Anne's workstation, showing a black desk, a large computer, and several posters. The words "Eyes here" are written across the computer monitor. "Hands here" is across the keyboard. "Sit here" is in the chair space.

Anne Learns to Write

5 Comments / Advice From Your Editor, Danebury Hill, Masterwork Experiment, Writing / By
Listen to my podcast version of this post.
On November 10, an ordinary thing happened. My Super Hardcore Editing Group partner Xina emailed me. “Sprint at 11:00?” she wrote.
 
We have a long history of proposing half-hour writing sprints to each other. We set our 30-minute timers at the appointed hour, then report our word count when the timer goes off. No big deal.
 
For a couple of years now, writing sprints have been useless to me. I’d spend the half-hour fiddling with a sentence, doing a little research, feeling like a fraud. 

Xina and I would sprint again a couple of days later. Or a couple of weeks. In between, I was grateful not to have to think about my writing at all. I could focus on other people’s writing, or the podcast, or my editing business, and tell myself that I was still legit. Still a pro.

November 10th was different. And I know exactly why.

I was out of excuses. I had a deadline and a commitment to finish my “Brokeback Mountain” analog story (working title is still “Danebury Hill”). I had already decided that the only way I was going to be able to write anything was to break the rules. That morning I pulled up my working document and scrolled around till I found one of the “Brokeback Mountain” beats that I hadn’t written a scene for yet. And I started writing it. 

It was pure bullshit.

I had to write for half an hour, and I had nothing to say, so I started just making stuff up. TKs everywhere. No research. 

Those 30 minutes crawled by, words coming out my fingertips kicking and screaming, and when the timer went off I was practically sweating.
 
My note to Xina on Sprint Day 1 said: “350 words! I told myself, ‘Just keep going, trust the process, tell the Shawn Coyne in your head to shut up.'”
 

The next day we sprinted again: “I hit a wall, energetically and word-count-wise, but…590 words! All bullshit, but I just wrote and wrote, making stuff up, trying to figure out how to situate poor Matty in the [redacted].”

Sprint Day 4: “Gah! 333 words. Better than nothing. Each one like pulling teeth. Honestly, I wouldn’t write a single word if not for these sprints, but I’m slowly chipping through my blockage and finding some little dribs and drabs of story.”
 
Sprint Day 10: “OMG. I had restless leg syndrome really bad so the only way I could write was by dictating into my phone while pacing around. I got more than 1300 words! It’s not story per se, but I was working through two brilliant ideas that came my way today…I feel like I’m shaping the arcs of my two protagonists AND meeting all the required Brokeback Mountain beats. I’m pretty excited.”
 
Sprint Day 17: “Thinking on the page has netted me 1035 words (not story), and I’m VERY CLOSE to an actual outline, with all the logistical problems either solved or with solutions in sight.”
 
Sprint Day 20: “500 words! Of new scene! It’s junk, but it’s good junk.”
 
Sprint Day 23: “Okay another 1000 words or so and I am SO EXCITED. My story is coming alive.”
 

Sprint Day 31: “I can’t tell you how good it feels, as if I’ve found my true self again! It’s all very well, pouring out effort on the podcast, and Story Grid, and editing for clients. All that stuff is important to me. But this is the real deal, the hard path. My real identity.”

Sprint Day Today: “235o words! [Note: I kept going for 90 more minutes.] I am having SO MUCH FUN. I’m writing the whole story as casually as possible from [a different] POV..,.. It’s turning up all kinds of interesting possibilities in the narrative device—how much to reveal, how much she could have known, what her own opinions were, etc.

“I’m ready to accept that the only way I can write a story is to write my way into it with huge swaths of words that I know won’t appear in the final draft, and don’t have to be written as if they will. This is a major breakthrough for me!”

I know, I know...

Laugh all you want. It’s not as if I didn’t know about daily writing. It’s not as though Shawn Coyne himself didn’t tell me that if the Muse finds me sitting in my chair not just once, but three or four days in a row, she might start taking me seriously and dropping some inspiration into my head. 

I failed to accept that a steady half-hour-a-day commitment really, truly will bring results.
 
I didn’t quite realize that writing a lot of crap—feeling stupid, blundering in the dark, going repeatedly astray—is the only way to skim the scum off the surface of my creative well and start to find fresh water.
 
I don’t know if “Danebury Hill” is going to be fresh, or even acceptable. But I do know that it’s going to be written. And that’s something that, a month or so ago, I honestly couldn’t say.

5 thoughts on “Anne Learns to Write”

  1. Drew

    This gave me quite the sense of deja Drew.

    Who knew that the best way to run a marathon was to sprint? Keep going!

  2. Sheryl Gwyther

    Oh, yeah, I so get it, Anne! We began NaNoWriMo in Australia this morning… and I set up a Word Sprint on our KidLit et al Facebook NaNo support page. Thirty minutes of slogging it!

    Slow at first, then the words came. BUT, earlier this morning, I wrote a rough first draft (of rubbish it seemed) of Scene 1 , with a good fountain pen on lovely paper, without worrying about what the words looked or sounded like, without worrying about editing along the way.

    And like your experience, Anne, it worked! The words came out easier as I wrote. I’m going to do this very rough handwritten chapter draft of my KidLit novel every morning, then start the Sprint to see how far I can go, continuing during the day.

    By this afternoon, I’d written over 3000 words … and there I was thinking I’d never get that far on the first day of NaNoWriMo.

    Enjoy the NaNoWriMo, Anne and everyone. Writing stories is the best thing ever. 😁

    1. Anne Hawley

      Hi Sheryl. Thanks for stopping by! A good fountain pen on lovely paper sounds so wonderful. As a leftie, I envy your fountain-penability. 😀 Congrats on the first rubbish draft of Scene 1, and on 3000 words! My goodness. That’s huge.

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