On slowing down

This is where I worked yesterday. Not IN the open fire, obviously (although perhaps there is some fantastically zen-like author who has mastered working in the flames, like walking over hot coals) but beside it. It was lovely, particularly because yesterday was the first 'cold' day we have experienced in Austin so far. LOML walks to work every day, and he sent me a message when he was about halfway there - "It's cold!"
"Really?" I didn't believe him. "Properly cold?"
"12 degrees!" (Celcius).
Good grief. I actually had to wear wool trousers and a sweater. It was quite gorgeous, though - crisp and sunny, with a cold wind - and made my Pumpkin Spice Latte all the more delicious. I have no idea whether there is actual pumpkin in that drink, but I don't want to know because I hate pumpkins in their natural form (I know. I'm sorry). A proper fall drink for a proper fall. And then, of course, there was the open fire. The perfect spot in which to settle for a day of rewrites.

I have always tried to work as quickly as possible, and be as productive as I can. This furious work has a superstitious intensity; as Anne Lamott suggests in Bird by Bird, part of me is worried I might die mid-first-draft, before I have the chance to finish it or make it any good. I have said before that I sabotaged myself early on with this book by not completing the first draft all at once, with no time off, thus making it a lot harder to let the story unfold organically. I still think that. But I also think that my usual crazed, 2,000-words-a-day strategy doesn't work all that well for me either. It is a fight-or-flight mechanism, something I do when I am scared - of failure, of drying up, of losing momentum. Quick, quick! Finish it as fast as possible or you might die with it unfinished and then your ghost will haunt the Macbook forever. Or something. Hyper-productivity can be a bad habit too. It is easier to work, work, work with no pause than it is to stop and think; to inhabit the story; to give yourself time.

I am starting to learn the difference between working obsessively and working consistently. Writing every day is good. Writing every day until I'm exhausted and hate the sight of Times New Roman and want to become a plumber is bad (for me). My agent tells me to take my time. Wiser and further-down-the-path writer friends tell me to take my time. They know a lot more than I do, and yet there is this part of me that is wildly impatient and insists that I need to push, push, push and speed through everything. I find it easier to set unlikely goals (I am going to finish editing this book by midnight!) and meet them than I do to allow my story the time and space it needs in which to develop properly. For me, that is scarier. Because anything could happen. I race towards being FINISHED because that feels safer than trusting the story and my characters to develop in their own time. I am forcing them to grow unnaturally fast. No wonder they are a little unripe. Letting go and relaxing a little would produce better, more thoughtful results.

The control freak in me rebels against this idea. What do you mean I can be relaxed and take things more slowly and still achieve just as much? Rubbish. It doesn't work that way. There's a part of me that believes that being stressed out and exhausted all the time means that I am working hard enough; a part of me that finds it satisfying to be stretched too thin. Again, I think this is partly superstition (if I'm happy and relaxed, I'm kidding myself - I'm being lazy and the work will be bad).

So, my new resolution is an unusual one for me. I am going to deliberately slow down. I am going to take my time with these rewrites - because, luckily, I have time. I am going to consciously bite off smaller pieces to achieve each day. The control freakish workaholic inside me is already spinning into a panic as I type this. It doesn't sound as impressive as "I am going to finish it by the end of the week," which was the original plan, but I know this is the right thing to do.

What you do away from the page matters too. Of course it does! That's where you find your characters and your stories. It might take years for them to trickle through the complicated filtration system of your brain (it's a scary place in there. Mine has sewers and mutant alligators), but they will surface eventually, if you keep your eyes open and engage with the world in as many different ways as you can. Yesterday, I did my afternoon's work in the sunshine, in the company of Sandhya and Trigger.

Who could possibly be stressed around these two?

I had a Big Scary Article to write yesterday to meet a Big Scary Deadline. I was pretty anxious about it - it just wasn't taking shape. I had tried powering through and writing a complete draft, but it felt clunky and clumsy and just plain awful. After some time spent talking in the sun and playing with Trigger, however, it all fell into place. I finished it in half an hour. I felt a little miffed, to be honest, because all my hours of agonising and intensive rewrites had produced nothing, while a little sunshine and a friendly puppy got the bloody thing written in no time. My inner control freak is having a good old sulk right now.