How I Write by Jennifer Young
In the offices of Tannachie, the staff of Writing and Journalism talk a lot about our teaching; ways to help students; what we’re reading; whether or not we want tea/coffee, and when we’re going for lunch. But the most constant non-teaching conversation we all seem to have is: how is your writing going? When do you write? Where? How?
At my old university, I had an hour commute each way. I wrote the bulk of my two novels on the train, mostly on my phone (at least in draft form). Now in Falmouth, I have an 8 minute walk to campus. I lost my key writing time (and gained vastly in quality of life, but that’s another matter all together). I usually also wrote when I set my Creative Writing students exercises to do, but here I mostly teach English Literature.
The summer before I started working at Falmouth, I submitted the final draft of my next novel to my publisher. So when I arrived in January 2019, I had something in the bag. From January to May, I wouldn’t have been able to write anything. I had to learn everything; I had to teach two modules; I had to settle myself and my 6-year-old into a new town and school. The summer was full of plans for the new academic year and the Comedy Women in Print prize. September rolled around, and I’d written some, but not nearly as much as I wanted.
In November, I went to the National Association of Writers in Education conference in York with Sherezade Garcia Rangel and Amy Lilwall. Amy was part of a panel with Anna Kiernan, Liz Flanagan and Sarah Franklin about how they write.
Liz Flanagan recommended the 100 days of writing challenge. She said all you had to do was ‘show up to your project every day’ and put it on social media. It didn’t matter if you wrote for hours or for a few minutes. This sounded very doable, so I started on the 1st of December.
I have a lot of demands on my time, as we all do. Lots of people want things from me at work, and at home I’m a single parent to a very energetic child. My real issue with tackling the 100 days was: when? Many people recommend morning pages, but I was never a morning person at the best of times, even before I had to cajole a child to school. I had plans of booking a small meeting room and going to write at lunch, but something always interrupted that plan. I realised my only possible time would be a small window at night: after my child is asleep, when I’ve switched off emails and social media. Here I find my few minutes to write, in a dimly lit bedroom propped up with my phone or my laptop. I keep the phrase ‘showing up to my project’ in mind, even when I’m so sleepy I wake up mid-sentence to find something has gone very strangely in my fictional world!
Last week, I finished my 100 days of writing. I never put it on social media, because it felt like an intensely personal challenge. However, I did talk to colleagues about it. We all have different methods, and some other colleagues will be writing pieces for this series soon.
I feel vastly better when I write every day. On the weekends, sometimes I find a few hours to write. When I get a stretch like that, it is much easier to plunge in, rather than trying to find the thread I had been working on days or weeks before. I have a rough plan for the rest of my third novel in my trilogy, and I’m a happier parent and academic. I’m going to keep going with my nightly writing. My goal now is a whole year, so I’ll see how far I’ve come on the 30th of November, 2020!
Update: 18/3/2020. I’m now self-isolating, and thought it might be worth updating this with ‘how I write on difficult days’. I’ve taken the same approach I took on good days (i.e., Christmas and New Year’s). If I don’t feel I’m up to writing the peril and intrigue needed in my third novel, I shift to back story. At Christmas, I wrote my characters are Christmas. It won’t appear in the final novel, but it gave me important elements that are feeding through to the actual plot and emotional interaction of my characters in the novel. I’m on day 2 of self-isolation, and I’ve returned to the holidays. It keeps my writing simmering along and makes me feel much better!
by Jennifer Young