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Years ago, when I was writing my first book with two young children at home, my writing time was fixed. I took my daughter to school, put my son down for a nap, wrote for two hours, then got my son out of his crib and picked up my daughter from school. My writing had fixed time boundaries.

Some years later, I did NaNoWriMo, which required me to write 50,000 words in November; I wrote around 2,300 words each day (some of it, admittedly, absolute dreck). I know authors who, for various reasons, set fixed goals (or limits) on their writing: one writes from 8-11 every morning; one aims for 3,000 words each day when drafting a book. What is important, of course, is that writers work in a way that suits them.

My approach has changed over the years. A set word count didn’t work all that well for me; I found myself increasingly detached from my characters’ feelings and experiences the more I focused on the word count. (Besides, I found myself resisting taking words out — and we all know that pruning the superfluous is nearly as important as writing the necessary!) Setting a fixed time felt different. At first, I liked the knowledge that I would sit down for a set time each day. The daily practice helped me to feel I was serious, committed, and doing something that would someday go somewhere. (That’s a lot of “some,” isn’t it?) But the more I came to think of myself as a writer, and the more I witnessed myself being committed to the practice, the less the fixed structure mattered. Now my writing is like water, flowing around other things — hiking, meeting a friend for lunch, running errands. I usually write every day for a few hours, especially when I’m developing that first draft or in revisions — but after years of writing, I have faith that even if I take two or three days off, I will eventually get back to my desk and put my fingers back on the keyboard. A good writing day is one where I lose myself in the manuscript for some period of time. 

For the writers out there — how do you work? What counts as a “good” writing day?

I’m revising my new book. I’ve sent the first (rough) draft out to some beta readers, and I’ve received excellent feedback in return. I’m tremendously grateful to these five generous women — all of whom I shall thank profusely in my acknowledgments — and as I read their suggestions, I think, Yes, absolutely, that will make it stronger! That will raise the stakes, clarify the character, tighten the scene.

But as I go to implement the changes, overwriting my previous version, the manuscript feels tangled and muddled and awful. As I revise, I feel like a kid with an Etch-a-Sketch that’s old, so the previous drawing doesn’t quite erase all the way. (Remember the Etch-a-Sketch?) As much as I want to let go of the story in my head so I can put in the new version, it’s hard because I am simultaneously erasing and creating.

This is the Ugly Phase, when I begin to doubt the book and my abilities as a writer — because the book keeps getting worse (chopping up chapters and moving things around, pulling out scenes that took me days to write because they no longer work, rewriting a subplot, thus making another subplot irrelevant). But it must get worse before it gets better. 

Even though I’ve written half a dozen books, I sort of forgot that this is always part of the process — until I started moaning (by text) to a writer friend and she replied that she was in a similar phase with her new book: “The whole thing began to feel unwieldy as I started to graft new stuff on to the old. I am trusting time will help me see it clearly. You’ll get there. The book’s in better shape than you think.”  

For those of you who are in this murky place with the two of us, remember: the Ugly Phase doesn’t last. Keep going.