Writing Update #9

keep on keepin' on

Current word count: 31,544

Two ideas have come to me recently that have really helped on this book writing journey. The first came from actor and writer Bethany Anne Lind. In her Substack One Job Away she tackles all the many ins and outs of being a working actor which means she tackles the many ins and outs of being a human. In her most recent post she quoted Anne Lamott from her seminal work Bird by Bird (which I now have a hankering to reread) -

“E.L. Doctorow once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”

So really I’m quoting Lind who’s quoting Lamott who’s quoting Doctorow. It’s a beautiful rippling out of wisdom, an infinite fractal. This quote is particularly comforting when you’re 31,544 words into a manuscript and can’t see the finish line. A rough outline will only get you (read: me) so far. But, day by day, I sit and write. Some days the headlights barely illuminate the next sentence. As dim as it may be, I think that light is my only way forward. At least, I can’t presently think of another way to do it.

Another idea that’s helped quell any procrastinatory detours came from Annie Duke. In her book Quit she writes about the importance of when to walk away. Her thesis is that the most successful and influential people in business, technology, government, science, and the arts know when to quit something and move on. The book is incredibly well-researched with supportive anecdotes and strong storytelling.

Duke writes about the many obstacles to quitting. One of the ways that people get stuck is the sunk cost fallacy. It’s the idea that because an investment has been made into a project then it must be seen through to the end, even if quitting would have the best outcome. People often get trapped into a sunk cost mindset by building pedestals instead of training monkeys. Stay with me!

When embarking on a huge endeavor there’s going to be the big main thing (training the monkey) and many smaller ancillary things (building a pedestal for the monkey to stand on). Many of us, and I am very guilty of this, build pedestals as a means to procrastinate on training the monkey. We tackle smaller tasks because we know we can do them. We don’t always know that we can do the main thing. So we put it off. Sometimes we find ourselves stuck with an untrainable monkey and hundreds of pedestals.

This week I found myself doing a lot of research into book agents and query letters and book proposals and how to score a huge book advance and selling movie rights…instead of writing my book. As difficult as those things will be, and they will be quite difficult, they are only pedestals. My manuscript is a feral untrained monkey with barely a diaper on. He needs me and my attention right now. Maybe once he’s a little older and knows a few commands I can start the process of building him some nice pedestals to stand on. Some of this can be done side-by-side but not until I get this money to stop flinging his own poo across the room.

Meanwhile, I gotta keep on keeping’ on.

Onward!