When I wake up in the morning, I make myself a mug of tea and get to writing. If it’s a day off, I write from about 7:30 to 9, make myself a second mug of tea, and keep going. I’m currently on mug number two, and just remembered at 10:24am that I should probably eat breakfast. On most days, I run out of creative energy and focus by noon. But if it’s a really good day, I’m still going strong enough to make mug number three. 

I’ve worked out my writing system over more than a few years of experience; three-act outlines, sticking to a routine, and letting the outlines and first draft be messy. This is what works for me, my personality, and my tendencies. A certain amount of structure to keep myself productive, and enough understanding and freedom to let my creativity breathe. 

I like three-act story structures because they make the most sense to my brain: beginning, middle, end. What the problem is, the road to fixing it, and fixing it. I outline my books, my plots, and my characters’ personal arcs in three acts. My stories are more character-driven than plot-driven, so having individual outlines of the changes my characters go through helps me keep track of what’s going on. 

Right now, I’m outlining the the last book in my Lionheart trilogy. This is the second draft, so I’m integrating all the changes that I made mid-book in the first draft and fixing the problems that I found after it was all done. I’m currently at the point where I feel like I’ve got six balls of yarn tangled up together, and I have to spread them all over the room in a huge mess before I can even begin to straighten things out. My outlines begin as very neat, one-sentence, three-act summaries for each of the plotlines, and then they explode into this yarny mess while I figure out how those neat little summaries look played out. And how they intersect with each other. And when they should be happening, and when I should cut to another plot, and if my characters are even doing what they should be doing in the first place. After I’ve spent a while sorting out the huge mess, the outline is perfect and lovely. (Until I start writing, then I find the other fifty problems that I missed.) 

In act two of book three I’ve got six plot threads, all of them intersecting and affecting the others. Things are heating up before the third act, the last major pieces of character development are getting into gear, and things are being set up for the final confrontation. Plot threads that were set up in book one are playing out and backstories are being faced and dealt with. It’s satisfying to finally be completing these plots, but there’s a lot to do. After doing all this untangling in act two, ideally act three will be smooth sailing. 

Messy outlining lets my brain and all of its ideas sprawl out on the page, and three-act plots are good containers to fit it into. But if I don’t actually write it, I’m not getting anything done. I learned a long time ago that if I write when I feel like it, I don’t finish anything. There’s something to be said for letting your creative juices flow when they will, but eventually you have to buckle down and get it done. 

This is the first year in a while that I haven’t done NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, where you try to write a 50,000 word book in the month of November) but I have been writing regularly, every morning (or at least 6/7 days a week) for the last year. NaNoWriMo always ends up burning me out with its 1500-words-a-day pace, so I’ve set up my own expectations. When I’m outlining, my minimum goal is an hour of writing a day, and on days when I’m not working, I usually get in at least two. When I’m actually writing I have a minimum goal of 800 words. That’s definitely undershooting, but I’ve learned that a high goal (like 1500) while attainable, stresses me out. I know I can reach 800 words every day, whether I feel like writing or not. And that lack of stress usually loosens me up enough to write 900 or 1200 or 3000. Learning to be a little easier on myself, understanding how I best function, has made me way more productive. 

The other way I keep myself productive is by letting my work be less than perfect. Anyone can probably relate to wanting their first try to be exactly what they imagined. But no matter how much time I spend perfecting, my first draft is always going to need to be better. There will always be plot ideas I come up with in the middle of the last book, friends are always going to give me an incredible idea for backstory that I have to rewrite the whole story to work in, the pacing is always going to be weird. It’s the first time I’m telling the story, it’s not going to be amazing. Understanding that has let me slog through finishing the first draft and the messy parts of the outline, knowing that it’s not perfect yet, but the present imperfection is necessary. I’m still learning how to tell this story, I’ll get there eventually. 

That’s a lesson that’s been pretty useful in life, too. As a fairly anxious person, I tend to wait to do things until I feel ready for them, or like I can do them perfectly. But that usually means I never do them at all. (See: thinking about starting a blog for five years…) Now, I’m learning to go for things when I want to do them or have to do them, and I’ll learn how to do it along the way. It’s a lot better than never starting anything because it might not be perfect. 

Carrie Fisher said it pretty well: “Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”