“I’d love to know what your process is.”
“I wish I could write as much as you do.”
I hear variations on the above comments all the time,
whether in person at conventions or via social media. Sometimes I get the
feeling that these people are hoping that I have some kind of secret I can pass
along to help them be more productive. The truth is that there is a
secret, but it’s not one anyone can replicate: If you want to do what I do, you
have to be me. This is true for any artist. How we get things done is an expression
of who we are, just as our art is. We can discover techniques and habits from
other artists that we can try to emulate, but ultimately, we’re going to end up
doing what we do the way we do it because of who we are at any given moment.
And of course, this can all change as we change throughout the years. I think
artists are better served by experimenting with different techniques to
discover what they need in order to be productive than by being concerned
with how someone else produces work.
But that doesn’t mean learning about someone else’s
process is completely without merit, so here are some thoughts about mine, for
whatever good it may do you.
At this point in my writing career, I’ve traditionally
published fifty novels, nearly 200 short stories, and dozens of articles. I don’t
feel like I’m especially prolific, but the other day I took a look at my 2023 Writing
Deadlines document (I only make these when I’ve committed to so many projects that
there’s a good chance I’ll forget something if I’m not careful) and since the
start of the year, I’ve written one novel, two novellas, and eight short
stories. (I’ve also written material for this blog – as I’m doing right now! –
and for my newsletter.) Work I still need to do by the end of the year: one
novel, four short stories, and an introduction to the ten-year anniversary edition
of a friend’s book. A couple other projects are in the works, but no deadlines
have been set yet.
For years, I’ve primarily written short stories when I
get invited to contribute to anthologies, although I do write a few on spec
every once in a while. (On spec means on speculation, without a
contract already being in place.) The novels and novellas I write are almost
always contracted for as well. (I did write one novella on spec early in the
year, though.) What this means is that most of my work has a deadline involved,
and those deadlines hold my feet to the fire when it comes to getting writing
done.
I possess a number of qualities that aid in my being a
productive writer. One is that I have a facility for language (always have),
another is I write fast (always have), I tend not to have to revise too much
when I’m finished (always been this way), and somehow I’m able to keep
crippling doubt at bay and keep going (always been this way). I’ve always been
an imaginative person, living inside my head most of the time, and I’ve always
been a creative person. Ideas come to me all the time, mostly without my trying
too hard. I love learning about writing and storytelling techniques (this didn’t
start seriously until I was in my late teens), and this knowledge has given me
a lot to draw on as I try to figure out my own process (and try to reconfigure it)
over the years. I have a naturally analytical mind, I naturally work steadily
at my goals (both my father and maternal grandmother were the same way), and I
visualize many approaches to a problem before I try to solve it in the real world
(including in my writing). I’m also able to make choices easily and quickly.
They may not always be the best choices, but I can always fix them later (at
least in my writing!). I can also focus like crazy, especially when I’m doing something
that fascinates me.
All of the above qualities are natural for me. I wasn’t
taught any of them, although I have worked to cultivate and sharpen them consciously
over the years, but they all factor into how much writing I’m able to produce
and at what speed I produce it. So I suppose my first piece of advice would be
. . .
WRITER, KNOW THYSELF
I started out as an acting major in college, but I
didn’t stay one for long. On the first day of acting class, our professor told
us the only reason anyone should become an actor is because they have
to, that they can’t imagine doing anything else with their life. Only with that
kind of drive would they be able to endure the hardships and make the
sacrifices that are often necessary to have a career in acting. I knew I didn’t
have that kind of passion for acting, so I switched my major to theater education.
That degree had English as a secondary teaching field, and I thought that since
I liked theater, education, and English, by the end of four years, I’d
hopefully figure out what the hell to do with my life. But I then asked myself
if there was anything I loved – that I needed – so much that I’d be
willing to make any sacrifice for it. I realized writing fiction was that
thing, and so I decided to dedicate my life to it then and there (I told you I can
make decisions fast!). Like a lot of creative kids, I tried it all in high
school – theater, art, music, writing – and at one point or another I wanted to
make each of these fields my career. But writing is the only field that aligns
with my truest self. I don’t just like to write; I must write. It’s not
a job for me and it’s not a hobby. It’s life. I need to write the same
way I need to breathe. It’s that natural and necessary for me.
Maybe your need to write is as strong as mine – maybe stronger!
Maybe it isn’t. If writing is just a part of your life (which is probably a lot
healthier, let’s be honest) then maybe you don’t produce a lot of work because
you’ve got other important stuff to do with your life as well. There’s not a
damn thing wrong with that. Accept this about yourself and go forth and live
and write without guilt.
There are some things I’m not willing to sacrifice for
my writing, though. I’ve always wanted a relationship, and I’ve always wanted children.
Not having these things might’ve given me even more time for writing, but
without them, I wouldn’t be a fulfilled person, I’d be miserable, and I’d
probably have produced far less work throughout my life than I have. There’s an
old bit of writing career advice: Make a list of everything that’s more
important to you than writing. The shorter the list, the greater the chance you’ll
succeed. My relationship with a significant other and my children are the only
two items above writing on my list. If your list has a lot more items on it
before you get to writing, so what? Accept it and don’t beat yourself up about
it.
TIME AND SPACE TO WRITE
To finish my undergraduate degree (a B.S. in
Education), I had to student teach at a local high school. It didn’t take long
for me to realize that not only did teaching teenagers drain all my energy,
making it hard to write at night, but that I’d be stuck working from 7 a.m. to
4 p.m. or so (and probably grading essays at night). I worked at the Writing Center
at my college, and I’d learned that people with an M.A. in English could teach
college composition courses part-time. I realized that I needed time to write,
especially when I was in the early stages of my career and trying to grow as a
writer, and teaching comp part-time would give this to me. (And I wouldn’t have
all the life sucked out of me before dinnertime every day.) This was the first
conscious career choice I made to ensure I had time to write.
I was privileged in terms of paying for college. I had
an inheritance that paid for my undergrad degree, and I got a teaching assistantship
which paid for my M.A. I left college without any debt, so I didn’t have to
take jobs I didn’t want to in order to pay off loans. I taught part-time for
ten years while I wrote, until I decided that I should probably find a job with
benefits since I was getting older, and it was becoming clear that my first wife
and I would likely divorce before long (her job was the one that gave us and
our kids benefits). I found a full-time, tenure-track job opening at Sinclair
Community College in Dayton, Ohio, applied for it, interviewed, and got the position.
Yes, it was full time, but not 9-5 full time. There were gaps in my schedule,
and these gaps gave me time to write, and I could schedule my grading time, so
I could make sure to get my writing done before I had to mark papers. After 24
years there, it’s still a juggling act, but I’m good at that kind of juggling,
and I don’t find it stressful. When my daughters were very young, I wrote a lot
less, because they needed my time (and I needed time with them), and I didn’t
worry about how much or little writing I produced. I knew writing time would
return to me when as they grew, and it did, and my production returned to
normal.
So I’ve been able – through a combination of
privilege, luck, good decision-making, and hard work – to create a life in
which writing is possible almost every day. Few people have day jobs that
support their writing life that don’t swallow gigantic chunks of time and
mental and physical energy. I’ve also been fortunate that teaching writing has
taught me as much about writing as producing writing has. Both of my jobs feed
into and support the other. I’m not just a writer or a teacher: I’ve created an
entire life in writing.
When I was nine, my first relative died and a few months
after that, I nearly drowned. This one-two punch of mortality awareness made me
determined to waste as little time in my all-too-brief life as possible. This
means that I don’t waste time playing video games or watching the latest
popular TV show. I don’t waste time drinking or doing drugs. I don’t go out with
friends. I write on weekends and holidays (if possible), and I usually only travel
for conventions. I devote as much of my lifespan to writing as I possibly can,
and – for me – this results in my living my best life. The more time and space
I have in my life to write, the more I produce. Pretty simple. If you don’t
have this kind of time to write, don’t get down on yourself. Write when you can
and as much as you can and be happy. You’re building your writing life,
not anyone else’s.
GOOD HEALTH
It’s damn hard – if not impossible – to concentrate
and be creative if you’re sick all the time. I’ve been blessed with good health
for the most part in my 59 years. My second wife jokes that I have such a strong
immune system, I get sick for about eight hours and then I’m over it. I am
diabetic, but so far, I’ve managed to keep that under control. I know my
general good health is a temporary state. As I age, my health will decline
(unless I’m hit by a truck tomorrow; then I won’t have to worry about aging!).
But being healthy now means I have time to create. My wife has a number of
health problems. She’s an artist, but she can only manage to produce so much
work because of her health issues. I try to help her understand that given her
circumstances, she’s producing as much as she can, but of course, she still
gets down about it at times. It’s only natural.
And when my health isn’t that good, writing can give
me something to focus on to distract me from my illness. I wrote the novelization
of Halloween Kills when I had Covid (and that shit did not go
away in eight hours!).
So factor in the state of your health at any given
time when you assess how much you able to produce, and don’t beat yourself up
for not writing a novel a year when you’re dealing with serious health issues.
My most serious health issue is mental health. I’m
dysthymic, which means I suffer from a constant low-grade depression that can
easily slide into a deep depression if I’m not careful. I take meds for this
and I’ve had a lot of therapy to help me learn to deal with it. All of this helps,
but I sometimes think writing is therapy for me on some level too. It lets me
enter a kind of meditative state while I do something I love, and I can’t think
of any better way to keep the black dog of depression at bay.
SUPPORT
I’ve also been fortunate in that my family, friends,
and spouses have always supported my writing. (My first wife was a bit lukewarm
in her support until the checks started rolling in; after that she was Team
Writing the whole way.) Not everyone is as lucky as I am. Many writers have to
fight to get even a little time to themselves to write, with women in our
culture especially viewed as selfish for attending to their needs instead of others’.
A lack of support can have a huge impact on writing process and productivity,
and while people might say Ignore those
people or Cut them out of your life, it’s never as easy as that. You need to factor
in your level of support when assessing how effective your process is and how
much writing is enough for you to produce in a given time.
DEADLINES
Open submission calls come with deadlines, and when I
first started writing, I found these useful. Often, the calls were for theme
anthologies, and I found the theme for the anthology an effective prompt to get
me writing. I purposely sought out such calls partially because they were
open, but also because of their deadlines. When I wrote for myself, I would make
deadlines for myself, and while this helped, it didn’t give me the same solid
structure as real deadlines. Now I have deadlines all the time, and when I do
write on spec, it’s between deadlines. So my writing life is structured in a
way that I don’t have the luxury of not producing. Some people would find this
super-stressful, so I’d advise them not to commit to deadlines, but in general
I find them motivating, and they keep me moving forward.
ADAPT AND THRIVE
One
of the things I learned early on about my writing process is that I need to
change it when it’s not working. I need to use the same imagination and
creativity to help me find the best ways to produce work that I use to create
the work itself. I’ve tried all these techniques at various times:
·
Writing
an hour a day at a set time every day. When I student taught in college, I wrote
from 7-8 p.m every night.
·
Writing
a set amount of pages each day before I go to bed. It didn’t matter when I got
the pages done. They just had to be finished before I went to sleep. And if I
didn’t make my goal that day, I didn’t beat myself up about it. I just tried to
meet the page count the next day. I’ve adjusted the number of pages over the
years. I’ve done five pages a day, seven pages, ten pages, twenty pages . . .
After my first daughter was born, I did one page a day for a while. The amount didn’t
matter as much as continued forward progress. These days, the closest I get to
this is calculating how many pages a day I need to write in order to meet a
short deadline.
·
I
grew up in a noisy household, and a psychologist one told me that I need noise
to block out in order to concentrate. I can use music for this, although it must
be instrumental music. Music with words distracts me from writing my own words.
When my kids were little, they couldn’t leave me alone when I was home so I
could write (they were too little to understand), so I began writing at coffee
shops, where there would be noise and activity around me, but where no one
actually needed me for anything.
·
When
for whatever reason words wouldn’t come to me when I wrote using my computer, I
handwrote text and inputted it into the computer later. I did this for years, handwriting
at Starbucks until Covid hit. Then I began writing at home on my computer
again, and I still haven’t gone back to handwriting first drafts. Maybe I will
someday, maybe I won’t. Who knows?
·
I
learned years ago that I have a writing biorhythm. I can write twice a day, once
every twelve hours, and produce at least five pages each time. If I have a
short deadline or I’m behind on a project, I take advantage of this.
·
I’ve
written late at night when everyone else has gone to bed.
·
These
days, I tend to write early in the morning before anyone else is up. This works
great because no matter what else the day brings, I’ve got my writing for the
day finished.
·
These
days, I don’t consciously do much in the way of arranging my writing time. I
write in the morning, usually write again in the afternoon, and if a project is
going really well (or a deadline is looming), I’ll write later at night before
I go to bed. If I’m close to the end of a novel, I’ll write every waking moment
I have until it’s finished.
·
I
usually sell novels to editors based on short pitches or outlines, and I
usually have a drafting outline for novels (but I don’t always refer to it as I
write, since the overall story is in my head, and things often change somewhat
as I write). I may have a simple outline for short stories or I may just pants
them entirely. The last short story I finished I had a title and nothing else.
I just started writing and kept going until I was done.
·
I
have started going out to Starbucks to write during afternoons again, but only
a couple times a week, after my summer MW comp class is over. I don’t know if I’ll
keep this up in Fall. It depends on what works best with my teaching schedule
then.
·
When
I write at home these days, I sit on the couch in the living room so my
dachshund Bailey can snooze next to me. I have a home office, but I have a lot
of Funko Pops and action figures around that Bailey wants to chew up, and she has
trouble understanding she’s not supposed to gnaw on my author copies, so I haven’t
written in my office since we got her last year.
I adapt my writing
process all the time in order to meet the needs of the moment. This is one of
the huge factors in my productivity. I do my best not to let anything stop me
and I keep going.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO A BE A WRITING MACHINE
CONSTANTLY CHURNING OUT PROSE, NOR DO YOU HAVE TO BE THE KIND OF ARTIST WHO TAKES
YEARS TO WRITE A NOVEL
Writers too often compare themselves to other writers.
If we see someone producing more than we do, we think something’s wrong with
us. If we see someone taking a long time to write an artistically complex and
beautiful work, we think we write too fast and too simply. If we see someone
succeeding in writing crime novels, we fear that we may be wasting our time
writing horror, or science fiction, or romance, etc.
Whatever you write at any given moment, whatever process
you use, however much you produce, it’s all good. We may write for others to
read our work, but we produce that work in the first place for ourselves. It
doesn’t matter if it takes you ten minutes to write something, ten hours, ten
weeks, ten months, ten years . . . All that matters is that writing itself
leaves you feeling fulfilled, otherwise, why the hell do it?
Okay, I sat down in a Starbucks – with music playing,
people talking, coffee machines whirring – to write this blog entry around
noon. It’s now 2:48 pm as I type this (and it’s 3:27 as I’m proofreading). This
article is around 3,500 words (it was then; now it’s ballooned to 4,260 words).
This kind of nonfiction is easy for me to write. I just write about myself and
think about how what I have to say might help other writers. If I’d chosen to
write fiction this afternoon, I might’ve produced about half that many words,
maybe less if it was a new story and I was still trying to find my way into it.
So the type of thing I write affects my process as well. I won’t make any money
from this blog entry, and although I’ll add some promotional material below, I
know not everyone who reads this will click on the links below and buy one of
my books. So what? I wrote this entry to clarify my thoughts about my writing
process and to have an article to link to whenever someone asks me about my process
since I can never give anyone a simple answer to explain it. I wrote it to hopefully
help writers, too. So given what I set out to do, I’ve succeeded, and I feel
fulfilled as a writer.
This brings me to one last thought. My friend author Taylor
Grant says he tries to write with intention but without attachment to a
specific outcome. This means that he has artistic goals when he writes
something, and if he achieves those goals, he’s succeeded. Whatever happens to
the piece afterward happens, and regardless of what happens, he can’t fail
because he’s already succeeded. I think if all artists could learn to work with
this kind of healthy detachment, they’d be better off. So whatever your process
or however much you produce in however much time it takes you, if doing the
work fulfills you, you’ve succeeded. I feel as if I succeeded at what I tried
to communicate with this blog entry, and I feel fulfilled.
And that’s what matters most.
If you have any writing process tips you’d like to
share, feel free to do so in the comments!
DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
But if you’d like to buy something of mine, that would
be good too!
Your Turn to Suffer Sale!
The eBook edition of my novel Your Turn to Suffer
is currently 99 cents at both Amazon and B&N! I don’t how long this sale
will last, so snag a copy while you can!
Order Links:
Amazon:
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/your-turn-to-suffer-tim-waggoner/1137330372?ean=9781787585201
Lord of the Feast Available to
Preorder!
My next novel
for Flame Tree, Lord of the Feast, won’t be out until April 2024, but
the paperback is available for preorder. (The ebook edition should be available
to preorder soon.) No cover art to share
yet. This is the last book I was contracted to write for Flame Tree, so if
you’ve enjoyed my novels for them, the best way to make sure I get to write
more is to buy, review, and spread the word about A Hunter Called Night
and preorder Lord of the Feast.
I’ve already
had a few people ask if Lord of the Feast connects to my overarching
dark fantasy/horror mythos, and the answer is yes, although you can read and
enjoy the book without any prior knowledge of my other work.
Synopsis:
Twenty years
ago, a cult attempted to create their own god: The Lord of the Feast. The god
was a horrible, misbegotten thing, however, and the cultists killed the
creature before it could come into its full power. The cultists trapped the
pieces of their god inside mystic nightstones then went their separate ways.
Now Kate, one of the cultists’ children, seeks out her long-lost relatives,
hoping to learn the truth of what really happened on that fateful night.
Unknown to Kate, her cousin Ethan is following her, hoping she’ll lead him to
the nightstones so that he might resurrect the Lord of the Feast – and this
time, Ethan plans to do the job right.
Order
Links:
Barnes &
Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lord-of-the-feast-tim-waggoner/1143636012?ean=9781787586369
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