More on Building Writing Stamina: Excerpt from my book: A Friendly Guide to Writing and Ghostwriting
While you’re building stamina to write, you have to know when you’re tapped out. When you feel like you can’t go on, when you're completely drained and you can’t focus, don’t shove yourself around. When I reach the stage of diminishing returns, I take a hot tub or I go for a walk. I let my mind wander and often, a phrase comes to mind that fits into place and encourages me to go back to the computer. If I have something else to do and I can't get back to work right away, I make sure to write down my thoughts so I don't lose them. Then I call on my stamina to get back to the computer and enter them into the text.
Horror master, Stephen King says, It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.
On the polar opposite, Goth author, Anne Rice says, Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I’m writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.
If the idea of writing a book gets overwhelming, if it seems like an undoable task that will require energy you don't think you have, look at what you’ve already accomplished in your life. Maybe you worked your ass off in college, doing endless research and pulling all-nighters when finals were coming. Do you have kids and a spouse who run you around every morning, no matter how well or badly you slept? Maybe you built a business from scratch and learned to think on your feet. Or maybe you spent years caring for a sick relative or friend. All of these things take stamina and lots of it.
Building stamina requires a generous dose of discipline that eventually turns into consistency if you keep at it long enough. I see “discipline” as a hard word, suggesting a rigid structure that you take on with unswerving fortitude, staying on track when the going gets rough, never veering off the path. It’s a kind of impeccable focus where you don’t allow yourself to stop until you reach each short-term goal, no matter how you feel or what arises to try and get in your way. I recall mornings during my ballet training when my mind tried to seduce me into skipping a class or a practice . . . just for today. The internal debate, should I or shouldn’t I, will I or won’t I, was a constant, annoying voice yakking in my head as I showed up for classes and rehearsals each day, committed to my career, dedicated to the training that was required. I got myself to the ballet barre every morning, overrode my internal whining and protests, and kept my eye on the prize.
That’s when “consistency” kicked in. It’s a softer word that suggests a way of transcending the internal battle altogether. In my experience, if you keep at it, discipline will transform into consistency as a natural progression. We all crave that kind of ease and surrender, but you can’t get there until you get there. After my ballet training had become part of my very bones, the debate ended and a gentle flow took its place. I no longer had to drown out the inner struggle because there was no struggle. My stamina improved and I embraced my training with no punishing debates or pressure.
Now, after years of practicing my craft, writing each morning doesn't take urging. I get up, have some coffee, scan the bad news in the newspaper and sit down to write. No debates or excuses. That is the definition of consistency – doing what you set out to do every day like it’s second nature.
It takes practice, practice, and more practice. If you want to excel at basketball, you shoot thousands of hoops. If you want to improve your golf game, you practice putting and you drive endless baskets of balls. When I was working with basketball champion, Magic Johnson, he said, “I couldn't dribble with my left hand when I was young. I knew that put me at a disadvantage so I dribbled a basketball with my left hand every day when I walked to and from school. I ended up being able to use either hand equally.”
Writing takes the same kind of determination but you have to pace yourself and be realistic. Don’t ask too much or too little of yourself. You know who you are and you know what you can and cannot do. You know when to move forward and when to take a break. You know when you're on task and when you're making up excuses. You know when it’s time to stop and move on, which is different for everyone.
I once attended a writer’s conference where bestselling author, Tom Robbins, said that instead of editing a rough first draft, he writes a single parapraph and perfects it, no matter how long it takes. When he decides it's the best it can be, he continues without rereading or doing any more editing until he has a refined and finished draft in his hands.
That’s his way but it isn’t mine and it may not be yours. There is no set way to write and no set time that it “should” take to write a book. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Dr. Jeklyl and Mr. Hyde in six days. It took William Golding five years to finish Lord of the Flies. Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in six weeks and J. D. Salinger worked on Catcher in the Rye for ten years.
No two people write at the same pace. I have a friend who writes her books over three weeks of long days and sleepless nights. For me, writing like that is an exercise in futility. I sit down in the morning, I write for about four hours and then I do the rest of my life. In this way, I avoid burnout since I write every day and intend to continue doing so. Everyone has to look inside and find their own way.
I once worked with a celebrated diva who had three months to write her highly anticipated memoir. It was an alarmingly short period of time but her publisher wanted the book to come out in tandem with her thirty-year anniversary in music. When she hired me, I went to the computer every day and wrote as quickly and professionally as I could. I submitted the finished book two weeks late, but nobody cared since the deadline had been tighter than the whalebone girdle my mother used to hitch up over her fat globules each morning. Having the stamina to go at it every day, focused and determined, was what it took and I conditioned myself to be able to pull it off.
As hard as it is, building stamina is like giving yourself a gift. Novelist Leon Uris says that in order to become a decent writer, you will have to learn to close off the loves and hates that can overwhelm you and wilt your tenacity. He suggests you build enough stamina to be with your writing 100%. “That’s the bloody price,” he says.
If you can overlook the thoughts that are interfering with your writing, if you can place your full attention on your work and keep coming back, you’ll build the stamina it takes to write a book over an extended period of time. If you’re solid and focused, you’ll be surprised at how good it feels to finish one chapter and start the next one. And the one after that.