Too Fast, Too Slow

Is there a correct speed for getting writing done?

I love writers. And I love poking fun at them/us because we have a knack—no, a true talent—for turning a positive experience into a source of worry and angst. This “superpower” is most certainly a defense mechanism to protect us from disappointment, but doesn’t it also keep us from savoring our successes? (Rhetorical question alert! The answer is YES!)

Here are some of the “what ifs” that arise for a lot of writers when things are going well, including ones I’ve received in the Comments section of Page Fright articles (in quote marks):

·      The words were flowing today like never before. What if that never happens again?

·      I received such positive responses from my workshop group. What if they were just being nice so I’ll be nice to them?

·      “What if readers *like* what you put out there? Some people might succumb to the tyranny of high expectations.” (SK)

·      “What if my writing takes off? Am I really ready for that? Of course, but OH MY!” (NS)

·      “What if after a lifetime of doing something else, I discovered I had a great talent for writing after all :( “ (AB)

The list could go on for pages. We writers sure know how to make lemons out of lemonade.

Here’s one of my favorite examples of self-doubt that could have easily been self-satisfaction: A friend of mine, Lisa-Marie, who I met in a fantastic creativity group run by The Spark File, was working on a screenplay for a short film about white privilege, BLM, police brutality, Covid, and conspiracy theories (and, yes, she found a way to interweave all these plot lines!). She surprised herself with how quickly she’d written it—in a matter of weeks, not months and months as she’d expected. I told her how impressed I was, and she responded with a comment like, “It flowed so easily that it makes me question whether it’s any good.” Gah! 

I wish she’d said it to be charmingly self-deprecating, but she was genuinely worried. Most writers would kill to have their ideas and words flow smoothly rather than having to wrestle them to the page, but even when it happens the way we think we want, that doesn’t necessarily quell all our fears. New ones seem to take their place!

If you’re concerned about writing too fast, consider this: I believe some people write fast because their project has actually been partially pre-written. I don’t mean they’ve plagiarized. I mean that so much of writing does not take place at a desk or on a laptop. It occurs consciously or unconsciously while we’re driving, sleeping, daydreaming, doodling, people watching, eavesdropping, conversing, imagining, etc.

Mike Nichols, the director of The Graduate, The Birdcage, and so many other movie classics, once described how when he was working on a film, the “suits” would come around to the writers’ space, and notice them drinking coffee, joking around, putting their heads on their desks, etc. and demand to know why they weren’t doing anything. Nichols, with what I’m sure was an enormous effort to not roll his eyes, would explain that, whether it looked like it or not, the writers were doing their job: writing.

And sometimes pre-writing or pre-creating produces creative output surprisingly fast. As I wrote in What’s Your Creative Type? about the love of my life , “Paul McCartney famously (and lucratively) experienced the unconscious workings of the mind, resulting in the most-recorded song in history, ‘Yesterday.’ As he recalled, ‘I had a piano by my bedside and I…must have dreamed [the song], because I tumbled out of bed and put my hands on the piano keys and I had a tune in my head. It was all just there, a complete thing. I couldn’t believe it.’”

I’ve experienced this phenomenon, too—on a much smaller scale, of course. When I write opinion pieces or pop culture columns, I sometimes wake up with the intro and maybe even some additional lines fully formed in my mind. It’s so exciting to have my work partially done for me—by me—before the day’s even begun. If only this happened with chores: Bills paid! Rugs vacuumed!

But if you’re still worried about the quality of your work because you’re writing it so fast, keep in mind that the idea for your project might have rolled around in your brain for years before it was the right time to develop it. It grabbed hold of you and wouldn’t let go, which is an excellent sign that it’s worthwhile. The transition from thinking to writing might be smoother and faster than usual because you’ve already devoted so much time to the topic or plot or characters that they nearly jump onto the page.

Suppose you have the opposite (and more common) concern. What if you are the type of writer for whom 250 words a day, the equivalent of one page, is your maximum output? Well, then, you must suck at being a writer because it’s taking you so long to organize your thoughts or find the precise words or sit for enough time to type them up, right? Wrong!

Maybe writing one page per day, five days a week is simply your process. You’ll have accomplished five pages per week, and in a year’s time, you’ll have 260 pages, a.k.a. a book-length manuscript! On the other hand, if you regard 250 words a day as pathetic and therefore avoid writing altogether, you’ll have…nothing. The choice is yours: nothing or a big, fat, juicy something.

In the beloved Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott describes a writer’s tendency to want to rush the creative process along: “Your unconscious can’t work when you are breathing down its neck. You’ll sit there going, ‘Are you done in there yet, are you done in there yet?’ But it is trying to tell you nicely, ‘Shut up and go away.'”

So (nicely said), shut up and go away! Let the process take the time it requires.

But if you still feel bad about taking forever with a writing project, these examples of beloved novels that took years to write might help soften your self-criticism:

·      After The Hobbit came out, it took J.R.R. Tolkien 12 years to complete its sequel, one of the bestselling novels of all time: Lord of the Rings 

·      In 1926, to relieve the boredom of being housebound with a broken ankle, Margaret Mitchell began writing Gone With the Wind. It took a decade for her to finish it

·      Michael Crichton spent eight years on Jurassic Park. Some of that time was devoted to research, which can also contribute to the length of time a project takes

·      Although he was called an "overnight success," it took Arthur Golden 15 years to write the bestselling novel, Memoirs of a Geisha. One reason? He wrote it in third person, twice, before realizing it needed to be in first person

Think you’re writing too fast? Too slow? Maybe you’re doing it just right.

I’d love for you to share any of your too fast/too slow experiences in the comments below. Feel free to respond to each other’s replies, too. Thanks, as always, for being so involved and open with this growing writers’ community!