Changing Habits

Terry here, answering our weekly question: If you could easily change one writing habit, what would it be? Starting earlier (or later) in the day? Become a plotter or pantser? Rush through a first draft or edit as you go? 

 I wrote my first Samuel Craddock book on our boat—a spacious catamaran. Every morning I woke up at 6AM, did a few stretches, brewed my cup of tea, then kicked my husband out of our cabin and started writing. (To be fair, he was always ready to go out and start working on some little “something” on the boat). I wrote for 2-3 hours straight. The book seemed to pour of me. Did that have something to do with the water?

Turns out I didn’t have to be on a boat to do this. What I needed was early morning time. Since then, when I’m working on a book I get up and head straight for my desk. At least I did. 

For a while I got into the bad habit of doing other things first: NY Times Crossword Puzzle, reading emails and writing letters to the editors of various newspapers, having breakfast, going for a walk…and suddenly it would be early afternoon and I’d feel claustrophobic about my writing time. I’d rush through and feel dissatisfied, only to do the same the next day.  I’m not sure why I dropped into those bad habits, but it was killing my joy in writing. 

Then, I attended a book launch where Gigi Pandian and Naomi Hirahara were interviewing each other. They both said they got to work first thing in the morning. I asked Gigi if that was even before morning stretches. Yep. She said she’d do a few stretches, but would work for a while and then do more. The next morning, I got back into my old routine. I copied Gigi. I did a few stretches to get out the kinks, brewed myself a cup of tea and I was off. And it was glorious.

All of this is to say that habits can be changed if you want to. Trickier (for me anyway) is changing from pantser to plotter. In my heart I know that it would be a great help to me if plotted my books out in advance. This very morning I realized that my current WIP is going to need a huge overhaul. I’m 50,000 words in, and there is a major change I think will work better. I can do it. But if I had plotted out the book first, I might have saved myself some time. So why don’t I?

I do to a certain to a certain extent. Usually about 20,000-30,000 words in, I loosely plot out the rest of the book. I think about the end and what needs to happen to get there. It’s often vague, but it gives me a line to hang my words on. 

But starting out with a complete plot has always eluded me. I have a feeling this is much more than a habit I need to change. It’s a deeply-personal way that plots come to me. I can sit and stare out the window all day, thinking about how a book should go. But for me, the plot unfolds most readily (note, I don’t see easily) when I put words on paper. In the words of Flannery O’Conner, I write to find out what I’m going to say. Or words to that effect. Please don’t think I’m comparing myself to that great writer. But I do understand what she meant. 

 So if I could change one habit, it’s that I would be able to plot out a book. Some pantsers say that plotting would take the excitement out of writing a book. But what I know is that what I often end up with in a first draft is akin to a giant outline. That is to say, I don’t do much description, sometimes have cardboard secondary characters, and the timeline can be wonky. Those things are fixed in the second draft, but I wonder how much easier they might be if I actually knew where I was going with a manuscript. 

 Oh, well, there’s always the next book.