A lesson to be learned right at the outset of the novel writing process was that of good writing habits. For the majority of my life as a novice writer my process involved long stretches of not writing, of “waiting for the right time.” Then, on a long and empty afternoon, I would binge several thousand words. That’s how I wrote the first two chapters of this novel early last year. I would wait until I had series of uninterrupted hours and vomit up about 5,000 words. Needless to say, after a day like that I didn’t feel like writing for about a week. I fell into the habit of writing on Monday afternoons, as at the time I had Mondays off. The problem was that I never wrote a word for the rest of the week.

When I returned to the project in January, my intent was to use my weekends to write as much as possible, then take it easy during the work week. When one works forty hours a week, this seems logical. I quickly learned its fallacy. Long hours spent in front of the computer train your body that writing is an enormous and involved undertaking; and while this is true to a certain extent, your body learns to feel exhausted even thinking about the task. Soon your body reaches the point where sitting down in front of the computer or typewriter or notebook fills it with so much dread that writing feels impossible. You learn to fear writing. You get burnt out.

The Terror Below

I’m not known for my common sense, so it surprises me that I figured this out very early on. After a while I came to realize that writing is very much like repeatedly jumping off the high dive: when you stand looking down at the water you’re almost paralyzed with fear, but after the plunge you keep asking yourself why you were so afraid. I noticed that no matter how afraid I was of sitting down at my desk after dinner on a weeknight or on a sunny weekend afternoon, I felt incredible relief after writing even 500 words. The important thing is to remember that relief and use it as a goal for which to strive. There’s even a kind of endorphin rush that comes with it.

I still experience a slight anxiety when I sit down to write. I’m thinking that it’s just unavoidable. The majority of my fear now, though, surrounds the possibility of missing a day—of not writing for a day. I find that returning to the novel after even one day of absence is much, much harder. Your body—even after that short time—starts to forget the habit. This is how I’ve come to appreciate the standard bit of writing advice: Write every day. It’s another cardinal rule that I resisted for years. All this revelation lately makes me wish I wasn’t so inherently stubborn.