How My Crazy Brain and a Terrier Dictate my Workflow, by Josh Stallings

Q: A writer's job involves a lot of sitting - scribbling in a notepad, or hunched over in a chair, typing. Do you have a daily exercise routine? What advice would you offer to other writers, to keep themselves fit and healthy over the longer term?

A Case Study.

2:41 AM PST. My brain alerts my central nervous system, "WAKE UP. I have pages for the new novel. I need the fingers to type them. WAKE UP. I have the essay for Criminal Minds. It starts with “CASE STUDY” and a screen grab of the time.” 

Drifting between a dream and this demand I glance at my wrist. My trusty Tudor Ranger tells me it’s too damn early o’clock for any demands. I try to negotiate. “Hey brain, sweetie, twenty more minutes of sleep and I’ll jump to.” 

“No. Now.”

“Right, how about I get up and make some…” I feel myself slipping into a dream about making coffee so I can write. I feel myself measuring the water. I can smell the grounds as I spoon them into the filter.

“Wake the fuck up you lazy bastard.”

“Hey brain, ease up.”

“NO. Get the fuck up and start typing. I work over-time thinking about stories and essays. Coming up with fixes for chapter twenty-seven — she holds the veil up against her face so Harry can see who she was, lowering it exposes tattooed tribal lines of the warrior she is. She is the widow. She is the warrior. MY only request is that you act on these ideas with some immediacy.” 

Fair-play brain. I roll out of bed trying not to wake Erika or the dogs. Buster isn’t fooled, he follows me into my office. 

2:49 AM PST. I’m up and typing. No coffee, my own fault; I wasted coffee making time arguing with myself, Topo-Chico will have to do until I get enough of this essay written that it won’t crumble if I look away for a few minutes. Ideas are like dreams, real concrete worlds that start turning to mist the moment I wake. For them to survive…

3:35 AM PST. …fairy chimes ring out of my phone, ripping me out of my writing. It’s a family member worrying about Huston power outages. I’m not physically in Huston, or I wasn’t until I checked the text. Who is texting this early? Don’t they know I’m working? Yes it is three hours later on the East Coast, but still. Calming down I breathe. My own damn fault again. I forgot to set my computer to “do not disturb.” I work on a Mac linked to my iPad and iPhone. With one setting I can tell all my devices to “Leave me alone, I’m working.” 

If I don’t respect my writing time, how can I expect my brain to keep churning out ideas and coming up with solutions to my first draft messes?

3:48 AM PST. An hour wasted. 504 words written. 507 if you count these. 513… 

3:51 AM PST.  I hide Word Count. Computers have all these amazing tools, choosing when to use which ones can be tricky. Knowing my current word count tends to lead me into a state of I-need-more-words-to-prove-I-had-a-productive-day. 

Less is always more unless more is needed. My life is full of dichotomies. The only way to gain power over my life is to admit I am powerless over my life. This is as true about my alcoholism as it is about my writing career. 

By accepting I have no control over any outcomes I see what I do have control over, these words I’m typing, this moment. Right here, right now, that I can control. I can control setting the do not disturb switch. I cannot and should not control who sends a family group chat out. I have neither the nuclear launch code nor the formula to cure disease. I’m just not that important. Anyone trying to reach me can wait until the sun has risen and I’ve had some coffee.

PROJECTED AGENDA: Future gazing from 4:00 AM.

6:00 AM ish - I will take the dogs on a pee/poop walk around our property. Give them a chance to investigate the smells left by the wild things of the night. If we’re lucky our neighbor dogs will be up and they can have a quick sniff and chat through the fence. This walk takes between ten and fifteen minutes depending on the length and speed of investigation.

7:00 AM - Feed dogs. Make coffee. My breakfast of oatmeal or smoothie. Chat with Erika and Jared. Maybe do some writing after that. We shall see.

8:00 AM ish - take the dogs to County Park or Nature Center for a long walk. This schedule varies based on weather, summer heat gets us out earlier, winter’s lack of light pushes walks until 10 AM. If we’re walking our friend’s dog Daisy, we go as late as 11:00 AM. The key is to get thirty to forty-five minutes of physical and mental exercise. Buster being a terrier needs this or he becomes an asshole. I need it because as a human if I live entirely in my head I become an asshole.

Today is a writing day so after the tromp in the forest I will write. 

12:00 PM ish - lunch. Usually with Jared and Erika. Food and a show of some kind. Lately Jared and I have been watching Snowpiercer, a dystopian TV series based on a French graphic novel and a Korean film. It is different enough from my creative worlds that it can feed me without taking over what I’m working on.

After this depending on my output so far and the demands of life, I will either go back to typing or get to outside chores, chopping wood and carrying water literally. 

3:30 PM ish - Walk dogs in the neighborhood, visit with their and our friends. These walks are anywhere from twenty to forty-five minutes, depending on how many plants need sniffing, and how many conversations we have.

Afternoon is for finishing the hanging threads of my chores or writing or watching a film.

7:00 PM - dinner for humans and dogs.

8:30 PM ish - a quick last walk with the dogs. Family hang time and bed.

Wake up tomorrow and if I’m lucky enough to have my brain still talking to me I do it all over again.

BACK TO REAL TIME

4:46 AM PST - wrapping this up before emailing it to Erika for her first pass edit.

I come from a long line of farmers and peasant folk who aspire to be artists and intellectuals. My body is built for labor while my brain is built to muse and mumble. When I forget to honor both sides of my DNA I wobble wildly out of balance. That doesn’t mean exact equal amounts of physical and mental tasks every day. Creative work like outdoor chores have seasons. Early in the writing process I need a lot of staring into space think time. Chopping and stacking logs give me something to do while I think. Deep into a project my brain becomes a taskmaster, I honor this by spending less time outside and typing more. 

Owning dogs makes sure I never completely disappear into my office. Those big eyes and a hereditary willingness to turn boredom into acts of destruction are great motivators.

4:47 AM PST - Heading back to bed. Catch an hour of sleep before reading this over to see how crazy I am.

9:30 AM PST - Words fixed as best as my dyslexic self can. Emailed to Erika. She’ll let me know if I’ve strayed completely off the page. She hasn’t said so yet. I’m beginning to think she likes me a wee bit crazy. And so do I. It’s important to have an editor who likes the same things about your work as you do.

Hoping a grand and productive day to you all.

****

What I’m Reading now:

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker. 

Finished it, and it only got more astute, ingenious, insightful, and crazy good. One of the most brilliant books I’ve read since We Begin at the End.

The Mars Room: A Novel by Rachel Kushner

I fell in love with her The Flame Throwers. This is very different but equally wonderful.

I’m listening to The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel.

 ****

Todays word count for those counting is, drum roll… 1,439 so far.

Railing Against the Algorithm Gods, by Josh Stallings

 

Q: Tell us about your ideal reader. For whom do you write and why don’t they ever leave reviews or tell you how you’re doing?

A: I never want to feel like I’m walking the same writing path twice. My ideal reader is someone who is flexible in their literary taste to join me on my journey. 

I have never been really good at following rules. Not because I see myself as a rebel or an iconoclast, but mostly because I’m not wired to remember illogical rules. My creative process as both a writer and a film editor is to stuff my head with facts and thoughts and feeling and research. Then I toss it all out the window and trust the good stuff will stick and the unnecessary will drift away. 

Side note: I see lately how connected my process is to my voice. I just looked at my latest WIP I have 37,000 words in my research file. I doubt I will reread any of my notes, but the act of writing them says to my brain, “Pay attention, I might need this info.” By not doggedly adhering to my original thoughts I allow myself to wander down side tracks chasing ideas that I’ve only seen from the corner of my eye. Some readers like my flow, others are irritated by it. But the fact is that flow is my voice regardless of the genre or sub genre I happen to be playing with at the time.

My ideal readers are curious, and willing to go into places that feel unfamiliar and even confusing, trusting the writer will get them home. I just described myself as a reader. So my ideal reader is me I guess. That is also who I write for. 

I write for me as a way of making sense of the world. A way of understanding myself and my life. I write because even at its most difficult it brings me joy. 

As for readers leaving reviews, it is not their responsibility to take any action just because they bought my book, or checked it out from the library. I understand it is about sales. They say that reader’s reviews matter to the algorithm gods at Amazon. That’s the A10 algorithm that replaced its predecessor A9. Okay I have zero idea what that means. I Googled algorithm to figure out how to spell it and found out how much I don’t know. 

Sales matter. If reader reviews convince the algorithm to put my book in front of more readers that is a good thing. Or maybe it’s not. I’m not just looking for readers, I’m looking for readers who will be predisposed to dig my books. 

How do you choose what to read next based on Amazon’s suggestions?

For me it is almost always a personal recommendation. I read Rachel Kushner’s THE FLAMETHROWERS because Charlie Huston said he thought it would be in my wheelhouse. He was correct, it ripped the lid off what I thought could be done with a novel. It felt familiar to how my brain works and yet also excitingly foreign.  

I’m reading Adam Rapp’s WOLF AT THE TABLE on a recommend from my agent Amy Moore-Benson, she said it reminded her of my work. And so far I love it. It is a hard book dealing with broken folks trying to make it through this life. It also has a technique I really dig. Every chapter jumps forward in time. Things have happened and you aren’t sure why or how. This builds suspense without needing a ticking time bomb. Adam Rapp’s command of withholding information and knowing when to tease it and when to deliver is masterful.

None of this is to say I don’t love hearing from readers, I really do. Writing is solitary by nature so when when someone tells me that my books have meant a lot to them, it helps fuel my inner writer. Novels like all art forms are conversations between the creator and the viewer. I was at a bookclub in Idyllwild where they discussed TRICKY, it took the “conversation” to a new level. 

My feeling on readers writing reviews? If it brings you joy, or if it helps you clarify your thoughts about a book, do it. If you love a book, shout about it. Or think of who you know that might love it as well, and tell them about it. We readers are a community that depends on each other to find our way through a massive stack of books to the ones that are right for us. 

There are no wrong answers. There are no books you shouldn’t read or write. In these tech driven days we are reminded, nobody knows nothin. And if they do, it will all change by tomorrow.

Here are some words that made me smile;

“I was going 145 miles an hour. Then 148. I was in an acute case of the present tense.” — The Flamethrowers: A Novel by Rachel Kushner

 

*****

What I’m reading right now:

WOLF AT THE TABLE by Adam Rapp