{"id":1662,"date":"2022-04-20T08:00:13","date_gmt":"2022-04-20T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/?p=1662"},"modified":"2022-04-20T08:00:13","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T12:00:13","slug":"success-is-dessert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/20\/success-is-dessert\/","title":{"rendered":"Success Is Dessert"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On March 26, 2021, MissMiddle wrote, I was wondering, how many hours do you write per day? I recently read that the most successful authors write for 4+ hours each day. Do you think that\u2019s necessary? I\u2019d love to see a post about how much to write each day and if you already have one it would be great if someone could direct me to it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time I wrote back with this: I\u2019m adding your question to my list, but it will take me a long time to answer. My minimum daily writing time is 2 1\/4 hours. I try to go longer and often do, but sometimes I don\u2019t make even my minimum. I don\u2019t think 4+ hours are a necessity, but consistency is important. If you have little time, try carving out at least 15 minutes a day for writing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I haven\u2019t changed my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not long ago, I kept failing to make my time goal. Nothing big was going on, just little diversions that I gave in to. I forgave myself, because forgiveness is the bargain I\u2019ve made, and I think it\u2019s a useful and benevolent one for everyone to make. Otherwise, we pile on blame. We think we don\u2019t have the discipline or the talent to be a writer and we stop writing. But forgiveness turns off the self-recrimination spigot. If we forgive ourselves, tomorrow is free and clear, uncluttered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I do make my goal, I feel a little shinier than when I don\u2019t. I think that\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mine is a time goal rather than words or pages. If I work the contracted time, it doesn\u2019t matter whether the writing went well or horribly. A page or word requirement would add an additional milestone I\u2019d have to meet to get the shine. Some days I mostly write notes about my story or do research (which I count) and I wouldn\u2019t get to, say, two pages in ten hours. I know by now that if I put in the hours, eventually the writing will figure itself out and I\u2019ll finish a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no fixed length of time one has to write every day to be successful. We don\u2019t even have to write every day. We\u2019re all different. The only imperative is that we write frequently enough to produce stories. How many stories and how often also vary from writer to writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having said that, though, discipline is<\/em> essential to writing and to getting better as a writer, which we can\u2019t do if we don\u2019t, er, write. When I\u2019m revising, I can keep at it almost endlessly, but when I\u2019m starting a new story or writing notes about it\u2014the hardest part for me\u2014sticking to the work can be torture. Discipline is no problem during the easy phases!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A daily goal of some kind is helpful for the hard parts. We want to establish a habit. If we get used to writing for, say, half an hour a day, the act will become like brushing our teeth, part of what we do, and we\u2019ll feel strange and unlike ourselves when we don\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it isn\u2019t enough for me to say, Just pick a goal and make it a habit. In my own experience as a failed visual artist, I know that expressing<\/em> our creativity is hard. Not being<\/em> creative, When I googled Why is creativity hard<\/em>?, I found this lovely quote from Lewis Mumford who wrote The Myth of the Machine: <\/em>\u201cAnyone who says \u2018I don\u2019t have a creative bone in my body\u2019 is seriously underestimating their skeleton.  More to the point, they are drastically undervaluing their brain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s super difficult is hauling that creativity from our bones out into the world. During my long writing apprenticeship, I made lots of friends among my fellow wannabes, and I watched quite a few give up for one reason or another, but not because they weren\u2019t creative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Googling led me to an article in Psychology Today<\/em> called \u201c10 Reasons Why We Struggle With Creativity\u201d by David DiSalvo\u2014but before you google it too, know that I think it\u2019s for high-school-and-above people. Two of the ten reasons jumped out at me. The first sounds discouraging even self-defeating: that we can attain the self-confidence to produce creative work (writing for us) only by failing to produce work we have confidence in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The secret weapon, though, is that now you know. We have to fail, probably again and again, to succeed in the end. Most of you know that it took me nine years for one of my stories (Ella<\/em>) to be accepted. And it\u2019s not that everything I write is a success. In every book, I fail myriad times. Right now, working on my memoir, which I think I\u2019ve mentioned, I\u2019m finding it astonishingly hard to make it chronological, as a beta reader has said I must. I keep wandering off on tangents. But by now I do have confidence. Understanding the necessity of failure will let you fortify yourself. We tighten our stomachs and yell into the wind, \u201cThis isn\u2019t working. Too bad.\u201d Off we go, trying again or starting that new idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second reason goes with the first, that the failing we must do sets off memories of other failures and a cascade of self-criticism. How can we ever succeed if we\u2019ve already proven ourselves to\u2014fill in the blank: have only stupid ideas, sputter out every time without finishing, write awkward sentence after awkward sentence, be unable to build a world, stink at endings, stink at beginnings? I can go on and on. I bet you can too. We have to fortify ourselves against our excellent memories. We can replace memories with facts. How long did it take the Wright Brothers to figure out flight? How long did medicine stumble before germ theory was discovered? Failure should be embraced!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are three prompts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n