Keeping That Forward Momentum (Josh Intro) (12/11/2021)

A recap of the week's writing at Atticus Review. Intro by Joshua Raff.

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As I began to think about writing this piece, I was also working on a piece of technical writing.  Challenged by the complexity of the concepts I needed to make my argument, I struggled to address each issue thoroughly yet fit it into a coherent whole. It is a process I have been working with for years and, while the issues differ from project to project, the process is familiar, practiced. I made good progress—my arguments seemed to be coming together, I got through the rough draft and started to go back to revise and restructure, trim the excess, the redundant, the grossly awkward. There came a point I knew it was time to stop. I had reached my limit. It was not the number of words I had written, or the hours worked, but the point at which I had made the best use of my time, had a good sense of what I had done and a toehold in the next part of the piece. I put my pen down. (Well, OK, I turned off my laptop) I knew I would be able to pick up the thread when I next sat down, be it the next day or a week later. I wonder when I will develop that sense with my creative writing, when I know if I should keep working on a piece or put it aside, think about it for a while, let it marinate. And when I will know I have done as much as I can for a day, when a break will freshen my perspective, allow me to see more clearly the work I have done and what must come next? The project I am working on has some urgency, stirred as it is by political events, although not strictly topical. Can I hurry it up? Speed it along while the subject matter still has some currency.  I took a brief detour to write a short, related piece, got it out there fairly quickly, but that seemed to throw my momentum off for the primary work at least as much as it may add my authority for the larger work. In the absence of the years of experience that allows me to sense when I am done, do I create a fixed schedule, a minimum (or maximum) daily word count? Robert Caro (might as well set a high bar) strove to write at least 1000 words a day and kept a log of the number of words he wrote every day. Should I instead set my schedule by the number of hours spent writing, based on my general sense of how productive I can be and for how long?  Or should I try something else, taking into account research, reading, writing housekeeping?  Will whatever I land on serve for the internalized process that I have developed through many years of working? Will it allow me to get the most out of my writing time? And keep some forward momentum.I suspect there is only one answer. Keep writing. And writing. Perhaps one day I will sit down and I will just know. Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here.Joshua RaffCNF Reader

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THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

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