Are You Doing It Wrong? A Guest Blog by Kathleen Damp Wright

The school parking mom leans in the window and smiles at Michael Keaton as he delivers his kids through ~gasp~ the wrong driveway the first day of being Mr. Mom. “Hi,” she smiles, all swollen volunteer authority. “You’re doing it wrong.”

My husband and I still use this line. And just recently the epiphany of it hit me anew in relation to writing fiction. I’m doing it wrong.

I’ll ask you the same question: “Are you doing it wrong?”

If you’ve been reading Routines for Writers during their sophomore offering of Author Crush Month, you’ve been reading some of fiction’s best writers confess/reveal their writer routines. Or lack thereof. Which, if you think about, is a routine. Sorta like Harvey Cox’s quote, “Not to decide is to decide.”

In a serendipitous dovetail, I’ve been dipping a toe into logical fallacies with my essay students. We were discussing “part-to-whole” faulty reasoning as explained by The Fallacy Detective. This book, written by two twenty-something guys, products of homeschooling, stipulates that folks should reason better. The authors define part-to-whole thusly:

“When someone tries to say that what is true of part of something must also be true of the whole thing together.”

Hmm. In my earlier guest blog on RFW regarding productivity, I had unknowingly blundered into a partial understanding of my faulty reasoning with the two-parter, The WMB. That day in class, the crux of it burst upon me like a grand finale on July Fourth in the park.

Here we go.

• the WHOLE of what I want…to be published
• the PART – the magic bullet, the routine, the book, the conference, the blog, the online class

Example

Liz Curtis Higgs, Author Crush Month writer, is published (THE WHOLE of what I want)

She has two desks on two different floors, one lined with bookshelves where “no food, no phone calls, no kidding” (the PART of the WHOLE of being published)

Therefore, I need to work in two different places, stop eating M&Ms at my desk, and pull the plug on the phone by my elbow. Ah, that will give me the motivation/edge/entrée to agents to publishdom.

Don’t be laughing now. I know you’ve thought this. These wonderful writers, who spin tales that take us out of our day and into special worlds, have found and are still finding their routines. See my outstretched hand coming through your computer screen with a sympathetic expression. Are you doing it wrong? Are you trying to make someone else’s part be your part?

Let’s get ludicrous, ludicrous…

More part to whole. More “If they are published and I do what they do, then I will be published.”

• Fortinbras Fourbooks publishes four books a year because of his _________________ (insert any routine you’ve heard from a keynote speaker at a writing conference) schedule.

• Susie So-Published writes _____ words a day for ____ days a week without fail except for the days she’s already xxx’d out on her calendar.

• Bill Bestseller creates extensive personal histories for each of his characters before he writes word one of a new story.

• Fergie Focused never does anything else before she sits down and types out her ______ number of words a day on her current work in process (wip).

• Multipublished Fred Freespirit abhors an outline because he says they are agents of death for creativity.

• Nelly Notecard, NYT Bestseller, scribbles her plot points on note cards and tapes them on a white board that covers one wall in her office.

• Harry Hiker, always on the bestseller list, dictates all his novels on his digital recorder while hiking steep trails, then downloads them to a voice recognition software.

What if:

• You accept that “procrastination and avoidance are not the best routine for an aspiring author” (Donna Lott) and you pledge to dabble in many types of routines until you find the one that fits you…for that season, that book.
• You look at the whole you, your whole life which is so much more than simply your writing: “Choose according to your needs and self control.” (Lauraine Snelling)
• You go large. Large overcomes small, tight, and limiting. What might you try this year? This month? Tomorrow?
• Writing never does become a routine for you, but you still finish compelling stories with each one written a different way, in a different place. “It’s the feeling of the space, and the sanctity of what can happen here” (Lois Lowry) that makes your part the whole.

And when you do, come back to Routines for Writers and tell us all about it.

Kathleen Damp Wright caught, rather than sought, the moniker The What If Girl. She’s a fiction coach for beginning and multi-published writers, writes her own fiction, and blogs inconsistently on her website.  In addition, she gets to teach writing to fascinating junior and high school students in an educational co-op. Living in the Wasatch Mountains, she writes and plays and not always in that order. Catch her on Twitter.com also as TheWhatIfGirl and join her fan page on The What If Girl, A Fiction Coach on Facebook.