Pages, Words and Hours by Ann Brashares

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The working life of most writers is pretty unstructured. Mine especially. I don't teach (so far) and I don't write short fiction or essays or magazine articles (so far). I write novels with long deadlines. So I've spent a long time trying to figure out how to shape my days--what kind of daily goal will cause me to write well instead of badly and what unit of writing will best quantify my progress. (I have to admit that on many days I am happy not to quantify anything at all, but rather to fritter away the hours knowing that I will begin my book later.)

I started with pages. I set myself a goal to write seven pages a day. The problem with goals is that you orient yourself to them. I got so taken by the idea of cranking out the pages, I would use big spaces between scenes. I'd celebrate finishing a page by going off and doing something else. When I'd lose myself in thought I'd realize I wasn't writing any pages and jostle myself back into action. This was a problem. Thinking, it turns out, is important to writing. Pages are a necessary feature of books, of course, but it's better if the words on them are good.

I thought I'd be tricky and writerly and switch from pages to words. I set myself the goal of writing two thousand words a day and would fiercely resist the desire to translate that into pages. (It's eight pages.) I would sit there typing away, devilishly padding sentences with extra thats and looking down at the word count every few seconds. I would write five hundred words and spring from my computer to go do something else. My sentences were flabby and I was hanging around on the surface of my story.

Then I realized something. On any given day, the first hour of writing for me is the worst. It's a miracle if I can keep myself in the chair for that first hour. I write fitfully and badly. The second hour, if I can get there, is better. I start to dig deeper. I start to relax. I forget about the word count for minutes at a time. The third hour is better still. I forget it's the third hour. The fourth and the fifth hour are better than that. I forget where I am. The sixth might be pure bliss, but I usually have to go pick up my kids at school by then.

When I was counting pages and words, I was not only being flabby and shallow, but I was also spending almost my entire writing life in that dreaded first hour, often multiplying it into four or five first hours spread throughout the day. That's a lot of bad and fitful writing.

So here's my ideal writing day: five consecutive hours. I suffer mightily through the first hour and usually feel pretty happy through the rest. Unless the doorbell rings and puts me back at the beginning. And it doesn't matter if I write ten thousand words (forty pages) or one word (no pages). Just sitting there and thinking is encouraged.

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Ann Brashares, The Last Summer (of You and Me), sisterhood, love, loss, friendship, Fire Island, growing up, Penguin Books, books