What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

dr-dendritic-trees asked: How do you write so fast. I can very rarely manage more than a couple of paragraphs of a single work at a time.

Short answer: I have no idea? I just kind of do!

Long answer: Different people write at different rates. There are heaps of very successful writers who only ever write a couple of hundred words a day, but who do so, consistently, every day, and are therefore prolific. I tend to write in bouts - I’ll go a week or a fortnight or a month where I just write ALL THE THINGS, and then I have to stop for the same length of time to recuperate, or I burn out. (Though weirdly, this doesn’t seem to apply to different types of writing: meaning, if I’m taking a break from a novel, I can still blog, and vice versa.) Honestly, I think it’s a mix of nature and nurture: some people are very good at setting routines for themselves and sticking to them, and others are naturally inclined to write a certain way, and we all just tend to figure out the balance of that dichotomy for ourselves, between instinct and habit, until we find what works.

As for me, personally: sometimes - often - I have to drag the words out with tweezers. That’s where practice and routine comes in, because if I *need* to write something, either to hit a deadline or get through a tricky part, then I can’t fall back on my natural inclination to just write when I feel like it, or I stagnate. So I force myself to write, typing a few words at a time, pausing, typing a few more, checking the internet, writing a sentence, chipping away until it gets done, and maybe I only end up with a paragraph, but I’m still that little bit closer to finishing, and that’s what matters. But when the words are there - and this is the bit I have no idea about, because it’s personal, and instinctive, and I can’t really explain it properly - I fall out of myself. I lose time. I write like I’m remembering. I’ll be at the computer for hours, and it only feels like minutes. I don’t know why. It doesn’t happen with all stories, or all essays. But when it does, it feels like a kind of magic, and when it stops, it’s like I’ve jumped off a merry-go-round: my head spins.

In conclusion: there are very many ways to write, and no one way is inherently better. Your natural process is just that: a process, something you can refine and develop with practice. And so long as you do practice, you’ll always get better - though not, necessarily, faster. Speed does not equal quality, but it doesn’t negate quality, either. It’s all individual.