This is how you write (Part 2)

Nine years later, twelve more reminders.

Nine thousand years ago, I wrote a piece This is how you write.

It was a letter to myself, reminding myself, how to write.

Not on craft. Not on structure. Not on getting published. But on the biggest pickle in the creative process: the psychological.

Over the last six years, I’ve interviewed hundreds of writers and have held space for thousands more to commit to their own writing practice at London Writers' Salon –and have struggled with my own writing for twice as long.

So here I am, in my Richard Linklater¹ era, with a fresh set of reminders for my monkey mind, on how to write.

And if your mind looks anything like mine, maybe reminders for you too.

1. It’s a diary entry.

That’s all it is.

You’re putting too much gravitas on this thing you call “writing.”

What if writing – making anything – was simply a documentation of your experience through life?

It’s like Rick Rubin suggests:

“Make it with the freedom of ‘This is something I’m making for myself for now.’ That’s all it is. It’s a diary entry... No one else can judge it. It is my experience of my life.”

He goes on:

“Everything we make can be that – a personal reflection of who we are in that moment of time. It doesn’t have to be the greatest you could ever do. It doesn’t have to have any expectation that it’s going to change the world. It doesn’t have to be ‘This has to sell a certain number of copies.’...

All it is is, ‘I’m making this thing for me and I want to do it to the best of my ability to where I feel good about it and it’s honest of where I’m at.’”

– In conversation with Andrew Huberman

2. You get to define success.

This is what Rubin is really saying.

It doesn’t have to be the greatest you could ever do.

But did you do the best you could, with what you had?

Are you proud of what you made? Or at least proud of the effort you put in to make it?

Did it change you as a person?²

Did you learn something about the world or yourself while making it?

These are great measures of success. Ones you can control.

Sure, you might have goals that are around gaining a readership or making money or getting published. If those light your fire, great. But they need to coupled, with equal or greater force, by an intrinsic measure of success.

Plus, if you look dig deep enough, underneath these external goals you’ll fine clues of truer – and again, intrinsic – measures of success. To spend a life well lived. To do work that matters. To have honored your brief time on Earth.

You get to (need to) define your own success.

You write the rules.

3. You need rules.

Speaking of rules, you need them for your writing practice.

I know rules feel like the least creative thing in the universe.

But you’ll find that everyone who committed themself to a creative practice had them.

Anthony Trollope’s were stated explicitly: three thousand words every morning before his postal shift.

Maya Angelou’s were implicit in how she constructed her writing life: “a tiny, mean room with just a bed and, sometimes, if I can find it, a face basin.”³

It’s like Gustave Flaubert said: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

Or if you prefer the SEAL Teams version, “Discipline equals freedom.”

Rules keep you honest. Rules set you free.

The best rules come from your higher, future self. The one looking back at you, with wiser, weathered eyes. The one who sees the best in you and desperately wants you to succeed.

Three is a good number. What three rules will rule your writing practice?

How do you write? When do you write? What will you do when you sit down to write? What won’t you do?

Here are example rules:

• Write or do nothing.

• No amount of writing is too small.

• Screens live in the other room.

• Start with pen and paper.

• Do it first thing. (Or don’t go to bed until you’ve done it.)

These might not be your rules. Experiment until you find what works for you.

Much of being a writer is figuring out what kind of writer you are.

Make rules. Stick to them. Keep what works. Try new rules. Repeat.

4. Start with pen and paper.

Here’s a rule that’s worked for five thousand years before computers: start with pen and paper.

I know you type faster on the keys. I know you think quicker than pen allows. But the universe is too vast and temptation too great on anything with a screen.

Especially as you ease back into it, archaic ink on ancient tree are your best friends.

Anything with a screen or a ping goes in another room.

Your freest writing starts here.

5. Write what you don’t know.

You tell yourself you can’t write yet because you don’t know what to write. You don’t have the answer. You haven’t figured it out. You don’t know where to start.

That’s exactly where you start.

Writing is an act of discovery.

Start by complaining, moaning, bitching.

Start by writing “I don’t know where to start.”

Better yet, start with a question, “What’s on my mind today?”

Or start with a list: Things I love. Things I hate. Things I don’t yet know. Things I can’t write about.⁴

It doesn’t matter where you begin. You just need to begin.

This is why Julia Cameron’s stream-of-consciousness Morning Pages is so powerful. It doesn’t ask you to know where you’re going doing, it just asks you to start going.

Something funny happens when you ask yourself “what do I really want?” enough times, across enough days. An answer can’t help but begin to emerge.

From nothing always emerges something.

If it’s good enough for the Big Bang and the Holy Grail, it’s good enough for us.

Knowing where you’re going is overrated.

No real adventure started that way.

6. Pay yourself first.

Here’s another rule that works for most humans. Do it first.

There’s a concept in the parable The Richest Man in Babylon that states: “A part of all you earn, is yours to keep.”

Pay yourself the first 10% of whatever you earn, the lesson goes, before paying bills or anyone else. Even when it feels like there’s not enough for you to do so.

The rich pay themselves first. The poor pay everyone else first.

If it works for money, it’ll work for our more precious commodity: time.

What if you applied the same to your writing life?

10% of a 16 hour waking day is one hour and thirty-six minutes.

If that’s too much to ask, what about 5%? Could you start with 1%. You can do 10 minutes, can’t you?

Like the Zen saying goes "You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day. Unless you're too busy, then you should sit for an hour."

You’re much more likely to write (or do anything) when it’s the first thing you do.

Do it before the other voices start shouting. Mary Oliver knew.

"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do...

–Mary Oliver, The Journey

7. Do bad work.

Seth Godin says that writer’s block is just a “fear of bad writing.”

I remember reading the very first Word doc manuscript of Stephen Markley’s Tales of Iceland. It was riddled with red squiggly lines. A bloodstained battleground of misspellings and grammar casualties. Steve is a published writer — a real author! Was he illiterate? Didn’t he know the difference between their and there?

The abundance of red squiggly lines were only proof of how much of a professional Steve was. He was operating by the code of creators:

Don’t write and edit at the same time.

Don’t make and critique in the same breath.

Misspelling words while crafting a story should be the least of your concerns.

Much of the magic we call good writing is actually good editing.

You’re afraid you’ll “ruin the perfect idea in your head”⁵ when you try to articulate it.

And you most certainly will.

Sadly, it starts here. Fortunately, it doesn’t end here.

“You must practice being stupid…Try to do some BAD work – the worst you can think of and see what happens, but mainly relax and let everything go to hell – you are not responsible for the world – you are only responsible for your work – so DO IT.” –Sol LeWitt, in a letter to Eva Hesse

Do some bad work.

8. You need a deadline and a stage.

Duke Ellington said: “I don’t need time. I need a deadline.”

Parkinson’s Law says: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

Archimedes said “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

I say: “Give me a stage, a date and a topic on which to speak, and I shall have something to say.”

The same goes for your writing.

The best deadlines involves stakes. The most motivating of stakes? A group of people relying on you. A stage of people – metaphorically or physically – ensures you meet that deadline. Imperfectly. (It’s always imperfect).

Shame gets a bad rap. A little shame is good. Or rather, the fear of shame. Don’t let it define your life, your worth. But it’s a damn powerful motivator to ensure you’re ready before you’re ready.

Your life is defined by the things you did, on time, before you were ready to do them.

9. You also need a buddy.

A trusted friend. A special pal. A buddy in the trenches. Or hundreds of buddies.

You need a person who’s eager for your writing and wants you to succeed.

Or just someone to work beside you for a set period of time. To be your “body double.” To be a witness to your effort and your chosen identity of “writer.”

Especially when no one is asking you to write.

Julia Cameron calls them “Believing Mirrors.”

At London Writers' Salon we call them creative friends.

If you don’t have a buddy, join enough groups, over enough times, and you’ll increase the chances you’ll find one.

(Hint: to find a good buddy, you need to be a good buddy first.)

10. Convince yourself: this is your job.

You work hard. You’re dependable. Especially when you have a job.

Whatever mental gymnastics you need to do to convince yourself that writing is as much your job as whatever else pays the bills, do it.

Treat it like it’s your job. Act as if.

One day, you might wake up and realize that it actually is.

11. Not writing is the selfish act.

You might be someone’s favorite writer.

Imagine your favorite writer not writing because they were so self-absorbed with their own issues that couldn’t get something going. How selfish.

It’s like what Steven Pressfield says in The Art of War:

“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

12. You won’t live forever.

I mean this in two ways.

1. You won’t live forever – so get on with it. What if these are the good years?

2. You won’t live forever – but when you write, you do for a moment.

Joe Dispenza says that in reality, there is no separation between past and future – just an Eternal Present Moment. Everything is happening now.

To write, to make anything, or simply to sit in deep awareness, is to observe and preserve, like a fossil, this thin sliver fragment of eternity, from your particular set of eyes. You are both human and God in the single breath. You touch this particular moment, and in doing so, touch every moment that ever was. You experience the eternal and the ephemeral at once.

We all know how weird and unique it is to be in a body, alive.

And isn’t this what writing, doing anything, is really about?

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” ―Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

This is how, and why, you write.

1. God save me before Before Midnight.

2. One of Lindsey Trout Hughes’s favorite measures of success.

3. Via Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals.

4. Another one of Lindsey Trout Hughes’s favorites.

5. My favorite line from author Holly Bourne in one of our first LWS interviews.