Then when the deadline is threateningly close, I do all of that some more, but then I don't sleep because the painful anxiety keeps me up. And that's pretty much when the extraction must take place (you know, the extraction of words and coherent thoughts on a digital page).

It's not unlike the time I had to have my gallbladder removed.

[Drongo]

My process involves organizing my closet, drinking whiskey and watching bowling tournaments on television. And, apparently, reading your blog.

"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." -Thomas Mann

[DiaryofWhy]

I wish I needed a process. My life is sadly deadline-free, and so my "process" goes something like: have an idea for a blog entry. Don't write about it, hoping that a better idea will come along. When it doesn't, give in and write about that Halloween thing that happened over a week ago, now that it is completely irrelevant and nobody cares anymore. Annnnnndd publish!

[zan]

And now you have an answer for the question that will inevitably be asked at every single reading you will ever go to in your entire life.

[mosey along]

I wrote about this a while back myself. Fear paralyzes me when I have a task to accomplish. I stalk up and down the hallway, drink entire pots of coffee and eat multiple bags of Pirate Booty while procrastinating ad nauseum. And then once I sit down to actually do it, the work flows smoothly like buttah and I kick myself for all the angst.

[Swedish Pankakes]

My process involves thinking, thinking, thinking until I have it all perfectly in order and then I sit at my laptop, play Mah Jong Solitaire for awhile until I realize it's late and I should go to bed and commit to more thinking because obviously my thoughts weren't compelling enough to translate into words on paper.

[Anne]

I talk to myself a lot when I write. Hense why I don't write in public - afraid the men in the white coats will drag me away. My neighbors at my last aprtment complex thought I was really strange becuase I'd stare out the kitchen window and mumble to myself.... No, I'm not spying on you! I'm THINKING!!!!

[Hope]

I don't write, but I have projects for work and my process is to wait until the last possible moment, making sure to take time to Facebook about not doing the project and pretty much do ANYTHING else I can before cranking it out in record time and then wondering why I procrastinated so long because it wasn't really all that bad.

I continue to do this 'process' for pretty much everything. It's always fine at work, but in every day life, I wait for things to blow up before dealing with them.

[Jamie]

I'm not a writer but I do a similar thing with designing. I'll sit at my desk all day pretending to work while instead wasting time, meanwhile FREAKING OUT about all the projects I have to do. And then with one hour left at work I'll kick ass and take names and get it all done in the nick of time. It's weird and probably bad, but it seems to work for me.

[schmutzie]

My process involves sitting around in my underwear, beating out 1000 words, rewarding myself with food, sniffing my armpits, taking a bath, beating out 1000 words, etc. I make writing way sexy.

[Erin]

No, I don't have a process. I just started my very first blog last Friday and I might already be out of things to say. I also wear a hoodie with the hood up. And I stare out the window for so long that my eyes start to burn. I don't do it on purpose, sometimes I'm too stuck to blink.

I did read this great article in the WSJ Friday though, profiling a few great authors and how they work (google "WSJ how to write a great novel" in case the link doesn't work. There are a few fab ideas!. I personally love the post-it-note guy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703740004574513463106012106.html

[Kristin Allen]

this was lovely and refreshing to read. I just got a babysitter and gave myself the gift of time to write and all the sudden I was like, "You are the biggest idiot Alive. You have nothing of note to say. Everything you've ever done in your whole life has amounted to nothing. Hurry, get back to cleaning the house and doing laundry because Then..THEN you will atleast have accomplished Something by taking care of everyone else. Who cares if you are still miserable? Who cares about your dreams?" And then I cry and think everyone around me hates me. But somewhere along the line, I pulled out of it. Thank God.
And..what is Redbook? I suppose I could check that out with my writing time instead of writing....

[galyng]

My process is much like yours but I'm considering a new one. Author Kate DiCamillo recently said she gets up at 5 am and writes until about 7 a.m. because the internal voice that tells her she sucks, she's a terrible writer and shouldn't be writing at all, wakes up and then she has to stop. She writes 2 pages a day while her inner critic is still asleep.

The problem is, can I get my creative genius up at 5 a.m.? I don't think so.

[Heather (The Momshell Diet)]

Caffeinate. Eat some chocolate. Eat some more chocolate. Hide the chocolate. Tell self I can go find it again when I've finished writing.

[edj]

My process involves reading everyone else's blogs, obsessively checking FB, reading books, chatting online with my sister-in-law...and then freaking out. So it's related. Also I eat.

[Kristin Steiner]

My process consists of writing one sentence, checking Twitter, Facebook, blog stats etc. Writing another sentence, sending my husband a funny/naughty e-card. Writing another sentence, calling a friend to go for lunch. Writing another sentence and calling my mother (if that doesn't suck the creativity out of a person I don't know what does). Deleting everything I've written up until this point, then cleaning my entire house. And finally barfing out my entire assignment in a 30-45 minute period of rampant typing. Then I send it to my husband to read and habitually graze on high carb foods, waiting for him to ridicule me and shred the crap out of my most intimate thoughts. And he just says. "I like it. It's funny."

To this day I don't know if he's referring to my writing or the ecard. But I'm not brave enough to ask.

@BeingSuper

[hi kooky]

Lots of staring off into space, and chocolate chips.

(Bonus: I just discovered Reese's peanut butter chips (baking aisle). These PLUS chocolate chips = Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Experience for a fraction of the cost.)

[spoiledonlychild]

I too have spent many an hour in procrastination hell before actually putting words to computer screen. In fact, I'm procrastinating about a writing assignment right this moment. Until now, my "process" has just involved surfing the internet and hating myself. But maybe I'll try the blanket. Wonder what my coworkers will think.

[Kate F.]

Ha, makes me think of that old quote (attributed to Red Smith but often to others, too), "Writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out drop by drop." I first heard that from my most awesomely curmudgeonly old-school editor (the kind with a bottle of Wild Turkey and a coffee mug in his cabinet) and I've always loved it.

I'm actually a really fast writer once I stop procrastinating. But my process, I guess, is of procrastination until I get to a point where I am positive that there is no way I will be able to complete with assignment, at which point my stomach starts doing flips and I get really frantic and sweaty-palmed and then at the last possible moment I sit down and bang it out. Then, since I'm a journalist and there are generally lots of facts in the things I write, I spend the weeks leading up to publication in an agony of terror about possible mistakes. Only once the article has been out for a week or two and there haven't been any catastrophes can I fully relax. I'm sure this is great for my blood pressure.

I've often said that what I hate most about freelancing from home instead of working on staff at a magazine is that I no longer have the support of coworkers for the procrastination/self-loathing/writing cycle. We'd mostly go into each other's offices and whine about how screwed we were and how surely we'd be fired, then go write a couple paragraphs, rinse, repeat until the deadline was magically met. Now it's just me and CSI:NY reruns and self-loathing all by my lonesome!

[Kate House]

A process? Now THAT is a radical idea. Perhaps if I labeled the whining and the shuffling files, I would work better.

In the meantime, I believe a few of the previous commenters have hit it on the head: Food. While hiding under the duvet, eat vast amounts of the least healthy snack items you can find at a convenience store (since convenience stores are known to carry much junkier stuff than any real grocery store). This activity spawns a variety of other time-consuming activities, like stripping the sheets to wash off the crumbs and chocolate stains, talking about how much you'll need to exercise to get rid of the just-ingested calories, and perhaps if you are particularly determined, actually exercising. By the time all this is completed, the deadline is one hour away and you have no choice but to meet it. Plus the work fills up that 50 minutes it takes the dryer to properly fluff your duvet cover.

[Amanda Blog and Kiss]

I need to get physical. Stand up, sit down, shuffle things around, dance a bit, roll the chair away from the desk, scoot it forward again back to the desk, play with the dogs, etc, etc until I get exhausted enough to focus on the task at hand.

And then I nap.

THEN when I wake I'm usually ready.

[Katie]

Step 1. Ignore that I have anything I must write.
Step 2. Allow what I need to write to simmer and congeal in head.
Step 3. Worry about having to write something by a deadline
Step 4. Continue to do nothing about writing anything
Step 5. Wring hands about how I really should be working on writing project
Step 6. Be really crabby for 24-48 hours before project is due.
Step 7. Within last 24 hours, write out project with many fits and starts, lots of snacking, and perhaps a nap in between sections.

If research is involved, I have to add 4 steps in there about collecting scads of research and not reading it and then collecting more.

I'm doing a grad program now because I like misery.

[Lee]

My process: scrub bathtub, which hasn't been cleaned since last deadline. Eat chocolate. Hyperventilate. Use bag chocolate came in to stop hyperventilating. Decide to cook dinner (I don't cook). Start moaning about how it would just be easier if someone would kindly take a chainsaw and cut the @#$% paper/writing assingment out of me. Eat more chocolate. Continue cycle until 5 minutes past the point of any hope of meeting deadline. Write with the abandon of one who can not be corrected, because THERE IS NO MORE TIME. Live with imperfect product because who can be expected to produce anything great in that amount of time?

Another great procrastination process for writing a blog is to spend nine months on your template, without producing a real entry that whole time. Yep, nine months.

[Amy]

Oh my word, everyone who commented on here is EXACTLY LIKE ME. I feel like I have 27 personalities who all wrote about their barely-different processes under 27 pen names. Very therapeutic to learn that I am not alone, even though you may very well all be in my head. Thank you/me.

[Rebecca]

Oh my god, I love that you're saying this! Everyone around me thinks I'm insane because of my writing process, it's good to know that I'm in good company. I'm a student (getting a master's in education) and a dancer and my writing process and my choreography process are oddly similar. Here's mine:

1) Receive assignment/project. Get really excited about it and think of lots of ideas.
2) Forget about aforementioned assignment/project because there's a new episode of Glee on Hulu/new blogs to be read/shredded cheese to be eaten out of the bag.
3) Try to hunker down and do project 3 or 4 days before it is due, fail miserably because once again the internet is full of too many distractions and there is too much delicious food in my fridge.
4) Panic because deadline is looming, call best friend in a panic and take an Adderall.
5) Make large pot of coffee, drink several Monster Low-Carb energy drinks.
6) Work through the night, feel like I'm developing the most awesome ideas ever developed by any human ever while at the same time becoming acutely aware that my life isn't what it should be and my friends all probably hate me. Pace throughout the apartment intermittently.
7) Eventually finish project, submit it/present it.
8) Realize I haven't eaten in 24 hours and slowly reintroduce food into my system.
9) Fly off the handle at the next person who calls or talks to me and cry because I hate having ADD and because I've inadvertently starved myself.
10) Have a bourbon on the rocks and sleep for 16 hours.

[Mary Pat]

dear lord it's good to know that I think I suck at writing as much as you all do. except that didn't come out right. I think I suck at writing like you all think you suck at writing. whew. but the catch is that you all don't suck at writing and it's just me, right?!
Why am I applying to grad school again?
And yes, there is much wringing of the hands and fretting and deleting and walking away and oh! look! chocolate! mmmm. Hey! Etsy!
And then the husband comes in and ruins all the fun by saying something like "aren't you supposed to be doing something?"
ehem. well. since you asked: yes I am.

[twitter.com/ashleygillen]

My process is sitting in the EXACT same position on my bed every time. And complete silence, which I never get.

[Therese]

Yes. Several. Here is one of them.

First, I write something completely unrelated and stupid that makes no sense.

Next, I read it and decide it is brilliant, and can I use it elsewhere? This brilliance has to be immortalized, surely the world should not be deprived!

Then I make a sandwich while thinking about how brilliant I am, and how marvellous it was that it took only ten minutes to write that.

Once my sandwich is done I read it again. I decide I'm a moron, it's total crap, no one will ever see it because it is mortifying and mind-bogglingly awful, and am a worthless human being who will never write another word worth reading or ever have good sex again. Am doomed. Doomed to bad sex forever.

Then I have a drink, and gulp it down, take a deep breath, and eat the sandwich in a very hurried, very unattractive manner, chewing emphatically. Then I am suddenly juiced to try again but while making sure that thing I wrote is away from view.

Then I start all over again.

Results vary.

[Phoe]

Waaaaait...me jacking around and wasting time is a 'process'? SWEET! How come no one told me this when I was up until 10:30 on a school night finishing some stupid mythology project in junior high? Or, really, how come no one told my parents?

[Alittlejelee]

I just clean my entire house several times and then look at my bank account and see how I have no retirement savings and $300 in my child's college account, and then I sit down and I will the words. And then I rewrite them 50 times (somehow the rewriting is much easier).

[Marinka]

Of course she said "it's your process". What, you think you'll confess to her that you outfit yourself like a monk and sit with your eyes closed and she's going to mock you? And risk your wrath? "Process" never hurt anyone.

[lori cortiglia]

I have a blog. (I know, so rare.) In my desperation to come up with topics to post about, anything is fair game. If you infer from this that my life is somewhat boring, I would not try to correct you. So when one of my commenters noted--and quite rightly--that I had been procrastinating about writing my next post, this gave me the inspiration for my next idea. Before I read her comment I had not realized I was doing this. I thought I was just waiting for the next idea for a topic to come and gobsmack me like it usually does. But I do know this about myself: once the issue of procrastination is raised with regard to a task I should be performing, NOTHING CAN HAPPEN until a task I like even less rears its head, and it’s right then that I get the most interesting idea for a post and I sit down and write it straightaway, because I DON'T want to do that other thing. Does that make sense? It’s pretty much how I operate.
I wish I could say that my motivation to write has nothing to do with how filthy my house is right now. But it has EVERYTHING to do with that.

[Candace]

I'm a computer programmer, there is similar stress of trying to create something out of thin air under a deadline. I wear ginormous headphones, with no music playing. In public. That hood and blanket set-up sounds really nice...

[Ally]

Process. Heehee. Yeah I have one of those...

I wait until the very last minute to get stuff written (I'm in a Master's program right now so this happens a lot) because if I try to write way before my deadline, I tend to panic and think that I'll never, ever, ever get any of it done. Ever. (Ever.)
However, once the deadline is nigh, I pretty much immediately cease panicking, realize that I'll get it done like I've gotten everything else done, and then I just do it. It's like magic. And then little angels sing my praises in my brain for getting stuff done on time.

Also, if I reeeeeally can't get something done, I bribe myself. The last time this happened I told myself that I'd buy myself a hat from Yokoo on Etsy if I got enough done. Now I have a beautiful hat. It works.

[Sarah]

Hmm. I tell people that I have, instead of a "thinking cap," a "thinking hoodie."

Is there something about covering one's head while thinking that works, maybe?

[willikat]

That sure sounds like all the writers I know, and I know many, because I write for a living. And it sounds like me.
Also, I want your writing career. Like, can we talk? Not about you getting me jobs, but we writers have to stick together. Any advice you have for me greatly appreciated, even if it is about your thinking hoodie.
Also, here's a teeny bit about my "process":
http://willikat.blogspot.com/2009/10/only-true-currency-in-this-bankrupt.html

[tjdemauro@yahoo.com]

You know what? First step? Get over yourself. Seriously. And then? Write. And then? Edit. And then edit, and edit, and edit some more. I love process, honestly, and I do process every day. Write.

[Barbara]

I open a word document and then go do dishes. And then I make fresh coffee. And then I make the beds. And then I get really pissed off that I have lost hours, hello!! And what is wrong with me? Somehow, that anger propells me to write a little.

And then I get up and eat a little something, and then I start carmelizing onions because lord knows they take forever, and then I throw some laundry in the machine. And then I look at the clock and I have to go get the kids in an hour and I feel like the world is setting me up to fail! Why won't anyone let me write? And the self-pity, plus the sense of my time winding down, leads to low-grade panic, and that usually propels me to pound out another 300 words.

It's actually miserable and I enjoy it like a particularly well-fitting hairshirt, if the hairshirt maybe had pockets for really good chocolate.

[Terresa Wellborn]

My process? Chocolate, and lots of it. Chocolate chip waffles for brekkie, then a quick lunch because then it's chocolate time again for dessert, and then an after-dinner quickie (chocolate, of course!!) and then a late night indulgence.

And writing? Sure, I do that, too, in between it all, around and through the bits of chocolate melting on my white shirt while I type, unawares, and into the cracks of the keyboard.

And my 4 young kids? They share some chocolate once in awhile. When they behave.

[Jennifer]

My process is reading blogs instead of working.

[Nadia]

I'm a reporter, and having to write for a daily deadline has beaten any process out of me.
In fact, now I feel like I'm incapable of writing anything unless I have less than an hour to do it.
But if I ever wrote a book or anything longer, I'd probably do the same as you.
Writers make the best procrastinators.

[Shauna]

I can relate to such a process... but just wanted to say hip hip hoorary for the Redbook column. That is brilliant :)

[Stephanie]

love your writing - quality, always, and often a new word, for me, tucked into the bit. Today I had to look up 'fugue' which I knew was a music term, but that didn't fit the context, and I wanted to assume meant something like 'futile' but that didn't seem to fit you OR the context. So, FUGUE. Yes, I know that condition, and now I know there is a word for it!

Comforting, you are not the only AUTHOR dealing with writing drafts: http://www.joshilynjackson.com/mt/archives/001103.html

Cheering you on!

[kate]

Not a writer... exactly, but my process is
1. think about it.
2. work on it a little.
3. ignore it for a long time.
4. start to panic that it has to be done.
5. work on it for a full day.
6. scrap EVERYTHING I just did.
7. do it and finish just barely in time.

[Cat]

I'm pretty sure that "figured our your process" is euphemism for "crazy writer". Kind of like how rich people are "eccentric".