How Does a Writer Practice?

by Joel Worford

Aaron Burden

How does a writer practice?

I don’t really know. And sometimes I’m not sure why the question matters, but of the fact that it does, I am almost completely certain. It seems the clearest way to explain our obsession with other authors’ daily routines — their word counts, their hours spent in the chair — or the ever-looming reiteration, like some community comfort blanket, of how thinking, talking, looking, singing, crying, pooping and peeing should all count as writing. I, for one, am happy we’re deconstructing the 2500 words/day, Stephen King driven, you’re not a serious writer unless you grind them out, hustle approach, but my happiness doesn’t change the fact that dreaming won’t increase word count. It seems to me that there is an anxiety amongst many writers — an anxiety that stems from the question of am I working hard enough? and am I working right? Why is it so damn hard to tell with this craft? Musicians run scales, a tennis player hits two hundred forehands per day, and a writer…well, what does a writer do? We write, I guess. But does writing really make you a better writer? I’m not really sure. When I write an opening sentence, my feeling is that I am faced with an array of problems and potential solutions uniquely specific to that sentence. How does one prepare for that? I think reading is the closest answer, but someone on TikTok told me that was wrong. And in a way, I agreed. Plenty of people love to read who do not excel at writing. So what is it, then? Maybe reading and writing? I don’t know.

It frightens me to practice a craft in which the skills I regularly rely on, I can’t call upon, at will. Take music for instance. I do gig work as a guitar player, and every time I pick up a guitar, I know that I will be able to play a G major chord. I know that I will be able to play a G major chord because playing a G major chord does not rely on me being in any particular mindset that allows me to reflect on the nature of the G major scale and how that nature relates to my own — it relies on my hand remembering where my fingers go. And conveniently enough, my hand always does. It remembers because I’ve played a G major chord thousands of times, I’ve practiced the G major chord, and my reward now for that practice is that every time I pick up a guitar, I get to play that pretty chord. The reward for all of the frustration we go through problem solving as writers is more problems. It never ends. I do get joy from reading my finished work, the pieces I deem “successful.” Maybe that’s the equivalent of having the ability to play an instrument? But still, I’m not sure. With music, I know that every day — I can sit down with a guitar and play something beautiful. With writing, there is no muscle memory to rely on. Only the mind’s ability. And the mind is fickle.

I have had a successful career as a songwriter, in the sense that I have managed to write three albums’ worth of songs I am proud of, and I have made a little money playing those songs. Never once have I sat down and “practiced” songwriting. Never once have I set a “write a song per day” sort of goal. My songwriting grew with my musicianship. But I write a song when I end up writing a song. I do not know a songwriter who works any other way, and as far as I know, most of them aren’t too stressed about it. Once you write a song, you get to perform it in perpetuity. You can rearrange it, and aside from that, so long as the audience changes, the song stays new. I’ve been performing the same 45-minute set list with my band since my last album came out two years ago. I have not written a song since, have had no anxiety about my songwriting drought, and no problem doing my job as a musician. A song never really abandons its songwriter. In fact, it relies on them. A script needs a director, actors, and cameras to be a movie. A song needs a performer. In that sense, it stays alive, and continues being born after you write it. As a musician, you could write ten songs and perform them for the rest of your life — practicing your craft by practicing your instrument — play covers of other artists, and live a long, fulfilled life. That is exactly what I think Lauryn Hill is doing. As a fiction writer, there is no such equivalent.

What I’m trying to get at is that I get why fiction writers are anxious. We publish a short story, or a novel, and then that’s that. There’s no rearranging or re-performing to be done. The writing was the performance. If we want to keep performing, we need to write something else. Something that will bring with it a new set of problems, that the last thing we wrote probably didn’t teach us how to solve. The reason I believe that reading is the closest equivalent writers have to a musician running scales is because reading allows writers to observe how other writers solve their issues, and I believe that seeing the solution to someone else’s problem can help one navigate their own. Maybe this sort of reading takes a certain analytical approach, that for some folks, extends beyond the way they “read for pleasure.” Maybe this is why everyone who reads two hundred books a year isn’t churning out a perfectly crafted novel. I don’t really want to make a statement to the tune of “writers read different,” but ugh, maybe we do? I took a year off from writing fiction in 2019 for no particular reason other than that I was busy. I was in too many bands, one of which was occasionally touring, and so all I had the time (or energy) for, with literature, was reading. But when I returned to writing short stories in 2020, I was a completely different fiction writer. I won’t say my writing got “better,” but it had certainly progressed. It was different, and its quality matched the evolution of my taste.

I’ve put in a lot of time reading and writing, but I don’t know if I would say that my improvement has been objective. Folks that read my early stuff, bear with me as I say this. When I was about 21, I started writing pieces of fiction that “worked.” By that, I mean pieces where I had a vision when I started of what I wanted them to accomplish, and the work’s finished product either matched that vision or exceeded it. That was after about two years of failed attempts at story writing, and since then, I’ve written more works that have “succeeded” (and many many more that have failed), published some of them, and yeah, now I’m here. I don’t necessarily know that the stuff I do now “works” better than the stuff I did then. The stuff I wrote then “worked” to the reader I was then. Now I’m a different reader. My new stuff “works” different. I have more publications now, and some acknowledgements I’m really proud of, but I don’t see any reason why those pieces I wrote five years ago couldn’t have received what I’m getting now — if an editor at a big journal who enjoyed the books I did when I was twenty-one had read them, I would’ve gotten published in a big journal at twenty-one. A piece of writing that works the way it wants to work, works. The publications, the awards, all that stuff is, hmm, not at all meaningless — but not really indicative of quality, after a certain point. What I’m trying to say, I suppose, bringing this all back to hustle culture — is that the only thing that writing 2,500 words per day will guarantee you is a bunch of words. Publications aren’t like the Oscars. Nobody cares whether you slept in a bear carcass to get into your character’s mindset. Editors are only trying to figure out if a.) a story works on its own terms, and b.) if they, the editors, personally vibe with the chords it’s plucking. There’s only one of those things we have any sort of control over. You can hustle all you want, you’ll still have no say in the other one.

There is a truth that is true, which is that if you want to write a novel, you need a bunch of words. If you want to write a short story collection, you need a bunch of words. But…I dunno, I don’t think there’s any need to go all Jared Leto to get them. I think that if you write 2,000 words per day, every day for a year and talk like your main character, and read all the books and listen to all the albums and watch all the movies your main character would watch, you will certainly write a different book than if you didn’t do any of that. But will it surely be a better one? I don’t really think so. Ocean Vuong doesn’t work that way, and he seems to be doing all right. I think that the only reason you should take any approach to writing fiction is because you either a.) enjoy it or b.) get a creative result, on the other side of reasonable discomfort, that brings you fulfillment which outweighs its cost. Don’t suffer expecting some worldly acknowledgment of “quality.” Not as reparation for that suffering. And especially don’t suffer expecting to publish, that’s silly. I know these things sound obvious, but I feel like so many of us are letting hustle cultures bully us into spending six hours in a chair each day. That is just…so unnecessary. If you get paid thousands upon thousands of dollars a year to write fiction where the amount you believe in it doesn’t matter and you just need product, then please disregard everything I say. But for those of us where this is our passion and our craft, I don’t believe that it’s too outlandish for me to argue — I think it’s important we preserve the passion part. Don’t let anyone cajole you into hating writing.

I recently read Haruki Murakami’s book, Novelist as a Vocation and his main focus was not on quality, but longevity. It seems to me that the way a writer ought to “practice” their craft is whatever way best keeps them wanting to keep doing it. If editing-as-you-go is your most joyful process, then by all means, edit-as-you-go. If you do the messy first draft method, God bless, I don’t understand you, but I salute you as well! 500 words per day, writing every other day, writing on the third day of each month and then all morning Christmas, I say do whatever keeps you going, and stop doing whatever makes you want to stop. The craft of writing, to me, is mostly problem solving. It is certainly possible to improve at linguistic problem solving, but I think the means of “improvement” will be different for each individual. Some people will write 2,000 words/day and figure things out. Some people will write when they want to, and write just as well. One of my biggest improvements in dialogue came after I watched the movie Boyhood. My most prolific spells come when I’m being a productive reader. When I write without editing, I feel as though I’m wasting my time. We need to stop telling people their way of work is wrong. Writing is not learning an instrument. There is no tried and true method to improve. The method of improvement is a problem in itself. One that it is the writer’s job, and only theirs, to solve.

I think a part of my anxiety as a writer, the anxiety this column is trying, and struggling, to get at, is an irrational fear. It is the fear that one of these days, the sentence well will dry up. That I will run out of talent, or inspiration, or insight, and that that will be that, and my career will go away. I write every piece of fiction that “works,” wondering if it will be my last. But then, without fail, I go and write another one. So this fear could, perhaps, be defined as irrational. But I don’t think I’m alone in having it. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that this fear leads many of us to grasping — looking for ways, through work ethic, we can feel some creative control. Write 2,000 words per day, read two books per week — I’ve tried these methods, and I’m not really better for them. What matters to me, now, is that I find the joy in writing. That I find the most joyous process, and keep after that joy, until I see it as writing’s main reward. I never want to forget, or lose, the perspective that writing is a privilege. It’s a mode of expression I chose and sometimes excel at — but even if I couldn’t excel, I’d love the trying anyway. The performance is the practice is the reward is now my method.