I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Friday Flash, I share an epiphany or aha moment from the past week.
I spent at least a couple hours each day working on my book manuscript, but I don’t feel like the writing is flowing or has much momentum. I think I’ve leaned too hard on ChatGPT for the initial ideas, so now I’m going to run with what I already have and write mostly solo. ChatGPT can become a crutch, because it’s so easy to ask it to draft a section rather than writing one myself. It doesn’t write like me. I was so interested to read that one reason AI sounds so “clipped and dramatic” is because it has been trained on a lot of transcripts of speech, “the language of speechwriters, preachers, and copywriters.”
I spent time this morning figuring out how Scrivener, my manuscript writing software, works. I already knew how to use it to write a manuscript but I hadn’t figured out some details that are important foundationally for going forward. I wanted to set it up so I can very easily spit out an eBook to share, nicely formatted with chapter headings and titles. That meant I had to decide where I’m going to specify those chapter titles (in the “binder” or in the actual text I’m writing), whether to use descriptive section headings or not (I’m going to–to make it easy for readers to scan and skim), how to capitalize, and how to set up the editor so that I can see where I am and what I’m doing as I’m writing.
It’s hard to keep coming back to the manuscript as poorly as it matches my vision for the book. I am wondering if there is a better way to write it than just sitting down with Scrivener open and working through it. For example, Murakami found that by writing in English (his second-language) and then translating back into Japanese, he produced a spare kind of prose with rhythm he really liked. I imagine in doing that he also found a way around his inner critic, who would otherwise stop him from quick progress.
I find writing a newsletter article on Substack or writing a blog post here flows really easily, whereas trying to write a chapter in Scrivener does not. Serializing my memoir stories on Substack was one idea I had for getting the writing flowing. That quickly became a self-conscious stumbling block of its own.
What might I do to get some flow and momentum going? Here are some ideas (and I did use ChatGPT to come up with some of these!):
- I could write emails with sections of the book to myself (or to a trusted friend). Then paste them into Scrivener.
- I could start a new private Substack and write draft chapters there.
- I could make voice memo drafts on my phone as if I’m telling a friend my ideas then transcribe and clean it up later.
- I could jot ideas onto paper or index cards.
- I could use timed sprints — set a timer for 15 to 25 minutes and write without stopping no matter how clumsy it feels.
- Copy-work warm-up — start a session by hand copying a few paragraphs from a writer I admire to tune my ear to rhythm and ease me into my own writing.
- I could write in a Google Doc instead of Scrivener, to trick myself out of perfectionist mode.
Not sure what I’m going to do, and I look at my day and think, “I don’t have that much time for writing today anyway.” But I’ll give at least one of these a try and report back as to how it goes.