Written E-Book

Bec Evans

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 351

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

**With a Foreword by OLIVER BURKEMAN, bestselling author of the Sunday Times bestseller Four Thousand Weeks** Written is a transformative guide that anyone can use to overcome their blocks and build a successful writing habit. Many people think that there's only one 'right' way to get the writing done - or that trying harder is the key. Award-winning writers, productivity coaches and co-founders of Prolifiko Bec Evans and Chris Smith know this isn't true. Having coached over 10,000 writers, they've learned that productivity is personal. Their unique, results-driven approach is designed to help you find a realistic and sustainable practice that will get you to the end of any writing project, no matter how stuck you feel. Applying research from neuroscience and psychology, and based on the authors' own practice and findings, Written will show you how to manage your time effectively, how to visualise and set successful goals, how to recover from setbacks, and ultimately how to create writing habits that work for you. Along the way, you'll hear inspiring and relatable stories from other writers who have overcome their struggles to find success. Each chapter ends with practical coaching exercises that you can start implementing right now. For anyone with a project they need to get written - whether a business book, thesis or work of fiction - this inspiring book offers practical strategies to beat the inner critic, find time, keep motivated and write.

Leseprobe

Praise for Written

‘This book collects some of the best advice I’ve ever encountered for constructing a writing habit that actually works.’

Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks

‘An invaluable guidebook for writers at all stages. Evans and Smith understand that process is deeply personal, and they provide a wealth of wise, compassionate advice for breaking unhelpful patterns and creating a flexible, realistic plan for sustainable long-term productivity.’

Mason Currey, author of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

‘This is a fascinating and extremely useful book. I recommend it!’

David Quantick, novelist and Emmy Award-winning scriptwriter of Veep and The Thick Of It

‘What a lovely, friendly book. Made me feel cheerful, buoyant, less alone and keen to get on with my writing. Highly recommended.’

Cathy Rentzenbrink, memoirist and author of Write It All Down

‘This well-written book on writing well is enormously valuable for anyone wishing to write productively. If you’re a writer, first be a reader of this book.’

Robert Cialdini, author of Influence and Pre-Suasion

‘A fun-to-read and highly informative guide to overcome the most difficult obstacles in writing.’

Gabriele Oettingen, author of Rethinking Positive Thinking

‘Written lays out the challenges that almost every writer faces and provides real-world antidotes to many of the myths and stories we believe about ourselves and why we can’t seem to get our projects finished. This book will help you structure your writing life and how you approach the craft of writing.’

Rennie Saunders, founder and CEO of ShutUp&Write!

‘This isn’t just another productivity book. Most writers have lots of those, but none of them speak to the real causes of why getting on with writing is so hard to do. Written is different: it’s rooted not just in the authors’ own experience but also in that of the thousands of writers they’ve worked with over the years. Whatever you write, whatever you struggle with, you’ll find real-world solutions here. Warm, wise and practical, it deserves pride of place on your bookshelf.’

Alison Jones, host of The Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast and author of Exploratory Writing

‘Two things that I love about this book. First, Bec and Chris don’t assume that what works for one famous writer will work for you. Their emphasis is on discovering the best way for each writer to get their writing done. And secondly, this isn’t just based on hunches – but on extensive study of how writers write. Highly recommended.’

Nigel Warburton, author of A Little History of Philosophy

‘There’s nothing scarier in my work than a blank page, yet nothing more satisfying and exciting than finishing and launching a book. Written holds your hand throughout that entire process. Bec and Chris keep things practical, with an admirable focus on the habit-changes needed to get your words “out there”. If you want to go from “writing” to “written”, then you need this book.’

Graham Allcott, founder of Think Productive and author of How to be a Productivity Ninja

‘Bec and Chris’ course on combatting procrastination is one of our most popular Reedsy Learning courses, so I’m delighted to see they’ve turned their practical and inspirational advice for writers into a book – it works.’

Ricardo Fayet, co-founder of Reedsy

‘Refreshingly human and immensely useful. It’s so freeing to know there’s not just one right way to write! I love the breadth and depth of this book – the curated insights into seasoned writers’ heads and processes combined with the super practical tips and exercises on what to actually do next. This deserves to be a well-thumbed handbook on every writer’s shelf.’

Grace Marshall, author of Struggle and How to be Really Productive

‘I’ve been looking through my library of self-help books for writers and there’s nothing quite like this book out there. To me, it seems that it might mean the difference between a half-written manuscript abandoned in a drawer and a finished book on the shelf. I know so many writers who will benefit from it – me included.’

Wyl Menmuir, Booker-nominated novelist, writing tutor and author of The Draw of the Sea

‘Engaging and authoritative – full of tried-and-tested advice for all writers, wherever they are in their writing careers.’

Debbie Taylor, founder and editor of Mslexia

‘This book is an indispensable companion for anyone struggling to start and build a writing habit (most of us!). The writers’ journey is a lot less lonely and much more doable with Bec and Chris by your side. We’ll be sharing this one widely with our writing community for years to come. There’s no magic potion to becoming a writer, but this book comes close. Pick it up to get started – then put it down and get to work.’

Matthew Trinetti, co-founder of London Writers’ Salon

‘Bec and Chris really helped me on my way to publication. Their insights and encyclopaedic knowledge about creative productivity gave me inspiration, support and practical tools to persevere and establish a more mindful writing practice. I’m excited about their book, as it will help so many writers.’

Louise Bassett, author of The Hidden Girl

Published in the UK in 2023 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email: [email protected]

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ISBN: 978-178578-903-8eISBN: 978-178578-904-5

Text copyright © 2023 Bec Evans and Chris Smith

Foreword © 2023 Oliver Burkeman

The authors have asserted their moral rights.

Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of the material reproduced in this book. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make acknowledgement on future editions if notified.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro by Marie Doherty

Printed and bound in Great Britain

by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

I don’t love writing, but I love having written.*

—Jimmy McGovern, screenwriter best known for creating the hit drama series, Cracker

___________

* It is worth noting that although McGovern definitely did say this,1 the same or very similar words have also been attributed, rightly or wrongly, to writers over the decades. Indeed, Quote Investigator reports that the list is long and includes Hedley Donovan, the former editor-in-chief of Time; Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island; the writers of the 1970s American TV sitcom series, The Odd Couple; fantasy author George R.R. Martin; novelist Frank Norris; satirist and essayist Dorothy Parker; actor and playwright Cornelia Otis Skinner; writer and director Sidney Sheldon; activist Gloria Steinem and an unnamed journalist writing for a Louisiana newspaper in 1936. All of which suggests that the words have a certain universality and truth.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Oliver Burkeman

Introduction: Productivity is personal

Part One: The Approach

1 Break the rules

2 Make the rules

Part Two: Start Writing

3 Time

4 Goals

5 Starting

6 Stopping

Part Three: Keep Writing

7Resilience

8Habit

9People

10Mastery

Conclusion: The quantity myth

Take the next step

Acknowledgements

References

Permissions

FOREWORD

I’ve often fantasised about one day becoming a writer. This is a peculiar fantasy, I realise, since by any reasonable definition I already am a writer – a newspaper journalist for two decades and the author of three books. But I mean a proper writer: the kind of writer who has uncovered the One True Secret of how to write productively, day after day, preferably in a custom-built writing cabin, at a desk containing nothing but a laptop, a leather-bound notebook and always-fresh coffee in an earthenware cup. To write in such an environment – and here I’m quoting the eternally irritating words attributed to Muriel Spark, about her own creative process – would surely feel like taking dictation from God.

The fact that this book has seized your attention means that you, too, are almost certainly a writer (in the sense that you write things, at least sometimes), who yearns to become a writer (in the sense of finally discovering the blueprint for doing so without struggle, frustration or self-criticism). The bad news is that Written doesn’t contain the One True Secret of becoming a happy and productive writer, because there isn’t one. The good news is that letting go of the fantasy that any such secret exists is the crucial first step to becoming a happier and more productive writer. And this book collects some of the best advice I’ve ever encountered for dispelling that illusion, then for constructing, in its place, a writing habit that actually works – not for some fantasy version of yourself, or for Muriel Spark or Ernest Hemingway, but for you.

Writers love few things more than dispensing rules for writers; apart from anything else, it’s a pleasant distraction from getting words on the page. But fixating on rules such as ‘write every day’ or ‘you need an entirely distraction-free environment in which to write’ can easily do more harm than good. They give rise to the belief that you’re not a real writer if you fail to follow them. Or maybe you do follow them, for a while, then fall off the wagon and stop writing for months, because resuming that whole perfectly scheduled ‘writing life’ feels like an insurmountable challenge, when in fact all you needed was to resume a little writing.

The truth is that radically different things work for different personalities, different stages of life and different life situations. (In my house, as in many a family home, to be honest, I sometimes need a different approach on Thursdays than on Mondays.) It isn’t mandatory to write every day, or in large uninterrupted stretches; I’ll even concede – grudgingly, because it’s utterly alien to my personality – that even writing in multi-day binges can be the best approach for some. And uniquely, at least in my experience, Bec Evans and Chris Smith offer not a writing system but a system for figuring out your own personal system, tailored to your psychology and circumstances.

Deep down, I think we cling to one-size-fits-all rules because we crave the feeling of control they seem to promise. But in writing, as in everything else, that sort of control is a mirage. Exploring and applying the ideas in this wise, friendly and practical book will leave you with something far more valuable than the fantasy of a perfect writing life. It will help you write much more, and more happily, in the life you’re actually living.

Oliver Burkeman Author, Four Thousand Weeks

INTRODUCTION

Productivity is personal

This is going to be perfect, I thought as I stomped through the woods to my new place of work in my box-fresh wellington boots – a thoughtful leaving gift from my ex-colleagues. I’d been hired to run a renowned residential writing centre in rural Yorkshire and I felt like I was beginning a new chapter in my life (pun intended). I loved living in London but the daily grind was, well, grinding me down. Somehow, I’d ended up working in a high-pressure management job which just wasn’t me, and it had taken me until my thirties to realise it. My dream was to lead a creative life and dedicate more time to my writing, my long-held passion. I wrote a little in London, but nowhere near as much as I could write if I had more time and less stress in my life – or so I thought.

I swapped my buzzy city office for the tranquillity of Lumb Bank, an 18th-century millowner’s residence which once belonged to poet laureate Ted Hughes. Set in twenty acres of steep woodland with breath-taking views to the valley below, the house looks over a Pennine landscape of hills, woodland rivers, packhorse trails and ruins of old textile mills. Today, it’s used to host week-long writing courses for Arvon and now, as centre director, I’d be supporting people to write while rubbing shoulders with some of the best authors on the planet. How could I not become a successful writer working here? I mean, hand me a Pulitzer Prize right now. But my perfect plan didn’t quite work out.

The move to Yorkshire from London wasn’t done on a whim. It was the culmination of years of deliberation. I knew it would come with consequences: I’d miss my friends, my London salary and the security. At the time my husband Chris, co-author of this book, was a freelance consultant and ghost writer. Finding clients wasn’t a problem in London, but how easy it would it be in our new home? There were a lot of unknowns. It was risky, but together we agreed that it was worth it; we would be closer to family and could side-step the rat race to fulfil our other goals – like writing.

In my new home I’d have everything I needed to write. More time, less stress, more creative energy and inspiration. But here’s the rub: as soon as I started my new job, my own writing ground to a halt. Despite having the ideas, the motivation, the space, the support and the encouragement I needed, I barely wrote a thing. In fact, I had written far, far more when I was living in a tiny flat in London, burned out and working twelve-hour days, than when I moved to Yorkshire and had all the time and inspiration in the world.

Have you ever noticed that when you seek perfection, things rarely turn out as you expect? We often believe we need something else before we get down to the writing. We think we need to find a perfect writing environment or to write just like that successful writer over there. All of this may help of course, but what we actually need is quite different.

HOW THE WRITING GETS DONE

Creating anything involves a mixture of craft and practice. To write, you need to be able to spell (at least to an extent) and to understand the rudiments of grammar, style, tone, sentence structure and syntax. Then, depending on what you want to write, you need to grasp the rules of your particular discipline, genre, sub-genre or sub-sub-genre. You might need to learn how to write a three-act structure, plan a literature review, pen a haiku or develop a compelling character. You may need to learn how to present findings, plan a narrative arc or construct an argument. Whatever you write about, there will be certain technical and structural things that you need to know related to your field of writing. All crucial knowledge.

But to write, you need more than to know how to write. Knowing your craft is important for sure, but that alone won’t get the writing done. At some stage, you have to sit down and write. And that brings with it a whole other set of challenges. Challenges that, more often than not, are rooted in the knotty ball of emotions, fears, worries, doubts and hopes that we all have. When you decide you want to write – perhaps why you’re reading this book right now – you’ll need to find a way to get it written. You will need to:

find time and prioritise writing over other equally important things

figure out how to get started

find a way to continue when you feel stuck, overwhelmed or fed up

keep focussed: your phone, Netflix, the vacuum cleaner, literally anything else, is there to pull you away.

Craft is important, but if you want to write, you’ll also need to find a practice that means you turn up and keep going.

When I lived in London, I was incredibly productive with my writing given the time constraints I had. Not that I thought so at the time. Somehow, I was able to churn out short story after short story. Life was busy, but I’d developed a few simple support structures that helped my writing and worked for me. For example, I used to have a long train ride every week, which I’d use for developing my ideas. Nothing too strenuous, just notes, a little creative thinking and some light editing, but I used to look forward to those two or three hours where I could shut myself off from the world.

I was a member of a friendly and supportive writers’ group too. We first met at an evening course at a local college and decided to keep meeting up every week in a room above a pub. I also used to stop off to write in the Women’s Library on my cycle back from work. It gave me a quiet place to write and was a great way to wind down at the end of a stressful day. In Yorkshire, I had none of that. I had ideas, hopes and ambitions. I had creative inspiration by the bucketload. I used to walk to work every morning with my newly acquired puppy through a sun-dappled forest for Pete’s sake – but I’d stopped doing the one thing I wanted to do above all else.

WRITING IS HARD – FOR MOST PEOPLE

People find writing hard for different reasons. What holds you back and what helps you to keep going will be personal to you. I was finding it hard because I hadn’t replaced the support structures I’d had in London – in fact, I’d never really realised I’d had any. This meant that I’d started feeling a flutter of fear every time I passed my desk. I can’t be the only one who’s felt like that. The laptop is set up, the notebook and pen are poised, the space is perfect, I’ve got the time – so what’s the problem? Thinking about it now, the problem was pretty clear. I’d started to compare my meagre efforts to the work of the successful writers I now worked with. My writing routine had gone, and with it my self-confidence. Doubts and fears crept in about my own writing because I worked with inspiring and bestselling writers. My grand plan had the reverse effect.

Because most of us were taught the mechanics of writing at an early age, we tend to assume as adults that ‘writing’ will come easily. But writing – both the craft and the process – is hard. Being good at both is a skill to be learned and developed, just like with anything else. In fact, one research study by psychologists specialising in creative persistence found that there’s something inherent about the creative process itself that causes what they call ‘disfluency’.1 Any creative project involves making mistakes, navigating blind corners, getting lost down dead ends, feeling embarrassed by early attempts. All of which makes us more likely to prevaricate, procrastinate, get distracted and quit. Neuroscientists tell us that our brains are hard-wired to crave certainty and avoid risk, but the creative process is the polar opposite of this. Writing inevitably involves trial and error, getting blocked and having breakthroughs as well as randomness and luck. This in turn requires effort, grit, persistence and perseverance. Those things are hard – but it’s because they’re hard that they also bring such meaning and fulfilment.

It’s easy to compare your first draft with the polished outputs of contemporaries or writers who’ve found success. We can often assume these writers have a natural gift that we don’t or that writing must come easily – but is that really the case? Even the most established writers have experienced blocks, barriers and doubts. What they have in common is that they found a way to keep going.

Take Margaret Atwood. In the winter of 1983, she rented a house in freezing North Norfolk in the UK with the intention of writing a novel set in Tudor times. While that novel never arrived, something else emerged instead. Over the time she was there, the plot for the novel she was writing became ever more convoluted, the characters ever more unbelievable and the timeline ever more tangled. For months she struggled to write and spent most of the time avoiding her writing desk entirely by taking long walks and going birdwatching. Maybe it was on one of these walks that she became inspired by the house she was staying in – an old rectory which she says was haunted by nuns. ‘Perhaps it was those six months of futile striving … that caused me to break through some invisible wall,’ she writes, ‘because right after that I grasped the nettle I had been avoiding and began to write The Handmaid’s Tale.’ As Atwood goes on to advise us: ‘Get back on the horse that threw you, as they used to say. They also used to say: you learn as much from failure as you learn from success.’2

While six months might seem a lengthy time to struggle with a writing project, writer Mohsin Hamid spent seven years wrestling with his first novel, Moth Smoke. Convinced he wanted to tell stories in a way that more intimately involved the reader, but with absolutely no idea how to do this, he figured things out slowly by re-writing the book time and time again from different perspectives. The book went on to become a bestseller in India and Pakistan.3 Then came the second novel. You might think this was easier to write, but he claims the early drafts were ‘terrible’.

Despite this, he kept writing. In fact, it took him another seven years to write his second book, re-writing it countless times until he was happy with the result – or at least, happy-ish. ‘My job is to write a book increasingly less badly over time,’ he said. But his perseverance led to success: his second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, went on to become a worldwide bestseller and the basis for a critically acclaimed film of the same name starring Riz Ahmed, Kiefer Sutherland and Kate Hudson.

Different writers experience blocks in different ways. While some, like Atwood, experience one big block followed by a moment of clarity, other writers struggle with daily doubts and fears. Mystery writer Sue Grafton said that writer’s block wasn’t a subject she gave much thought to, because it happened to her so frequently.4 Although the bad writing days far outnumbered the good, the good days were what gave her life purpose. Over the years, Grafton came to think of the blocks she experienced as messages that helped her get the writing done in the long run. Her blocks told her that she was off track. She wrote: ‘The “block” is the by-product of a faulty choice I’ve made. My job is to back up and see if I can pinpoint the fork in the road where I headed in the wrong direction.’ She also developed a few tactics to ensure that she could keep going even when she experienced blocks, which included keeping a journal of her writing process for every novel.

If you experience blocks like these, you’re not alone. However, how you keep writing through these barriers will be unique to you.

THE PUZZLE OF THE PERFECT WRITING ENVIRONMENT

As Lumb Bank’s centre director, I’d say hello every week to a fresh cohort of eager writers. Most of the time, the students would be new, but sometimes I’d welcome returning writers. I’d get to know them and their projects, and over time it would be like greeting old friends. There was one student in particular who prompted a puzzle that stayed with me. ‘How’s your book coming along?’ I asked her one day in passing, as I was clearing up the empty wine glasses after an evening talk. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I haven’t written anything since I was here last year. I can only write when I’m at Lumb Bank.’ Really? Her answer surprised me. This writer had come to depend on the ‘perfect’ curated and designed structure of a writing retreat. She’d tried countless times to carry on her practice at home but she couldn’t do it – things always got in the way.

By thinking about her, I shone the spotlight back on myself. What was it about her life and her psychology that made it impossible for her to get down to writing at home? Why had I stalled, and what was it about my own situation that was affecting me? It also made me wonder what it was about the other writers – particularly the famous names that I hosted to deliver workshops and talks each week – that meant that they could keep going. Were some people doing something right? Was my returning writer doing something wrong? How did they keep going when we had stalled? Did we lack something that they had?

From that moment on (in what I’ll admit now sounds like an almighty exercise in procrastination), I started to research and write about other people’s writing routines. I dug into the academic research on the psychology of creative practice and persistence. I’d quiz the visiting writing students about their processes, what their fears were, what struggles they encountered, what blocks they had. I also asked questions of the successful, award-winning writers who visited each week. I wanted to know how they got the work done when others couldn’t. Was there a secret? These initial investigations taught me that aptitude and talent weren’t enough. The writers who were able to keep writing, in good times and bad, had all created successful habits and behaviours that worked for them.

So, joined by my husband Chris, I set up a business to help writers overcome their barriers. A decade on, thousands of writers have been through our courses and coaching programmes. With our help, novelists with writer’s block have gone on to be nominated for the Booker Prize, professors have gotten over their barriers and gained promotions, business writers have gained the confidence to write non-fiction books which have turned around their fortunes, and journalists have found the persistence to write award-winning works of reportage.

We conducted research of our own, from in-depth interviews to online quizzes and surveys, partnering with market researchers and academics to explore what stops some people writing and what helps others keep going. In 2018 Chris and I teamed up with researchers and experts from two universities in the USA to run a study into the habits, processes and practices of academic writers – although the findings apply to any type of writer.5 We surveyed and interviewed nearly 600 authors from around the world, each with varying levels of writing experience, to learn more about how they got their writing done. We wanted to see whether we could spot patterns. When they procrastinated, did they procrastinate in the same way? Did the writers who produced a lot of work use any particular method or tactic? How did the calm and collected writers stay that way? What was it they did (or didn’t do) that made the difference? While we couldn’t find one common tactic or approach that worked for everyone – there was no magic productivity potion waiting to be discovered – we did find one pivotal thing.

WHY PRODUCTIVITY IS PERSONAL

We found that the writers who were the most productive and fulfilled, least stressed out and better able to cope with the pressures of writing had all built a combination of support structures around themselves – just like I had done in London. These tactics, routines and rituals formed a system that supported them to get started with their writing and to keep going. They were always personal and based around what worked for them in their lives at that very moment. What made these writers productive wasn’t one thing but many things, and these things changed as their lives did too.

We expected to find that writers who were older or who had more experience would be significantly more resilient and adept at battling their blocks and barriers, but that wasn’t the case at all. We talked to experienced scholars with decades of writing experience who were blocked, miserable and unproductive. Some of these academics had been stuck for years and were on the verge of breaking point – their careers were taking a hit. On the flip side, we also spoke to inexperienced academics at the early stages of their careers who were highly productive and happy. They’d figured out what kept them motivated. It didn’t matter to them that they hadn’t been writing for long – they tended to ignore the well-meant productivity advice of their supervisors and they just wrote in a way that suited them.

Launched at the London Book Fair in 2019, our research went on to be cited in scholarly articles, quoted in blogs and featured in publications like Nature6 and the Guardian.7 We found that the writers who said they had found specific structures and systems that helped them write were:

By far the most productive. They were the most likely to have written and published the highest number of articles and papers.

Better at coping with pressure. 40 per cent of authors in this group said they feel under no pressure to write whatsoever.

More satisfied and happy. 61 per cent said they were highly satisfied with their writing process.

Less likely to experience blocks and barriers. In fact, they experienced very few.

Unfortunately, we also found that the writers who said they didn’t know what tactics worked for them, or who’d never given it much thought, had a tougher time. They were far more likely to be unhappy, stressed-out and anxious. There were also more likely to experience harmful emotional blocks like procrastination, guilt and low-confidence – barriers that can affect mental health and quality of life.

HOW THIS BOOK WILL HELP

One simple idea drives our work: noticing how you write and taking a more mindful, experimental approach to what works for you and what doesn’t is the most powerful thing you can do to gain a happier, healthier and more productive relationship with writing.

In our study, the writers who changed their behaviour and built support structures around themselves did so only because they’d noticed what it was that helped and hindered them, and they took action as a result. This mindful approach made them happier and more productive. The writers who wrote in a mindless way – on autopilot – weren’t able to change because they’d never paid much attention to their process. Some didn’t even think they needed one. This meant that they kept doing the same things again and again – things that didn’t work. They were unproductive, frustrated and often unhappy.

Many writing productivity guides and self-help books have a bad reputation. To take thesis writing as an example, one study found a university library groaning with ten shelves of books promising graduates and PhD students the winning formula to academic success.8 The researchers say that the problem with many of these books is that they take a linear, one-size-fits-all approach that oversimplifies the dissertation-writing process and often makes stressed-out PhD students even more anxious by using scare tactics along the lines of: if you don’t follow this advice, see what will happen!

This book is very different. As much as we’d love to give you a simple formula to transform your relationship with writing overnight, there isn’t one. There’s no linear process that suits everyone, no single sure-fire solution that’s guaranteed to work for all. But there is a way to build a better relationship with your writing if you take a more intentional approach to your process, noticing what works and what doesn’t, and what helps and what hinders. That way, you will find what actually works for you.

This book is the culmination of a decade of exploration and experimentation, as we figured out how to fit writing into our lives and help others do the same. It tells stories about the successes and struggles that writers have experienced throughout history. You’ll have heard of some, you won’t have heard of others, but their stories will inspire you to pick and choose what might work for your life. It also condenses what we’ve learned about the brain and writing, through reading hundreds of scholarly articles, books and journals in fields such as neuroscience, psychology and writing studies – so you don’t have to! Each chapter considers the kind of questions we know writers want answers to. Questions like these:

Is it talent or practice that makes the difference?

How can I tell if I’m procrastinating or just need a break?

Should I write daily, in small chunks or in binges? Is one way better than another?

What does a writing ‘habit’ mean and how do I get one?

Is it better to dream big or start small?

How do I keep motivated when I’m not in the mood? Should I push myself – or be more kind?

If there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, how on earth do I find a practice that’s right for me?

…and many, many more.Some of these questions might be more relevant to you than others – and that’s fine. This book is about helping you figure out what works for you now, but it may be that certain approaches change for you over time as you encounter different challenges. So while it might be tempting to start by picking certain chapter topics and skipping the rest, we’d encourage you to see what you can discover from every section.

At the end of each chapter is what we’ve called ‘The Writer’s Sandbox’ – practical tips and exercisesto help you apply what you’ve just read. These are the tried-and-tested approaches that we’ve shared with writers over the years in our webinars, workshops and coaching programmes. Sandboxes are about playing and experimenting in a safe environment, and we hope that as you read this book you see these moments as your opportunity to cast out old ways of thinking and give things a go in a supportive space. We’ve got you!

How do we know this approach works? Not just because we’ve helped thousands of people overcome their writing blocks, but because I’m living proof. From feeling stuck in my new home, I found success by learning from others and experimenting with different ideas. Over the years my fresh-from-the-box wellies got worn out and caked in mud, and my London life became a pleasant but distant memory.

My woodland commute to Lumb Bank (often accompanied by Chris and Peggy the Labradoodle) replaced my long train journey as the place to think and chew over ideas. While I didn’t have a writing group in Yorkshire like I did in London, I figured out that it wasn’t the group as such that kept me going but rather the connection with other people (more on this later on). I realised that ‘writing a book’ was stressing me out, so I built my confidence by starting small and writing regularly for my own blog. This turned into writing articles for others, which led to a book proposal, an agent, a book deal with a publisher, and in 2020, an award for my first book.

I found my system of approaches by understanding what worked for me at that point in my life. I realised that for me, being a productive writer wasn’t about chaining myself to my desk for longer, but rather about working smarter. I found my way to write – and now we’re going to find yours.

It starts with breaking some rules.

Part One

THE APPROACH

It is a seductive myth that if we start writing on day one, then we will gradually get better and more confident as time goes on. In my experience this is simply not true because writing is a tug of war between desire and fear, and therefore feels much more like a hazardous zigzagging.

—Cathy Rentzenbrink*

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* Cathy Rentzenbrink is an acclaimed memoirist whose books include The Last Act of Love and Dear Reader. In 2021 she published her first novel Everyone Is Still Alive. Her book about how to write a memoir is called Write It All Down. Rentzenbrink regularly chairs literary events, interviews authors, reviews books and runs creative writing courses.

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BREAK THE RULES

– because they were written for someone else

You’d never call writer Cheryl Strayed a shirker. Today, her books regularly hit the bestseller lists and her memoir Wild was made into an Oscar-nominated film. She’s a successful writer by any measure. But for years she was stuck – she didn’t write a thing. She judged herself harshly, thinking she wasn’t a ‘proper writer’. But one day a thought struck her which changed her life forever.

When you first start writing – or in fact, learn to do anything new – it’s normal to emulate other people who have ‘made it’. This is what Strayed did and what you might do too. She attended lectures in fancy university halls and readings in bookshops to learn from big-name authors. Sometimes these sessions were inspiring and helpful. According to Strayed, the authors would often share ‘secrets’ about their writing processes like they were unveiling universal writing rules carved into tablets of stone: ‘I write every day. If you don’t write every day, you’re not a writer,’ was an example of the kind of advice Strayed heard.1

She, like the other eager fans assembled, would hastily scribble these ‘rules’ down believing them to be gospel. As an aspiring writer, Strayed took this advice seriously and tried to follow it – but she couldn’t. Being the kind of person she was, this made her doubt herself and her own abilities. She longed to write but she couldn’t do it like them. Her head must have been full of doubts and fears. But then one day, she had a revelation. She realised she’d been taken in by a myth.

HOW MYTHS SHAPE US

As writers, we often spend a lot of time believing in myths about writing and about ourselves. Sometimes we believe these myths because, just as with Strayed, they’ve been told to us by people we admire with status and power: other writers, teachers, mentors, supervisors. Often these myths have been shaped over years and are influenced by many different factors: social pressure, our self-esteem, our upbringing and the comparisons we make to the people around us. Over time, the myths crystallise and become ingrained in us, influencing how we behave.

Take Michael Legge, a comedy writer who came to us a little while ago with a problem. He told Chris on their first phone call that he was an ‘incurable procrastinator’. This was the myth that had become ingrained in him. He said he lacked focus and determination and that he was at his wits’ end because he needed to write for his career. ‘Am I not trying hard enough?’ he asked. ‘Maybe I’ve just lost it. Perhaps something has switched off inside me,’ he said. Legge explained how he would wake up dreading the day ahead. Every morning he’d drag himself to his writing desk and ‘try to write’. There he’d sit for hours and hours, forcing the words out. He’d feel disappointed that he hadn’t written anything he liked, get distracted by Twitter, feel bad because he’d got distracted by Twitter, do some housework instead, feel bad about that, go out with the dog, sit down again. Chris felt so bad for him as he talked through his guilt-fuelled, gruelling day. Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Deadlines and opportunities flew past. And all the while he blamed himself for his inability to ‘get down to it’. But then, something big happened. Partway through our coaching programme he emailed to tell us he’d had a revelation about himself and the beliefs that were shaping his behaviour (more on this later) – just like Cheryl Strayed.

Back in her twenties, Strayed wasn’t stuck because she lacked talent (her writing record since then proves that) and you could hardly say she lacked determination and perseverance: she is famous for her arduous 1,100-mile solo trek across the Pacific Crest Trail; grit’s her thing. But in those early days, Strayed was doubting herself. She was stuck and feeling thoroughly miserable because she was trying and failing to live up to someone else’s standards. Her mindset had become fixed and, like Legge, she’d come to believe a certain way of writing would – and should – work for her because it worked for the famous and successful writers she felt she should emulate.

Reflecting on the advice she received in those early readings and lectures, Strayed said: ‘You’d look deeper and see that this man – and it normally was a man – would be in his office and his wife would be bringing him lunch. I’d be – “that’s just not my life, no one’s catering my life”. I was bringing lunch to other people. I was a waitress.’2 Strayed was blocked because she was trying and failing to copy someone else at a different life stage with different priorities, different responsibilities and bags more freedom and privilege than she had at the time.