I'm panicking.
Because, truly, what the hell am I doing with my life?
Here’s the full truth. The FULLY TRANSPARENT TRUTH:
I work, on average, two to three hours per day.
Why am I only working two to three hours on my craft every day? Even if I don’t currently have a serious, social-status-giving, real job?
But more importantly, how can I ramp it up? I mean sure, I get it. I want a life with as little stress as possible, if only to beat insomnia. I want writing to come from place a fun and excitement. I do NOT want to force myself. So, in the end, I really ‘work’ no more than two to three hours a day.
That’s a tremendously low number. No wonder I live with heavy guilt all the time and I don't feel like I deserve the privilege of getting published.
Take the last couple of days. On Monday, I have worked from 9 to 11 before going for a run. Didn’t work in the afternoon—I took a walk with a friend. Yesterday? Worked from 8:30 to 11. Then I had to move a pile of wood (100 sixteen-feet long planks, aaahhhh my back!) from the driveway to the backyard. And it's been like this since the beginning of the pandemic (not the wood part thank bejesus). My average is probably more around three hours, even though I'd like to see it go up to 5 in an ideal world.
Combine that FACT OF LIFE with the belief that if I don't work 8 to 10 hours a day, in pure Flow, I will never make it and am therefore lazy and and don’t deserve anyone to care about my writing if I care so little myself.
I mean, that’s like, 10 to 15 hours a week!! It's so tiny it's laughable.
But hold on, isn’t this what the Evil Part of My Mind (The Beast) wants me to believe? (that I'm a lazy piece of useless dinosaur shit?)
Let’s unpack this for a minute.
What do I actually mean by ‘work’? Well the only thing that counts, in my mind, is writing—as in writing fresh material—rewriting, and editing. The rest is all secondary, and therefore, worthless. Or at the very least, guilt-producing.
Okay then, let’s conduct a little experiment. Let’s track it. Probably not the best idea ‘cause I've learned that I suck big time under pressure and that I couldn’t force words out of my brain if there was a cocked and loaded pistol inches away. But what the hell? It's just an experiment. I don't even have to work more—just track it.
So for the next week or two, I'll track two things:
1- Primary Work
Writing
Rewriting
Editing
2- Secondary Work
Sending query letters
Journalling (or Morning Pages for those who are familiar with Julia Cameron's work—I might give you my opinion on her philosophy at a later point)
Reading short stories to learn structure and find inspiration (aka, stuff to steal like a Pro)
Walking (that's the fun part of being an artist. Walking can actually be super productive—again for a later post)
Reading craft books
Watching videos on the craft
Writing this newsletter
Watching episodes (okay, that’s stretching it… I might not count that, ah!)
After which I'll likely discover that I’m more productive than I thought I was. Duh.
However, I don't think I'll ever get a sense of accomplishment from secondary work. In fact, the only way I can make my Internal Asshole shut up for the next 19 hours is when I just wrote two thousand words.
All in all, I’m pretty sure that even if I doubled the number of primary work hours, he’d still find a way to nag me. You just can’t convince a stubborn idiot. Even with hard evidence. Don’t believe me?
There's a good book by Cal Newport called 'Deep Work'.
I think in general, almost everyone only does a very low amount of deep work each day, there are just too many distractions to stay in a flow state (or even get in one, since it takes a while just to get there).
I think anyone that is even aware of this is ahead of the game, since most people don't realize it and just aimlessly drift through their days switching between tasks and emails and meetings and such and don't really have a battle plan, don't block out some prime hours to do deep work, etc.
So I think it's great to want to improve deep work and track things to see how you're doing and where you can improve.
Just don't beat yourself up about it! I think it hurts the results more than it helps -- your brain may think it's motivating you by being hard on you, but I think it's more the reverse.
See it as glass-half-full: Writing is really hard, and I'm doing a few hours a day, which is good. How can I do even more? Start by trying to add 10 minutes daily on average, then a little more. Lots of small victories much easier than setting a huge goal that is very hard to reach quickly.
Also remember how you don't *have* to write, but you *get* to write, which is an awesome privilege to be savored! "What worlds shall I create today!"
If George R.R. Martin can feel like an impostor, I think we all can. But 1% better at a time, and over time we'll get there.
cheers!