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One of my favorite parts of teaching my food writing class is the one-on-one conversations I have with my students at the end. Some students really want to talk about the piece that they workshopped in class, or get my tips on where they should pitch or submit, or tell me about the last wonderful thing they ate. (Some students don’t want to meet at all, which is fine!). But there’s one common question that comes up over and over again…
“What is your writing process?”
Which is to say, how do you actually write?
I don’t really know. To get a little woo woo, there’s definitely some element of mystery and magic.
Then to get less woo woo, I’m not suggesting waiting for inspiration to strike. I don’t even know what that means, really. I start with putting words on the page. We’re all different in the way we think, write, and experience the world, but I’m definitely someone who thinks through things by writing them down. The words become sentences, and those start to connect, and before I know it, I’m telling a story, or making a point, or maybe even saying something that feels like it needs saying.
Sometimes not, and that’s part of the process, too.
I have a sprawling Word Doc called “Cutting Room Floor” full of these false starts and tangents and of course brilliant gems that I will maybe repurpose at some later date. (But probably not.)
Our teachers made us outline our essays in middle school, and I used to cheat: I’d write the essay first, then go back and extrapolate an outline. I never sit down and draw up an outline before I write; that’s just not how my brain works. (I’ve also never written a novel with a complex plot, or something where there just might not be a good way around this.)
60,000. That’s how many words it said on the contract for my first book. I had sold the work on proposal, which meant I hadn’t yet written the whole book, which meant I had actually never written a whole book before! Suddenly I was seized with panic. How was I supposed to write 60,000 words? An actual BOOK?
I think it was a friend who said, “well, you’ve written a lot of essays, right? Isn’t one book just like a lot of essays?”
This friend was not wrong.
Feast was 75,000 words. Plenty is 77,000 words. That's a lot of words. I mean, it's not a lot of words for a book—they’re both medium-sized books—but it's a whole lot of words to write when faced with a blank page.
Here’s my own particular method: on my writing days I aim for 1000 words. Not 1000 good words, just 1000 words. If I’m working in a big Word Doc, as I usually do, and the whole thing starts off with 17,000 words in the morning, it has to end up somehow at 18,000 words by the time I sit down for dinner in the evening and call it a day.
But sometimes I have to close my laptop and go for a walk. Sometimes I have to be ok with 100 words and try again the next day. Sometimes I have to be ok with zero words because things are marinating in my brain and in my heart. It’s not in my nature for me to be so gentle with myself but writing about hard stuff can be excruciating, and I’m not trying to make it any harder.
I also don’t write every day. Not on my Big Project. I work on other things. Last week I worked on editing a beautiful and heart-wrenchingly sad book for a client. I wrote a blog post for another client about health coaches and insurance. I researched espresso machines for another story I’m working on, etc. I need a break from so much personal writing all the time, and that’s also part of my process.
Writing is not just writing. It’s also what happens when you’re living, watching intense documentaries about cults, tickling your baby’s belly, making the short ribs that have to braise all day, and cuddling with your husband until your arm falls asleep in a weird position.
And then, back to the page. Back again and again.
A thousand words a day.
One word at a time.
I’ll end with one of my favorite writings about writing of all time, from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life:
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
Bird by bird, buddy.
Happy writing.
Here I am getting my words in on the roof of our Istanbul hostel, circa 2014.