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The Pace Gremlin

My writing pace is something of a personal gremlin.

Most days it doesn't bother me. I'm proud of the work I do. I put deep thought into every line.

When I hand it off I have zero anxiety about the feedback, because no one could ever pick it apart as thoroughly as I have.

I beta for opinions, not quality. To have someone else check my character's logic (they have a tendency to make snap decisions without explaining themselves adequately) and to find my infamous typos. By the time others read it, my prose is already at my current personal best. If it wasn't, I would still be writing it.

But when something brings me down emotionally, the pace gremlin is always right behind. Vulnerability has a pheromone that insecurity can't resist. It smells your self doubt and comes running.

I'm sure everyone has their own personal wounds. I'm sure lots of people struggle with the "I'm not creative" demon, the "I never finish anything" demon, the "someone else already did it better" demon. All valid. But not what I struggle with in writing. (Art is different but that's another post.)

The trouble with the pace gremlin is, everybody has a magic trick to "fix" slowness. I've read them all. Good advice, if speed is beneficial to you. I'm sure some people feel very good about a fat word count, and for them such advice is probably a life saver. A few common points in these advice posts:

1) Stop procrastinating. Make a schedule and stick to it. Write everyday.

I'm sure this works if you happen to have fully developed ideas on a schedule. I don't. I need time to gather my thoughts. I burnout, I get stuck, I mope because I'm a bit melodramatic about being stuck. But if you do have endless ideas and energy that never end up on the page, it's solid advice.

2) Stop editing while you write. Force yourself to write without stopping. Time yourself. Don't ever stop to research. Don't ever stop, period, until you've reached your word count.

Because a word count is the end all be all, right? Never mind prose, diction, attempts at originality and style.

People love to blog about this point because there are so many apps to cure it. It makes for good top ten lists, which always get more hits than actual content.

Advise blogs will tell you to turn your monitor off so you can't see what you wrote. They will tell you to put a coin under your backspace so you can't even press it. They will recommend you apps that track your output, apps that mimic typewriters, apps that block your internet usage, apps that punish you for failing. (shudder)

I don't see how any of this promotes quality writing, personally. I don't agree that all writing is good writing. I think of you input half baked crap you get out half baked crap. Who cares if you cover it in buttercream, it's still got raw eggs in it.

I don't buy that it's a bad thing to stop and rearrange the structure of a sentence, to find the exact right word, to question if there's a better way to reveal this plot point. I don't think word counts should be the goal.

3) Let go of perfectionism, "all first drafts are shitty."

Again, I understand that this is important advice for people who are paralyzed by self doubt. The compulsion to rewrite continuously and never progess is strong for some. But there's a difference between finessing and fixating. This advise shouldn't be taken as gospel.

Perfectionism is not an addiction, and it's not something I can quit. It is ingrained in how I evaluate myself. In preschool I arranged my Legos by color. I was literally born this way. Its not going away now.

If I make crap, I feel like a crappy writer. Which makes me hate the crap I made, which discourages me from writing more. Rushing to write crap is the fastest way to sabotage myself, I have learned. (Painfully.)

If someone is genuinely struggling with perfectionism, this is THE WORST advise you could possibly give them. Perfectionists need to feel confident in what they do. They need to produce good results. No, the first draft is never going to be perfect. But it can be good. It can even be great. And the feeling of writing something great can fuel my motivation for weeks.

Which is not to say that it's okay to indulge in endless editing loops. There's a limit. But it's also not okay for me to "write crap and fix it in revision."

I can't polish an paragraph if the paragraph is incoherent, if it has no unique qualities, if its just a meandering line of words I regurgitated to meet a quota. When I come back to edit I will just delete it and rewrite... In which case I'm actually spending more time than if I just wrote it slowly to begin with.

Which brings me to my real point:

There's nothing wrong with slow.

When people talk about slow, all of these other accusations are automatically made. Because it must be that there is something wrong, we are capable of zooming if only we weren't stunted by some hidden inefficiency that prevents us from joining the fast fiction master race.

Nonsense. I'm not slow because I edit too much, or because I don't know what my story is about, or because I lack discipline. I am capable, if given something to copy, of typing 60 words per minute. But I can't think at 60 words per minute.

(In fact, according to my sprinting stats, I think at about 10 words per minute...14 if I'm rushing. Please, hold your applause. Haha)

I'm a slow writer...because I'm a slow thinker. I don't "waste" time spinning my wheels on stuff that doesn't matter. I don't need an app to trick me into being productive. I just need time to think.

When I don't give that to myself... When the pace gremlin catches me unable to defend my insecurities...I make crap. I feel crappy. I convince myself I am the problem and I would already be published if only I let myself write "crappy drafts." If I wasn't held back by my toxic "perfectionism."

Enough. I'll always be slow. Its not a condition, it's the way my brain works. As far as I know, there's no cure for being a tortoise.

And that's fine. In my right mind I am proud of my pace. I take pride in considering every word in every line. I care about craft.

I find drafting sentences at a snail's pace satisfying. It's deliberate. It has gravitas. It's laced with complexities I hope others will detect and appreciate. And when I place my pages in stranger's hands, I know I have raised them with the ability to defend themselves. I have no fear.

I know I will still feel bad about it at some point. That's the nature of creative life. But now I have a post to remind myself why slow is okay. And I guess if anyone else had the same problems, then this post is here for you too. Don't get discouraged. Do it your way and make stories with meaning.

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