300 words a day
I sent K some writing advice, gleaned from the wilds of Twitter. I must stress: K does not need writing advice. She’s written one book and is working on her second; her short stories are exquisite. She knows what it takes. K is a proper novelist, where I am generally only playing at being a book writer.
The advice came from a very successful and fun-seeming British novelist, Joanne Harris — perhaps you have seen the film adaptation of her bestselling book, Chocolat — and it was this: write 300 words a day and you'll have a finished novel in a year. K and I are sort of accountability partners for one another, inasmuch as each allows the other to be. She tells me when I am living a full-scale bullshit lie, and vice versa. We acknowledge the fuckery. We change where we can, and then we move on. I love K. She loves me. In the case of this writing advice, I think it was quite clear to K that the advice was for me.
As I told her, this was the advice I had not realised I was waiting for! All my life, I have been attracted to bitesize chunks, maybe because I enjoy eating so much. I like being able to hold things in my hands: not too hot, not too cold. Just right. The Goldilocks approach to life (man, I should write a manual). If something is unmanageable, well, I make it manageable, dammit. There is nothing that cannot be divvied up, portioned into approachable chunks, and if required, re-assembled into a big, gorgeous thing at a later date. Can you tell that I enjoy short stories, and books of essays? I love a bitesize chunk, I do.
Here is the thing – 300 words is not a lot of words. They go so quick! Consider this: Up until the beginning of this sentence, there were 309 words in this letter. And you just breezed right through them. See? Not difficult at all. The problem is, I am easily distracted. As a child, and long before the internet, I was fond of gazing out of windows and making up elaborate lies about myself and family members. I often took up intense three-week interests: fashion design, interior design, landscape design… (the destination was fluid, but I always knew I wanted to be ~creative~) The need to distract myself has only worsened with the dawn of endless internet tabs. I am more distractable than ever.
These days, I enjoy the sensation of thinking very hard about something – approaching it from every angle familiar to me, and a few that are not. I enjoy it so much that I retreat into the comfort of thought far too easily. And I am a loner, which means I am often alone by choice, and furthermore, once happily ensconced in the soft pillows of thought, can stay there for quite some time. Unbothered. Unruffled. I have to make sure that does not become Unemployed.
I have been “writing a book” since I was a teenager. I have never completed it. I should. I have to. No more needless thinking over doing.
I’m going to take the advice I always meant to take for myself since K never needed it. I am going to try.