One great thing about writing is that age and experience helps.  It’s not like dancing or tennis where you wear out quickly.

Here are some things I’ve learned with experience:

1. Don’t talk about your work.  It’s harder to write when you talk about it all the time.

2. Don’t show your work until you’re ready–really ready.  When you finish a draft take another week to reread and revise.  I guarantee that the extra time and attention will pay off.

3. Build in breaks to your day.  Few can concentrate for hour after hour and many burn out trying.   Try a five minute break every hour, and give yourself a real lunch break too!

4. Exercise helps.  Walking, running, swimming, just plain stretching.  You’ll think better.

5. Plan ahead.  I know I sound unromantic, but writing notes or outlines and thinking about how long a project will take will help keep you sane.  Setting small short term goals makes a long project much less overwhelming.

6.  Read.  Some people swear off reading while they write a book, but I think that’s like exiling yourself.   If you find reading distracting, try a different genre.  Read poetry when writing fiction.  Try reading a play.

7. Daydream.  Staring out the window is actually not a waste of time.   Writing involves more than setting words own on the page.   In fact, thinking and imagining come first.  It’s so easy to forget that!

8. Try not to rush.  Don’t keep churning out pages just to get to the end.  Hold yourself to a certain standard so that you’re actually happy with the work you’ve done so far.  Careful work will make you confident.

9.  Enjoy the process.  Why do something you don’t enjoy?  This is your life; this is the only time you have.  Choose work you love.

10. Forgive yourself.  Nothing worthwhile is easy.  It’s hard to tell a story.  It takes a lifetime to learn.

Writers develop all kinds of excuses for not writing.   Fear.  Loneliness.  Exhaustion.  Self Criticism.  I’ve got a new one for you.  Sometimes it’s hard to start writing because you know you’re going to be interrupted.  In other words, it’s hard to start because it’s hard to stop.

I find I’m more susceptible to this syndrome at the beginning of a project.  When I’m unsure where my story is going, my work seems more fragile, and my time more vulnerable.  As I make progress, I’m eager to return to my work each day, and more willing to take what I can get for time–even if it’s just forty five minutes in my parked car, or an hour on a Sunday morning when my nine year old could come upon me at any moment.

I do find, however, that fear of interruption is an unacknowledged cause of writer’s block.  If you’re having trouble starting your work, consider the quality of your work time.  Do you have a good three hours of quiet?  Or are you pressuring yourself to write a certain number of words in between errands and activities.  Do you have time when you’re alert?  Or are you exhausted when you sit down to write?

One of my sons hated to take baths when he was little.  He wasn’t afraid of the water.  On the contrary, he loved the water too much, and hated to get out.  He began to dread getting out of the tub, and then he started avoiding baths altogether.  Creative work can become like that warm bath.   It helps to schedule enough time to enjoy it.  And it definitely helps to acknowledge that you can’t always jump in and out of your writing quickly–that you need time to soak, to think, to float!  Don’t rush the transition from the outside world into your inner life and back.  Try to think of ways to ease yourself in and out.

Easing into my work, I read the newspaper, and listen to music, and reread what I wrote the day before.

Easing out, I read a chapter from a good book, stare out the window, take a short walk, listen to music, outline the scene I’ll write next.

What about you?

Some writers swear that inspiration and instinct are their only guides.  I have a friend who says, “I have no plan.  I just keep working toward whatever feels alive.”  Others swear by old fashioned hard work.  One writer I know told an audience at a bookstore.  “Butt on chair.  That’s the only way to write.  I don’t believe in inspiration.  You just keep slogging away.”

What to believe?   And which course to take?  Do you keep paper and pen by your bedside and hope that ideas will come to you in your sleep?  Or do you sit down every day at your desk and write by the clock, or by the page?

Each approach has its benefits and limitations.  You need that spark of inspiration to write.  You need to allow your imagination its freedom.  A sense of play, a sense of possibility, time for your unconscious to work–all these are necessary.   But if you spend all your time waiting for inspiration to strike, you’ll get nothing done.   On the other hand, you need to put in time at your desk–or on your couch or in your local coffee house–to write.  At some point, you do need to sit yourself down in your chair and ask yourself to produce some pages.  The problem with the butt in chair approach is that you might produce mediocre work just because you want to feel you’re getting something done.  You can force yourself to write a certain number of pages, or words, but if they aren’t good, you aren’t doing yourself any favors.

What to do?  Is it possible to reconcile these approaches?

Yes, I think you can.   Writing requires inspiration; it also requires patient hard work.   A novel–or a short story, or a poem, or a dissertation, for that matter–is the product of insight that takes just a moment and also steady hours and days of work.  Just as light is both a wave and a particle, writing is both quick and slow.  The trick is to recognize that writing requires more than one kind of work.  There will be times you need to dream or take long walks.  And there will be times you’ll need to sit in your chair and write patiently, describing, developing, unfolding your tale.   Writing requires thinking.  It’s no good sitting down and asking yourself to write 2000 words when you don’t know what you want to say.  Writing complex pieces requires planning.   It’s difficult to find your way without directions.  Your guide could be an outline, or notes, or just a mental image, but you need a guide.  Writing also requires improvisation, fluidity and flexibility.  Instinct is essential, a sense of shape, an ear for the rhythm of a scene, and yes, a sense of what’s alive.

The funny part about inspiration is that it doesn’t always come first.  We romanticize the initial creative spark, but consider that breakthroughs often come in the middle of a project, not the beginning.  Why?  Because the imagination abhors a vacuum.  It requires material–whether that’s data, or dreams, or memory, or reading, or bits of writing you’ve done on the fly.  I’ve found that I’m most free when I’m best prepared.  As Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

1. Cooking.  How can I cook a big dinner after slaving all day over an imaginary stove?

2. Returning videos.  But I know my local video rental store needs the cash from late fees.

3. Plants.  A couple of books ago I killed a large cactus.  Turns out that not watering for two years will cause death.

4. Clothes shopping.  This is where writing can save money.

5.  Blogging.  Writing every day means less time to write about writing.

6.  Worrying.  Strangely no free time can contribute to great peace of mind.

How about you?  What do you let go when you’re in the throes of a big project?

There are writers who set themselves goals: 1000 words a day, or, three hours every morning. Then there are writers who work only when the spirit moves them, waiting for inspiration and then working nonstop. I’m somewhere in between. I try to write consistently, but I don’t have a rock solid routine. I do hope for inspiration, but I have to work while I’m waiting–and pick up kids, and buy groceries.

The tricky thing about writing is that it’s not even or consistent work. Sometimes writing goes quickly, and sometimes it goes verrrry slowly. Sometimes it involves steady page by page progress, and sometimes work means throwing out three chapters or taking a walk. For this reason, it’s difficult to map out a writing project in neat equal installments.

What I’ve found is that each story has its own slope. When you start out, you’re writing your way uphill, figuring out what to do, learning–indeed, inventing–the terrain.

The middle of a story feels like cresting the hill. At this point, you might want to rush to the end, but don’t do that. Stop here, unpack your picnic, sit with your reader and admire the view.

Ending means writing your way down again. Writing downhill is much faster than working your way up, but you need to pace yourself so you don’t run out of energy, and step carefully so don’t fall, or start avalanches, or get lost in the woods.

Every writing project has its own slope–steep, or gentle, or slippery.  A novel might have a gentle slope and a short story might have a rocky one, hard going at first. Strange and wonderful to consider these narrative topographies. Strangest of all to think that within a larger project like a novel, each chapter has its own slope, its own unique challenges and surprises–a sudden waterfall! A tangle of wild blackberries.

This week I read at the Fall for the Book Festival at George Mason University.  A young alumna of the MFA program drove me around and asked me if I had any words of wisdom for her as an aspiring writer.

I came up with a a lot of advice while talking to her, and then thought of more while flying home.  Here are my top 10 tips.

1. Keep your day job.  You’ll earn a living, and the real world is great material.

2. Work on more than one project.  If your novel doesn’t pan out, it’s wonderful to have something else in the oven.

3. If you want to write (and get something done) while taking care of kids at home, you’ll need childcare.  Nobody says this, but it’s true.

4. Try not to talk about your ideas.  Let your subconscious work in peace.

5. Don’t force yourself to write a certain number of words a day.  It’s so much better to write a great paragraph than a messy five pages.  Go for quality, not quantity, and you’ll save time in the long run.

6. Read your work aloud.

7. Revise as you go, and then revise when you’re done, and then put your work aside and revise again.

8. Don’t let other people rush you.

9.  Enjoy yourself.   You don’t have to be miserable to make art.   Misery and self-loathing are optional!

10. Read, read, read.   When you’re tired out, let other writers carry you.

Tomorrow my kids go back to school.  My children will be entering   sophomore year in college, 11th grade, 7th grade and 4th grade.   In a way I’m going back to school too, because each novel is like school for me.  Each time I learn new lessons about how to tell a story.

They are never the same lessons, because each story has different requirements.  Each story is its own school with its own people, and its own teachers, some strict, some funny, all demanding in their own ways.

If only ideas came with supply lists!   I’d love to go to the novel store and fill up a shopping basket:

1. protagonist–with dividers

2. large box of characters–with sharpener

3. protractor for figuring out all my angles

4. heavy duty eraser for fixing mistakes

5. craft glue

6. magnetic plot

Can’t wait for the first day!

I know the end of summer is bittersweet for many–especially kids.  For me, however, it doesn’t feel bittersweet at all.

I love shopping for school supplies. Especially new notebooks, binders and fresh erasers.

I love buying school clothes, and taking loads of outgrown clothes to the Red Cross containers in the supermarket parking lot.

I love the change in the light as summer ends and autumn begins.

I love going to the library and borrowing audio books for the car.   Last year my kids and I listened to dozens:  all the Little House books, Treasure Island, Doll People, The Secret Garden, and many more. There’s just something about audio.   It’s like supplying literature intravenously.

I admit, I do not like shoe shopping, the return of kids’ homework, the ferrying on hectic weekends.  But mostly, September feels like a fresh start.  The year is new, and I’m motivated to write my book!

I’ve fallen behind in my blogs on “Middlemarch” because of my own novel.   I hit one of those bumps in the road while writing, took a little bounce, stopped to catch my breath and look around, backed up, checked my map (rewrote my map!), and now I’m back on track, reading and writing.

I’ve now finished Book VII of “Middlemarch” and alas, I’ve got just one left to go.  This is a long novel, but it’s so full of life and incident and ideas that it never seems long to me, just rich and layered and sustaining.  It’s so beautifully constructed that the pace never slackens, and the narrative moves beautifully, marching forward.  It’s very much a book of change, motion, and transformation, both on a personal and political level.  We see Dorothea transformed from a naive idealist to an innocent realist.  We see Fred change from a cut up to a more serious man.  We see Will change from dilettante to adult.  We see Middlemarch itself change with the advent of the railroad and the reform bills. These are just a few of the transformations Eliot traces.  We watch Lydgate’s disillusionment.  We see Bulstrode’s downfall.

The novel is uniquely suited to detailing change.  This is because the novel follows characters and events over time.  In a long narrative there’s time for the old to die and the young to grow, for marriages to decay, for the foolish to fail–or profit, for the other shoe to drop.  Novels allow for outcomes more than any other tighter, shorter genre.  The reader swallows a short story, but follows a novel.  Following a narrative over days or weeks or even months, we journey along with the characters, and trace their moral development, or dissolution.  We have time to pass judgment, and we have time to revise our judgments as well.  This revision of judgement, this gradual dilation of point of view from prejudice to pity or from easy decision to complex consideration is Eliot’s great gift.  Consider her analysis of Dorothea’s marriage, and her discussion of Lydgate’s entrapment, personally and professionally.  Bulstrode’s drama, and Eliot’s use of his point of view, are stunning as well.  He’s unlikeable and at the same time we feel for him.

On this reading, I’m struck by Eliot’s subtle critique of the position of women.  Dorothea is the obvious locus, with her desire to do more and be more than opportunity permits.  But Lydgate provides the male context.  His romantic view of women leads to his disastrous marriage and the ruin of his hopes.  He looks for beauty instead of intellect, judgement, substance, goodness.  What he gets is Rosamund–the lovely embodiment of his failure in imagination.  Needless to say, Lydgate is trapped by his limited perspective.  His ruin is one of the triumphs of this amazing novel, and, to me, Eliot’s finest piece of social and political commentary–for she is suggesting that the men in her world are trapped as well.

I’ve started rationing “Middlemarch” because I enjoy it so much more when I read slowly.  Some books are meant for speed–all stripped down action and best read quick.   It’s fun to stay up late at night and read a novel all at once.

Other novels are meant for contemplation.   You want to live in them as long as possible.  “Middlemarch” is this kind of book.   There is so much to contemplate:

Mary and Rosamund standing side by side at the mirror.

Young Lydgate, bright but easily bored, deciding to become a doctor when he takes an old anatomy off the shelf.

Peter Featherstone, like Volpone in bed, mocking his greedy relatives–and each of those relations!  Greedy, anxious, ridiculous, proud, needy, self-important.   You can see them all if you take the time to look.

This novel is like a cathedral with its grand architecture and flying buttresses, its great shafts of light, its breathtaking windows, illuminating so many souls, and yes, its gargoyles, its Featherstones.  Even the name is gargoyle-like, connoting rock carved with wings.  The cosmic joke in imagining  flight and weight together, or daring pigs to fly or drawing blood from stone.