March 13, 2024 • 32 mins
No matter how much coffee I drink, I’m never able to write as quickly as I want to. This week, we’re taking a look at what it means to be a "slow writer" — and all of the baggage that comes along with it.
Thank you for listening! For show notes and a full transcript of this episode, please visit: https://www.sarahwerner.com/
To support the work I do here at the Write Now podcast, become a patron on Patreon at https://patreon.com/sarahrheawerner, or send me a tip on Ko-Fi at https://ko-fi.com/sarahwerner.
Happy writing!
— Sarah
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This is the Write Now Podcastwith Sarah Werner, episode 158:
Being A Slow Writer.
welcome to Write Now, the podcast thathelps all writers — aspiring, professional,
and otherwise — to find the time, energy,
and courage you need to pursue yourpassion and write. I'm your host,
(00:22):
Sarah Werner,
and today I want to talk aboutsomething with which I have been
struggling, and thatis being a slow writer.
I think this starts from anexpectation of myself and
also expectations from other people. Now,
those expectations ofmyself I set for myself.
(00:46):
So growing up, wheneverI had a task to do,
sure, I would procrastinate a little bit,
but I was always able toget the task done on time,
and even if I startedit at the last minute,
I would have an adrenaline rush thatwould push me through to the end.
I don't know if I've toldthis story here before,
(01:07):
but my senior thesis in college,
I'd been reading about it andtaking a few notes here and there,
but I didn't actually start outliningand writing it until the night before it
was due,
and I pulled an all-nighter on thishuge rush of caffeine and adrenaline
and turned it in and it won some kind of
(01:29):
award. It was this whole THING,
and in my experiencethat proved to me that:
A.) I could write quickly whenI wanted or needed to, and
B.) I would write better if I wrote faster.
This followed me all the way throughhigh school, through college,
through the workplace. Ihate to admit this here,
(01:51):
but I've had jobs beforethat weren't horribly
demanding, and often I could —if it was like a data entry job —
I would wrap up my day's workin the first hour or two,
and then have a lot oftime during which to...
insert activity here,
whether that was stockingshelves or organizing the
(02:15):
marketing merch room ofwhere I worked or thinking
about my novel, taking notesfor my novel, et cetera.
But all of that changed whenI worked on creative projects.
There was a marked difference— a markED difference,
if you want to put an emphasis on that —
(02:37):
there was a difference in not only thespeed with which I could do the work,
but the way that I experiencedtime passing as I did the
work.
And so I've always been writing and Ifeel like if you're listening to this
podcast,
you've always at least been interestedin writing, and maybe tried it a little
bit yourself when you were younger.And if you're anything like me,
(03:01):
you would start up creativeprojects and get lost in it,
and time would cease to exist.
There was no ticking of the clock.
It was just me, in the zone, creating.
I still get that every once in a whilewhen I'm allowed to work uninterrupted on
a creative project.
(03:21):
I don't experience that with work-work.
I don't experience that with data entryor coming up with marketing campaigns.
I only ever experienced that —
I called it a "flow state" — whenI was working on something
creative and challenging thatI was truly passionate about.
(03:43):
At first,
it didn't matter if you're a five-year-oldkid making your own picture book,
there's no pressure to get it donewithin a certain number of days.
You just finish up your homework andthen start in on the project you've been
dreaming about all day,
and then you get called for dinnerand you squirm through dinner
until you can go work on yourproject again. This was true, too,
(04:07):
later through school —
I'd always have to get my homework donefirst and then I could work on my own
projects as a treat. And on Saturdays...
those were the best because no school(at least, here in the United States,
no school on Saturdays),
and I could sit down and justimmerse myself completely with
(04:27):
no sense of time going by.
So I didn't know I was a slowcreative writer until a lot later,
when the creative writing projects I wasworking on started to have deadlines.
I'm not talking about a matterof minutes or even days.
So for an example, I firststarted Girl In Space,
(04:49):
which is my fictional audio drama(which you can listen to if you want;
I'll have a link for it in theshow notes for today's episode).
I started Girl In Space backin 2017, and when I started it,
I just created the first episode.
I was going to just make a 30-minutepilot, experimentally record it,
(05:10):
release it, and just see what happened,see if I liked that kind of storytelling,
see what it felt like to dosound design, all of that stuff.
And I put hundreds of hoursinto that first episode.
It may not sound like it,
but I was kind of learning as I went,and I was learning about Foley and I was
learning about voice acting,
(05:31):
and I was learning about the equipmentand what story structure looks like on an
episodic basis, not a novel basislike I had been doing before.
When I finally finished recordingthat episode, I was like, okay —
that took me hundreds of hours,
but that's just because I didn't knowwhat I was doing. The next episode,
it'll be a lot faster.I was very sure of this.
(05:54):
And so I published the first episodeof Girl In Space again back in
2017,
and kind of billed it as a biweekly show, by
which I meant, oh, it'llcome out every two weeks.
A lot of the podcasts that Ienjoyed listening to at the time,
the Black Tapes and Tanis and some others,kind of released on the same model,
(06:17):
and so I was like,well, if they can do it...
The problem was that I hadn't writtenthe entire series script ahead of
time.
I was seriously writing an episodeand then recording it and then
editing it and then doing sound designand then producing it and then releasing
it and marketing it before I evenstarted writing the next episode.
(06:40):
If you go through Girl In Space, ifyou look through the release schedule,
you'll see that at the very beginning,
the episodes kind ofcome out, quote, "on time",
but then you get to episodes11 and 12 and then the season
finale, and there's along, long time in there.
(07:01):
And the length of the episodes changedjust a little bit — from maybe 20 minutes
to 30 or 40 minutes — but thewhole time while I was writing,
I hated it suddenly for the first time,
now that there was publicexpectation for this show.
I hated how slow it was going. Ihated how long it was taking. See,
(07:21):
I had built up this expectation of,oh, well, if this is due the next day,
I can — just like mysenior thesis in college —
I can just do it the night before andit'll even be better because I'll have
done it under pressure with lotsof adrenaline. For some reason —
I don't know if this is true for you,
so let me know on the comments whatyour experience has been — but for me,
(07:43):
I can't rush my creative work,
which I know on thesurface sounds indulgent.
Maybe it's more that I don'twant to rush my creative work,
but we'll get to that in just a second.
As my releases for episodes ofGirl In Space got farther and
farther apart, I began to feela number of different things,
(08:07):
and I feel them even morenow as I write season two.
It has officially been... oh mygosh, seven or eight years now —
I can't even fathom that — since Ireleased the first episode of Girl In
Space, and people have been waitingpatiently (and not-so-patiently)
for season two. And I'm still writing it.
(08:29):
I'm aware of how long it takes, andI'm aware of how that makes me feel,
and I'm aware of how it makesme come across as a creator.
I'm especially aware when Iget (probably) very well-meaning
but demanding comments andemails and one-star reviews
that say, "Where's season two?" "You promisedseason two; why did this show die?"
(08:53):
And over the years, I've learnedhow to deal with criticism,
and so it doesn't really hurtanymore when I get someone who's
upset with me for notreleasing season two yet,
but I still feel shame —shame that I'm not faster,
especially when I look at othercreators who it appears to me are just
(09:14):
churning out novel afternovel or podcast episode after
podcast episode or film after film.
It's so easy to look at everyoneelse around you as an aggregate
individual and be like, "They'rereleasing a new podcast every day.
What is wrong with me?" So yeah.
(09:35):
So I feel shame in being a slow writer.
I feel like I lack somethingthat other writers have.
I feel like maybe I'm lesser or I'mnot good enough. I can't cut it.
I feel like I am perceived as being lazy,
and that really hits home for me.
That's a huge fear of mine — isthat people will think I'm lazy.
(10:00):
I can tell you, I amnot lazy. I work a lot,
but a lot of the work that I doisn't something that people see,
necessarily,
and so I'm afraid that I come offlooking lazy, and that generates more
shame in me,
and at the very end of all of this,
(10:20):
there's a deep sense of self-loathing or
self-hatred, and I wantto be honest about that.
I do try to be positive and encouragingon this show, but realistically,
when I feel like I'mbehind on a project or
when I feel like I'm not writingfast enough or well enough,
(10:41):
I begin to really dislikemyself. When that happens,
I've learned over theyears to talk to a friend.
I talk to my husband and partner,Tim. I talk with my siblings.
I talk with other writer friends,
and that helps because Ithink, deep in our guts,
we all experience the sameinsecurities and fears as writers.
(11:04):
I think we're all a little bit afraidthat people think we're not enough,
we're lazy, we are lacking in talent,
but we know — well, hopefullywe know — that we're not,
and if we don't know that we're not,
hopefully we have loving andtrustworthy guides along the way,
who'll get us back onto the pathof being okay with ourselves.
(11:28):
So why am I a slow writer? Ican tell you that with projects,
school projects, work projects, anything
I'm getting paid for, anythingthat's not a passion project,
I am a little bit of a procrastinator.
I'll put things off and then I'll getit all done in a rush of adrenaline.
And like I said earlier,
it will often be better than if I hadstretched it out over a certain period of
(11:53):
time. I'm also really bad attime management. It was funny —
I was going back through old episodesof the Write Now podcast just to get a
feel for what I've talked about before,
and I have episodes on timemanagement and priorities,
and I'm like,
"How dare I talk about these thingswhen I can't do them myself?"
(12:14):
The one thing that has worked for me,priority- and routine-wise, has been
habits. That removes the frictionof having to push myself into
doing anything. So everymorning I have my routine —
and I've been doing this for severalyears at this point now, without fail —
I wake up, I make a cup ofcoffee, I feed the cats,
(12:35):
and I sit down to write. When I sitdown to write, I do bullet journaling.
Every once in a while, if I feel like Ihave something in my brain that needs to
come out, I'll do some morningpages, but I'll write for about 10,
15 minutes in my journal and then I'llturn to my project and I will work on
that until lunch everyday, seven days a week.
(12:57):
I'm not saying that this is theright way or the only way to do this.
I want to make that very clear. I grew up...
I don't even know if I want to say Igrew up, but during my writing education —
which arguably started when I was a child —
but during my writingeducation later on in life,
when I got serious about studying thecraft and understanding the process,
(13:20):
I read books like On Writingby Stephen King that said,
in order to be a, quote, "real writer",you have to write every day.
That's not why I do this. I dothis because if I miss a day,
it breaks the habit, and Iknow that if I miss a day,
I feel terrible about myself.
It's like if you need to go for a dailywalk and you skip a day and your legs
(13:44):
and your back just hurt —
it's like that with me and writing formy brain. Because I think that a question
needs to be asked about — if I'mgood at creating projects for
other people, for jobs, forschool, et cetera, quickly —
why am I such a slow writer whenit comes to creative projects for
(14:04):
myself? What is going on there?
Why am I a slow writer?
I didn't know the answer tothis until about a year ago.
I've ghostwritten books before invery short amounts of time, and again,
those are projects for other people,and they were easy — well, not easy;
they were still very challenging —
but I didn't struggle inself-loathing with them as I do with
(14:29):
my own creative projects.
And I think to understand why I writeslowly for my own creative projects,
I had to go back and ask myself,why do I write? Why do I write?
Why do YOU write?
I really want you to thinkabout that because for me,
it turned out the motivation and theunderlying reason had a lot to do with
(14:52):
it.
When I was doing schoolwork orprojects for college or work or
whatever, I knew that I wasaccountable to somebody.
I knew I had to turn in this paperto this professor by this date,
and I wasn't obsessed with it because —all right, here's confession time —
I wasn't obsessed with it because Iwas worried I would get a bad grade,
(15:15):
but because I was a people-pleaser and I didn't want to let
anyone down. And thatworked for me for years.
I got A's on tests, I wonawards, clients were happy,
I did good work and I got paid,which was nice. (Not for the grades.)
I got paid for my work... usually.
(15:35):
So what kept me working quickly wasknowing that I had a deadline and that
somebody would notice and think lessof me if I didn't turn in this project,
this assignment, by the deadline, Iwas that much of a people-pleaser.
I don't know why I say I "was" that muchof a people-pleaser because I still am
that much of a people-pleaser.So with my own creative projects,
(15:58):
I wasn't caught up in people-pleasing or hitting deadlines.
I was caught up in something else,
and this is the answer tothe question why I write.
And that is because for me,writing is how I process life.
Like the example I used earlierwith going for a walk every day,
(16:18):
if I don't write every day,I start to feel terrible.
There were weeks and months,
maybe even years in my twenties(and maybe my early thirties)
when I wouldn't write for long periodsof time, and I would get depressed and
sick, and — I know this sounds, whatever,
(16:39):
a little hokey, and it wasprobably psychosomatic —
but I feel better. I feelhealthier when I am writing.
The world doesn't feelreal until I am writing.
I take notes in class because writingthings down helps me think and process.
It makes the information I'm learning real.
People used to look at me takingnotes in class and then later in the
(17:02):
workforce during meetings and be like,"Wow, those are some detailed notes!"
And I was embarrassed to tell them, well,
this is the only way I can understandwhat's happening — is if I write it.
So writing for myself was verydifferent from writing for other
people.
Writing for myself was a way tounderstand and process the world.
(17:25):
It was essentially how I lived,
even though both acts,
writing for someone else and writingcreative projects for myself, involve
putting letters onto paperor a screen, forming words and
sentences and clauses. They'revery — at least for me — very,
very different.
(17:46):
I had a chance to experimentwith writing quickly or
being pushed to write quickly throughseveral projects over the last few
years, and these are creative projects.
I used to build websites for people andghostwrite books and do all sorts of
things, but two years ago,
I decided that I was going tojust embrace the poverty lifestyle
(18:09):
and just write full time, get myprojects out, and see where that took me.
And I had some interestin a Girl In Space novel,
so I put season two ofGirl In Space on hold.
I think at that time I was upto episode seven of season two,
and I was writing, chugging along,
and I paused that so that I couldwork on getting this novel out.
(18:34):
Writing that novel and knowing that myagents and the editor wanted to see it
by a certain date — they wanted to seethis much by a certain date. It was...
I don't know how to put this.
I don't want to say it wasa nightmare, because it just
wasn't fulfilling, thewriting that came out.
(18:54):
And I even had Tim read draftsand he's like, this is not you.
This does not sound like you. Hesaid, this is really not good.
And I was like, I was hoping you wouldsay it's passable, but in my heart,
I knew it was not good. It was not good.
I sent the first four chaptersoff to my agent and the
(19:16):
editor last year, and I gotback a "revise and resubmit",
which actually is verykind and generous of them.
And the editor said,the pacing's all weird;
it doesn't feel like the podcast; I don'tknow what's going on with the tension.
But she's very generous, and she said,
just rewrite this and then we'lltalk some more. And I was like,
(19:41):
okay, thank you. Oh my gosh, okay,sorry. And I felt like crap about it.
But in the grand scheme of things,getting a revise and resubmit is an honor.
If an editor takes the time to say, "Hey,
I received this and I liked parts of it,
and here are some notes and some thingsI'd like you to fix," that's a big deal,
and I don't want you to think I'm notgrateful for that because I'm very
(20:03):
grateful. But it reallybothered me that it wasn't good.
During that time whileI was writing the novel,
which... I think I got about137,000 words in at that
time,
I was writing on what I called a NaNoWriMo
schedule. I think most of you atthis point are familiar with NaNoWriMo
(20:26):
It stands for NationalNovel Writing Month,
which takes place every November,during which people write about
1,500 words a day in order to write a full
50,000 word novella or small novelwithin the 30 days of November.
And I found that while I waspushing a productive pace,
(20:47):
my writing wasn't good. I think mygoal for each day was 1,700 words.
I think that's what it came out to.
So when I was writing my1,000 - 1,700 words every day,
something changed. And I wasn'twriting to exist anymore.
I wasn't writing to live. Iwas writing for a deadline.
I was writing fast,
(21:07):
and you could tell. I learned a lotfrom that experience about myself,
about writing, about the publishingindustry, about story structure.
I learned a lot in writing that novel.
I also got into a kindof a bad place, mentally.
I talked earlier aboutbeing a slow writer,
(21:28):
bringing on feelings of shame and lack and
self-loathing — yeah, Ideal with that every day.
My heart races with anxietyas I think, "I'm so slow,
I will never get this done." Logically,
I know that makes no sense; thatsmall steps can add up to a long
(21:49):
journey. I know that,intellectually, but in my heart,
there's just this heaviness and thisdespair that I'm not good enough.
I'm not fast enough. I'm not asfast as everyone else. I'm lacking.
Sometimes I am more okaywith it than other times,
and one of the things that I'm tryingto work on this year is acceptance.
(22:13):
Acceptance of who I am and what it
means to be a writer andwhat it means to live a
writing life.
There are a lot of things that, overthe years, I thought were wrong with me,
that I took on and adopted habits and
(22:33):
systems to overcome,
but I think a lot of thatcomes from a toxic place of
productivity,
an inhuman expectation forwhat it means to produce
one's life work.
I'm not under any delusions that I'msome kind of grand master artist.
I'm fine with that. I lovewriting for fun genre stuff.
(22:56):
I love writing family-friendly adventures.
I have no delusions that I am a"great American writer" and I don't
necessarily want that.
I've done a lot of thinking and a lotof journaling and a lot of research,
and I've begun to think...what if I'm not terrible?
What if I'm not awful? Whatif I'm not the problem?
(23:18):
What if the problem is a societythat expects an author to churn
out three new books in ayear so that they make money?
What if the problem was that Ijust didn't do a good job setting
expectations with my audience for howlong it was going to take, realistically,
for me to produce a secondseason of Girl in Space? Because I
(23:40):
totally own that.
I got real excited and people-please-ywhen announced that I was making season
two, and I was like, yep, it'sgoing to come out in June, 2022...
which is now two years ago, andI'm still not done writing it.
What if it's not my creativeprocess that's the problem?
I'm the happiest and healthiestin my writing as I have ever been
(24:04):
when I allow myself to go slow,
when I allow myself to live intothe words and live onto the page,
when I'm not desperately tryingto clock in 1,700 words a day.
I have to remind myself (24:17):
what if being a slow writer isn't a flaw?
What if it's not some kind oflack that I need to overcome?
What if it's not a problem to fix?
What if it's not somekind of moral failing?
What if I can still be a goodperson and a good writer and also a
(24:39):
slow writer? I realize thereare real life ramifications,
but there are things thatI care less about. Sure,
I could make more money if Iproduced creative projects faster,
but that's not why I am doing this. Youmay have noticed everything I create,
I release for free, without ads.I'm not doing this for money.
(25:01):
Money is nice,
when I want to buy a coffee or something,
but I would rather sit herein my stained sweatpants at
my secondhand desk writing somethingthat feels good to write than
receiving royalty checks and pumping outthings that I didn't actually believe
in. Now,
(25:22):
this is not a slight against writerswho need to hustle for a living.
I want to make that veryclear. As I've gotten older,
I've realized there is noone correct way to write.
There is no one correct reason to write.
Different people writefor different reasons.
Some people outline, some peoplepants the whole project.
(25:46):
And if there is a rightand wrong way to do things,
I am certainly not the judge of that.
I don't want to be the judge of that.
I just want to write in a waythat feels good to me, in a way
that doesn't leave me burned outand exhausted and hating myself.
I have to remind myself that I havemade the choice to accept that I am a
(26:10):
slow writer because for me,
quality is more importantthan quantity. For me,
good does not necessarily mean fast.
And when I try to rush a project,when I try to write fast,
I end up further behind. Iend up having to rewrite.
I end up hating theproject and scrapping it.
(26:31):
I think I'm at a place where myoptions are to write slow and steady,
to write fast and terrible,or to not write at all.
And I know which one of those is inline with how I want to live my life.
Again, this is not somekind of moral imperative.
This is not necessarily moralizingon "slow and steady wins the race".
(26:54):
This is not, "If you write morethan X number of words a day,
you're going too fast." This is not that.
I know so many talented and accomplishedwriters who can churn out a book a
month. I'm very jealousof them. I'm very envious.
But I don't think less of them.
They are doing something that works forthem. They're supporting their family.
(27:18):
They're writing stories that theywant to write. I celebrate that.
But it's not something I can do withthe way that my brain works and with the
reason that I write.
I started recording thisepisode because I wanted to walk
through, even for myself,
what it meant to be a slowwriter, and to kind of probe the
(27:39):
edges of how I felt about that.
It does feel like a wound sometimes,
and I'm afraid that poking at it willmake it worse. But this has been,
at least for me,
a helpful exercise in understandingthat I write the way that I
need to write for thereasons that I write.
(28:00):
And so if you are a slow writer like me,
I hope that you also are able tofind a sense of acceptance and peace
with your process. Now, if youwant to learn how to write faster,
go for it.
If that is something that bothers youand something that you want to fix,
I encourage you to do what is right foryou and your process and where you are
(28:21):
in your writing journey right now.I've just realized that for me,
after decades of trying topush, trying to write faster,
trying to produce more,it's not good for me.
It doesn't scratch the writing itch.
It doesn't imbue my life withthe meaning that I need it to.
It's not in line with why I write.
(28:42):
I would love to hearin the comments below:
how do you see yourself as awriter? Are you a slow writer?
Are you a fast writer?
How do you see yourself, andoutside even of terms of speed,
how do you see yourself as a writer, andhow does that vision and definition of
yourself as a writer work alongsidethe reasons that you write?
(29:06):
When I go back to thereasons that I write,
I realize that in orderto fulfill those reasons,
I need to take my time and Ineed to go at my own pace. And
realizing that, and working on acceptingthat, hopefully, will help diminish the
shame and feelings of not-enough-ness and self-loathing
that crop up when I get comparative.I can't rush my life's work,
(29:29):
and I need to learn how to accept that.
One of the reasons I am able to createthis show for you and provide it for free
and free of ads is the generous.
Support of people on Patreon.
I'm sure you've heard it amillion times at this point,
but Patreon is a securethird party donation platform that allows you to donate
(29:50):
a dollar per episode, $2 per episode,
whatever works for you to helpdefray the costs of recording and
producing this show, hosting andequipment, and all of that stuff.
I would like to give specialthanks to Laurie, Regina Calabrese,
Amber Fratesi, CharmaineFerreira, Dennis Martin,
(30:12):
Mike Tefft, Poppy Brown, Summer,
Tiffany Joyner, and Whitney McGruder.
Thank you all so much for yourgenerous support of this show.
I am extremely grateful. Thank you.
If you would like to become apatron of the Write Now Podcast,
you can do so by following the linkin the show notes for today's episode,
(30:36):
which I believe is episode 158.
Or if you don't like Patreon orif you want to do something else,
there are also links to PayPaland Kofi (or "Coffee" or however you
pronounce it) in the show notesfor this episode as well. Again,
I would love to hear your thoughtsand your experience and how you
identify yourself as a writer. Ifyou're a slow writer, a fast writer,
(31:00):
or something else entirely,
let me know again in the commentsfor this episode on my website,
which is out at sarahwerner.com. That's
S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R dot com.
Or if you're listening to this showon an app that allows comments,
let me know there. I wouldlove to hear from you,
(31:20):
and with that, this has been episode158 of the Write Now podcast,
the podcast that helps all writers —aspiring, professional, fast,
slow, and otherwise — tofind the time, energy,
and courage you need topursue your passion and write.
I'm Sarah Werner, andI'm cheering for you.
This is the Write Now Podcastwith Sarah Werner, episode 158:
Being A Slow Writer.
welcome to Write Now, the podcast thathelps all writers — aspiring, professional,
and otherwise — to find the time, energy,
and courage you need to pursue yourpassion and write. I'm your host,
(00:22):
Sarah Werner,
and today I want to talk aboutsomething with which I have been
struggling, and thatis being a slow writer.
I think this starts from anexpectation of myself and
also expectations from other people. Now,
those expectations ofmyself I set for myself.
(00:46):
So growing up, wheneverI had a task to do,
sure, I would procrastinate a little bit,
but I was always able toget the task done on time,
and even if I startedit at the last minute,
I would have an adrenaline rush thatwould push me through to the end.
I don't know if I've toldthis story here before,
(01:07):
but my senior thesis in college,
I'd been reading about it andtaking a few notes here and there,
but I didn't actually start outliningand writing it until the night before it
was due,
and I pulled an all-nighter on thishuge rush of caffeine and adrenaline
and turned it in and it won some kind of
(01:29):
award. It was this whole THING,
and in my experiencethat proved to me that:
A.) I could write quickly whenI wanted or needed to, and
B.) I would write better if I wrote faster.
This followed me all the way throughhigh school, through college,
through the workplace. Ihate to admit this here,
(01:51):
but I've had jobs beforethat weren't horribly
demanding, and often I could —if it was like a data entry job —
I would wrap up my day's workin the first hour or two,
and then have a lot oftime during which to...
insert activity here,
whether that was stockingshelves or organizing the
(02:15):
marketing merch room ofwhere I worked or thinking
about my novel, taking notesfor my novel, et cetera.
But all of that changed whenI worked on creative projects.
There was a marked difference— a markED difference,
if you want to put an emphasis on that —
(02:37):
there was a difference in not only thespeed with which I could do the work,
but the way that I experiencedtime passing as I did the
work.
And so I've always been writing and Ifeel like if you're listening to this
podcast,
you've always at least been interestedin writing, and maybe tried it a little
bit yourself when you were younger.And if you're anything like me,
(03:01):
you would start up creativeprojects and get lost in it,
and time would cease to exist.
There was no ticking of the clock.
It was just me, in the zone, creating.
I still get that every once in a whilewhen I'm allowed to work uninterrupted on
a creative project.
(03:21):
I don't experience that with work-work.
I don't experience that with data entryor coming up with marketing campaigns.
I only ever experienced that —
I called it a "flow state" — whenI was working on something
creative and challenging thatI was truly passionate about.
(03:43):
At first,
it didn't matter if you're a five-year-oldkid making your own picture book,
there's no pressure to get it donewithin a certain number of days.
You just finish up your homework andthen start in on the project you've been
dreaming about all day,
and then you get called for dinnerand you squirm through dinner
until you can go work on yourproject again. This was true, too,
(04:07):
later through school —
I'd always have to get my homework donefirst and then I could work on my own
projects as a treat. And on Saturdays...
those were the best because no school(at least, here in the United States,
no school on Saturdays),
and I could sit down and justimmerse myself completely with
(04:27):
no sense of time going by.
So I didn't know I was a slowcreative writer until a lot later,
when the creative writing projects I wasworking on started to have deadlines.
I'm not talking about a matterof minutes or even days.
So for an example, I firststarted Girl In Space,
(04:49):
which is my fictional audio drama(which you can listen to if you want;
I'll have a link for it in theshow notes for today's episode).
I started Girl In Space backin 2017, and when I started it,
I just created the first episode.
I was going to just make a 30-minutepilot, experimentally record it,
(05:10):
release it, and just see what happened,see if I liked that kind of storytelling,
see what it felt like to dosound design, all of that stuff.
And I put hundreds of hoursinto that first episode.
It may not sound like it,
but I was kind of learning as I went,and I was learning about Foley and I was
learning about voice acting,
(05:31):
and I was learning about the equipmentand what story structure looks like on an
episodic basis, not a novel basislike I had been doing before.
When I finally finished recordingthat episode, I was like, okay —
that took me hundreds of hours,
but that's just because I didn't knowwhat I was doing. The next episode,
it'll be a lot faster.I was very sure of this.
(05:54):
And so I published the first episodeof Girl In Space again back in
2017,
and kind of billed it as a biweekly show, by
which I meant, oh, it'llcome out every two weeks.
A lot of the podcasts that Ienjoyed listening to at the time,
the Black Tapes and Tanis and some others,kind of released on the same model,
(06:17):
and so I was like,well, if they can do it...
The problem was that I hadn't writtenthe entire series script ahead of
time.
I was seriously writing an episodeand then recording it and then
editing it and then doing sound designand then producing it and then releasing
it and marketing it before I evenstarted writing the next episode.
(06:40):
If you go through Girl In Space, ifyou look through the release schedule,
you'll see that at the very beginning,
the episodes kind ofcome out, quote, "on time",
but then you get to episodes11 and 12 and then the season
finale, and there's along, long time in there.
(07:01):
And the length of the episodes changedjust a little bit — from maybe 20 minutes
to 30 or 40 minutes — but thewhole time while I was writing,
I hated it suddenly for the first time,
now that there was publicexpectation for this show.
I hated how slow it was going. Ihated how long it was taking. See,
(07:21):
I had built up this expectation of,oh, well, if this is due the next day,
I can — just like mysenior thesis in college —
I can just do it the night before andit'll even be better because I'll have
done it under pressure with lotsof adrenaline. For some reason —
I don't know if this is true for you,
so let me know on the comments whatyour experience has been — but for me,
(07:43):
I can't rush my creative work,
which I know on thesurface sounds indulgent.
Maybe it's more that I don'twant to rush my creative work,
but we'll get to that in just a second.
As my releases for episodes ofGirl In Space got farther and
farther apart, I began to feela number of different things,
(08:07):
and I feel them even morenow as I write season two.
It has officially been... oh mygosh, seven or eight years now —
I can't even fathom that — since Ireleased the first episode of Girl In
Space, and people have been waitingpatiently (and not-so-patiently)
for season two. And I'm still writing it.
(08:29):
I'm aware of how long it takes, andI'm aware of how that makes me feel,
and I'm aware of how it makesme come across as a creator.
I'm especially aware when Iget (probably) very well-meaning
but demanding comments andemails and one-star reviews
that say, "Where's season two?" "You promisedseason two; why did this show die?"
(08:53):
And over the years, I've learnedhow to deal with criticism,
and so it doesn't really hurtanymore when I get someone who's
upset with me for notreleasing season two yet,
but I still feel shame —shame that I'm not faster,
especially when I look at othercreators who it appears to me are just
(09:14):
churning out novel afternovel or podcast episode after
podcast episode or film after film.
It's so easy to look at everyoneelse around you as an aggregate
individual and be like, "They'rereleasing a new podcast every day.
What is wrong with me?" So yeah.
(09:35):
So I feel shame in being a slow writer.
I feel like I lack somethingthat other writers have.
I feel like maybe I'm lesser or I'mnot good enough. I can't cut it.
I feel like I am perceived as being lazy,
and that really hits home for me.
That's a huge fear of mine — isthat people will think I'm lazy.
(10:00):
I can tell you, I amnot lazy. I work a lot,
but a lot of the work that I doisn't something that people see,
necessarily,
and so I'm afraid that I come offlooking lazy, and that generates more
shame in me,
and at the very end of all of this,
(10:20):
there's a deep sense of self-loathing or
self-hatred, and I wantto be honest about that.
I do try to be positive and encouragingon this show, but realistically,
when I feel like I'mbehind on a project or
when I feel like I'm not writingfast enough or well enough,
(10:41):
I begin to really dislikemyself. When that happens,
I've learned over theyears to talk to a friend.
I talk to my husband and partner,Tim. I talk with my siblings.
I talk with other writer friends,
and that helps because Ithink, deep in our guts,
we all experience the sameinsecurities and fears as writers.
(11:04):
I think we're all a little bit afraidthat people think we're not enough,
we're lazy, we are lacking in talent,
but we know — well, hopefullywe know — that we're not,
and if we don't know that we're not,
hopefully we have loving andtrustworthy guides along the way,
who'll get us back onto the pathof being okay with ourselves.
(11:28):
So why am I a slow writer? Ican tell you that with projects,
school projects, work projects, anything
I'm getting paid for, anythingthat's not a passion project,
I am a little bit of a procrastinator.
I'll put things off and then I'll getit all done in a rush of adrenaline.
And like I said earlier,
it will often be better than if I hadstretched it out over a certain period of
(11:53):
time. I'm also really bad attime management. It was funny —
I was going back through old episodesof the Write Now podcast just to get a
feel for what I've talked about before,
and I have episodes on timemanagement and priorities,
and I'm like,
"How dare I talk about these thingswhen I can't do them myself?"
(12:14):
The one thing that has worked for me,priority- and routine-wise, has been
habits. That removes the frictionof having to push myself into
doing anything. So everymorning I have my routine —
and I've been doing this for severalyears at this point now, without fail —
I wake up, I make a cup ofcoffee, I feed the cats,
(12:35):
and I sit down to write. When I sitdown to write, I do bullet journaling.
Every once in a while, if I feel like Ihave something in my brain that needs to
come out, I'll do some morningpages, but I'll write for about 10,
15 minutes in my journal and then I'llturn to my project and I will work on
that until lunch everyday, seven days a week.
(12:57):
I'm not saying that this is theright way or the only way to do this.
I want to make that very clear. I grew up...
I don't even know if I want to say Igrew up, but during my writing education —
which arguably started when I was a child —
but during my writingeducation later on in life,
when I got serious about studying thecraft and understanding the process,
(13:20):
I read books like On Writingby Stephen King that said,
in order to be a, quote, "real writer",you have to write every day.
That's not why I do this. I dothis because if I miss a day,
it breaks the habit, and Iknow that if I miss a day,
I feel terrible about myself.
It's like if you need to go for a dailywalk and you skip a day and your legs
(13:44):
and your back just hurt —
it's like that with me and writing formy brain. Because I think that a question
needs to be asked about — if I'mgood at creating projects for
other people, for jobs, forschool, et cetera, quickly —
why am I such a slow writer whenit comes to creative projects for
(14:04):
myself? What is going on there?
Why am I a slow writer?
I didn't know the answer tothis until about a year ago.
I've ghostwritten books before invery short amounts of time, and again,
those are projects for other people,and they were easy — well, not easy;
they were still very challenging —
but I didn't struggle inself-loathing with them as I do with
(14:29):
my own creative projects.
And I think to understand why I writeslowly for my own creative projects,
I had to go back and ask myself,why do I write? Why do I write?
Why do YOU write?
I really want you to thinkabout that because for me,
it turned out the motivation and theunderlying reason had a lot to do with
(14:52):
it.
When I was doing schoolwork orprojects for college or work or
whatever, I knew that I wasaccountable to somebody.
I knew I had to turn in this paperto this professor by this date,
and I wasn't obsessed with it because —all right, here's confession time —
I wasn't obsessed with it because Iwas worried I would get a bad grade,
(15:15):
but because I was a people-pleaser and I didn't want to let
anyone down. And thatworked for me for years.
I got A's on tests, I wonawards, clients were happy,
I did good work and I got paid,which was nice. (Not for the grades.)
I got paid for my work... usually.
(15:35):
So what kept me working quickly wasknowing that I had a deadline and that
somebody would notice and think lessof me if I didn't turn in this project,
this assignment, by the deadline, Iwas that much of a people-pleaser.
I don't know why I say I "was" that muchof a people-pleaser because I still am
that much of a people-pleaser.So with my own creative projects,
(15:58):
I wasn't caught up in people-pleasing or hitting deadlines.
I was caught up in something else,
and this is the answer tothe question why I write.
And that is because for me,writing is how I process life.
Like the example I used earlierwith going for a walk every day,
(16:18):
if I don't write every day,I start to feel terrible.
There were weeks and months,
maybe even years in my twenties(and maybe my early thirties)
when I wouldn't write for long periodsof time, and I would get depressed and
sick, and — I know this sounds, whatever,
(16:39):
a little hokey, and it wasprobably psychosomatic —
but I feel better. I feelhealthier when I am writing.
The world doesn't feelreal until I am writing.
I take notes in class because writingthings down helps me think and process.
It makes the information I'm learning real.
People used to look at me takingnotes in class and then later in the
(17:02):
workforce during meetings and be like,"Wow, those are some detailed notes!"
And I was embarrassed to tell them, well,
this is the only way I can understandwhat's happening — is if I write it.
So writing for myself was verydifferent from writing for other
people.
Writing for myself was a way tounderstand and process the world.
(17:25):
It was essentially how I lived,
even though both acts,
writing for someone else and writingcreative projects for myself, involve
putting letters onto paperor a screen, forming words and
sentences and clauses. They'revery — at least for me — very,
very different.
(17:46):
I had a chance to experimentwith writing quickly or
being pushed to write quickly throughseveral projects over the last few
years, and these are creative projects.
I used to build websites for people andghostwrite books and do all sorts of
things, but two years ago,
I decided that I was going tojust embrace the poverty lifestyle
(18:09):
and just write full time, get myprojects out, and see where that took me.
And I had some interestin a Girl In Space novel,
so I put season two ofGirl In Space on hold.
I think at that time I was upto episode seven of season two,
and I was writing, chugging along,
and I paused that so that I couldwork on getting this novel out.
(18:34):
Writing that novel and knowing that myagents and the editor wanted to see it
by a certain date — they wanted to seethis much by a certain date. It was...
I don't know how to put this.
I don't want to say it wasa nightmare, because it just
wasn't fulfilling, thewriting that came out.
(18:54):
And I even had Tim read draftsand he's like, this is not you.
This does not sound like you. Hesaid, this is really not good.
And I was like, I was hoping you wouldsay it's passable, but in my heart,
I knew it was not good. It was not good.
I sent the first four chaptersoff to my agent and the
(19:16):
editor last year, and I gotback a "revise and resubmit",
which actually is verykind and generous of them.
And the editor said,the pacing's all weird;
it doesn't feel like the podcast; I don'tknow what's going on with the tension.
But she's very generous, and she said,
just rewrite this and then we'lltalk some more. And I was like,
(19:41):
okay, thank you. Oh my gosh, okay,sorry. And I felt like crap about it.
But in the grand scheme of things,getting a revise and resubmit is an honor.
If an editor takes the time to say, "Hey,
I received this and I liked parts of it,
and here are some notes and some thingsI'd like you to fix," that's a big deal,
and I don't want you to think I'm notgrateful for that because I'm very
(20:03):
grateful. But it reallybothered me that it wasn't good.
During that time whileI was writing the novel,
which... I think I got about137,000 words in at that
time,
I was writing on what I called a NaNoWriMo
schedule. I think most of you atthis point are familiar with NaNoWriMo
(20:26):
It stands for NationalNovel Writing Month,
which takes place every November,during which people write about
1,500 words a day in order to write a full
50,000 word novella or small novelwithin the 30 days of November.
And I found that while I waspushing a productive pace,
(20:47):
my writing wasn't good. I think mygoal for each day was 1,700 words.
I think that's what it came out to.
So when I was writing my1,000 - 1,700 words every day,
something changed. And I wasn'twriting to exist anymore.
I wasn't writing to live. Iwas writing for a deadline.
I was writing fast,
(21:07):
and you could tell. I learned a lotfrom that experience about myself,
about writing, about the publishingindustry, about story structure.
I learned a lot in writing that novel.
I also got into a kindof a bad place, mentally.
I talked earlier aboutbeing a slow writer,
(21:28):
bringing on feelings of shame and lack and
self-loathing — yeah, Ideal with that every day.
My heart races with anxietyas I think, "I'm so slow,
I will never get this done." Logically,
I know that makes no sense; thatsmall steps can add up to a long
(21:49):
journey. I know that,intellectually, but in my heart,
there's just this heaviness and thisdespair that I'm not good enough.
I'm not fast enough. I'm not asfast as everyone else. I'm lacking.
Sometimes I am more okaywith it than other times,
and one of the things that I'm tryingto work on this year is acceptance.
(22:13):
Acceptance of who I am and what it
means to be a writer andwhat it means to live a
writing life.
There are a lot of things that, overthe years, I thought were wrong with me,
that I took on and adopted habits and
(22:33):
systems to overcome,
but I think a lot of thatcomes from a toxic place of
productivity,
an inhuman expectation forwhat it means to produce
one's life work.
I'm not under any delusions that I'msome kind of grand master artist.
I'm fine with that. I lovewriting for fun genre stuff.
(22:56):
I love writing family-friendly adventures.
I have no delusions that I am a"great American writer" and I don't
necessarily want that.
I've done a lot of thinking and a lotof journaling and a lot of research,
and I've begun to think...what if I'm not terrible?
What if I'm not awful? Whatif I'm not the problem?
(23:18):
What if the problem is a societythat expects an author to churn
out three new books in ayear so that they make money?
What if the problem was that Ijust didn't do a good job setting
expectations with my audience for howlong it was going to take, realistically,
for me to produce a secondseason of Girl in Space? Because I
(23:40):
totally own that.
I got real excited and people-please-ywhen announced that I was making season
two, and I was like, yep, it'sgoing to come out in June, 2022...
which is now two years ago, andI'm still not done writing it.
What if it's not my creativeprocess that's the problem?
I'm the happiest and healthiestin my writing as I have ever been
(24:04):
when I allow myself to go slow,
when I allow myself to live intothe words and live onto the page,
when I'm not desperately tryingto clock in 1,700 words a day.
I have to remind myself (24:17):
what if being a slow writer isn't a flaw?
What if it's not some kind oflack that I need to overcome?
What if it's not a problem to fix?
What if it's not somekind of moral failing?
What if I can still be a goodperson and a good writer and also a
(24:39):
slow writer? I realize thereare real life ramifications,
but there are things thatI care less about. Sure,
I could make more money if Iproduced creative projects faster,
but that's not why I am doing this. Youmay have noticed everything I create,
I release for free, without ads.I'm not doing this for money.
(25:01):
Money is nice,
when I want to buy a coffee or something,
but I would rather sit herein my stained sweatpants at
my secondhand desk writing somethingthat feels good to write than
receiving royalty checks and pumping outthings that I didn't actually believe
in. Now,
(25:22):
this is not a slight against writerswho need to hustle for a living.
I want to make that veryclear. As I've gotten older,
I've realized there is noone correct way to write.
There is no one correct reason to write.
Different people writefor different reasons.
Some people outline, some peoplepants the whole project.
(25:46):
And if there is a rightand wrong way to do things,
I am certainly not the judge of that.
I don't want to be the judge of that.
I just want to write in a waythat feels good to me, in a way
that doesn't leave me burned outand exhausted and hating myself.
I have to remind myself that I havemade the choice to accept that I am a
(26:10):
slow writer because for me,
quality is more importantthan quantity. For me,
good does not necessarily mean fast.
And when I try to rush a project,when I try to write fast,
I end up further behind. Iend up having to rewrite.
I end up hating theproject and scrapping it.
(26:31):
I think I'm at a place where myoptions are to write slow and steady,
to write fast and terrible,or to not write at all.
And I know which one of those is inline with how I want to live my life.
Again, this is not somekind of moral imperative.
This is not necessarily moralizingon "slow and steady wins the race".
(26:54):
This is not, "If you write morethan X number of words a day,
you're going too fast." This is not that.
I know so many talented and accomplishedwriters who can churn out a book a
month. I'm very jealousof them. I'm very envious.
But I don't think less of them.
They are doing something that works forthem. They're supporting their family.
(27:18):
They're writing stories that theywant to write. I celebrate that.
But it's not something I can do withthe way that my brain works and with the
reason that I write.
I started recording thisepisode because I wanted to walk
through, even for myself,
what it meant to be a slowwriter, and to kind of probe the
(27:39):
edges of how I felt about that.
It does feel like a wound sometimes,
and I'm afraid that poking at it willmake it worse. But this has been,
at least for me,
a helpful exercise in understandingthat I write the way that I
need to write for thereasons that I write.
(28:00):
And so if you are a slow writer like me,
I hope that you also are able tofind a sense of acceptance and peace
with your process. Now, if youwant to learn how to write faster,
go for it.
If that is something that bothers youand something that you want to fix,
I encourage you to do what is right foryou and your process and where you are
(28:21):
in your writing journey right now.I've just realized that for me,
after decades of trying topush, trying to write faster,
trying to produce more,it's not good for me.
It doesn't scratch the writing itch.
It doesn't imbue my life withthe meaning that I need it to.
It's not in line with why I write.
(28:42):
I would love to hearin the comments below:
how do you see yourself as awriter? Are you a slow writer?
Are you a fast writer?
How do you see yourself, andoutside even of terms of speed,
how do you see yourself as a writer, andhow does that vision and definition of
yourself as a writer work alongsidethe reasons that you write?
(29:06):
When I go back to thereasons that I write,
I realize that in orderto fulfill those reasons,
I need to take my time and Ineed to go at my own pace. And
realizing that, and working on acceptingthat, hopefully, will help diminish the
shame and feelings of not-enough-ness and self-loathing
that crop up when I get comparative.I can't rush my life's work,
(29:29):
and I need to learn how to accept that.
One of the reasons I am able to createthis show for you and provide it for free
and free of ads is the generous.
Support of people on Patreon.
I'm sure you've heard it amillion times at this point,
but Patreon is a securethird party donation platform that allows you to donate
(29:50):
a dollar per episode, $2 per episode,
whatever works for you to helpdefray the costs of recording and
producing this show, hosting andequipment, and all of that stuff.
I would like to give specialthanks to Laurie, Regina Calabrese,
Amber Fratesi, CharmaineFerreira, Dennis Martin,
(30:12):
Mike Tefft, Poppy Brown, Summer,
Tiffany Joyner, and Whitney McGruder.
Thank you all so much for yourgenerous support of this show.
I am extremely grateful. Thank you.
If you would like to become apatron of the Write Now Podcast,
you can do so by following the linkin the show notes for today's episode,
(30:36):
which I believe is episode 158.
Or if you don't like Patreon orif you want to do something else,
there are also links to PayPaland Kofi (or "Coffee" or however you
pronounce it) in the show notesfor this episode as well. Again,
I would love to hear your thoughtsand your experience and how you
identify yourself as a writer. Ifyou're a slow writer, a fast writer,
(31:00):
or something else entirely,
let me know again in the commentsfor this episode on my website,
which is out at sarahwerner.com. That's
S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R dot com.
Or if you're listening to this showon an app that allows comments,
let me know there. I wouldlove to hear from you,
(31:20):
and with that, this has been episode158 of the Write Now podcast,
the podcast that helps all writers —aspiring, professional, fast,
slow, and otherwise — tofind the time, energy,
and courage you need topursue your passion and write.
I'm Sarah Werner, andI'm cheering for you.
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