Habits are Not Just for Nuns: By Devi Laskar

So many books have been written on the art of writing, on the resistance to actually doing the writing rather than talking about doing the work required to be a writer. There are books about finishing a novel in a year to finishing your outline for your novel in a year. It’s enough, well, to get your head spinning like a top and make you want to give up writing altogether – and take up something more concrete, say, like plumbing or welding….

Everybody and their first cousin have a plan or a way to finish a book. Unfortunately, those are their plans. That’s how they finished their books, the one you plunked down cash for at the bookstore and are now reading, frantically, in an attempt to glean the magic formula to success. And completion.

What I’ve gleaned from all of these books is that ultimately, you have to come up with a plan that works for you, that helps you overcome resistance, that allows you to set up realistic goals and to meet these goals.

After many errors and missteps and after years of trying to finish a book the way another writer would have done it and not trusting myself and just treading water year after year, not going anywhere, something has changed.

Two-hundred and forty nine days ago I started doing an art project: take a photograph or paint/draw a picture. Every day. One a day. For a year. In a former life, I was a reporter for a daily newspaper and often had grueling deadlines to meet. Working to a deadline has served me well over the years, but I needed something more to get me toward the finish line for my novel(s).

It’s called accountability. Every day for the past 249 days, I’ve posted my art (photo, painting, drawing) on Facebook because that’s what I set myself up to do. I told my FB friends I was doing this art project every day for a year, and they expect me to turn something in, every day.

So far so good, I’ve managed to keep up. I’m accounting for my time. I’m becoming more efficient, and I’m able to focus faster on the tasks at hand. And it’s helping me enormously with the writing, counter to what I thought would happen, I’m able to see things I need to do to finish the book.

So, rather than complaining about having to change the Point of View on a particular section or debate someone endlessly whether or not a particular description is working, I just take notes, and think about the big picture – finishing the book.

But now, to quote fellow Book Writing World colleague James Black, I have to “blog and bail” because I have art to do for tomorrow. ☺

What kind of accountability keeps you creative?

Devi Laskar is a founding member of the Book Writing World. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, is a rabid Tar Heel basketball fan and has three poems coming out in the next issue of The Tule Review (February 2012).