A Writer’s Day.
Thursday was a day spent earning a living in the service of the written word. I note this because so many people come to Medium out of a love for writing, hoping to make something of the craft. There are articles with titles like, “5 ways to write like a pro.” One of the early things I learned about writing was don’t just say it, help your reader experience it. So the idea here was to take notes throughout a random Thursday spent laboring in the verbal salt mines. I hope you find them useful.
The day began in the middle of the night, or so I thought. My eyes blinked open. It was dark. There was a sentence running through my head, one I’d been struggling with the previous afternoon. I lay awake stewing about the problem sentence. Then the alarm rang. Turns out it wasn’t the middle of the night after all. Just another dark winter morning in Minnesota.
Still, the mental wheels were already turning and that’s not a thing a writer should ignore. I pulled on some clothes, grabbed a granola bar and beat the traffic downtown. First stop: Starbucks.
The early hours are best for writing. Today I want to keep them for myself so holing up at a Starbucks works in my favor. The task at hand is to begin a screenplay. I’ve been talking with a couple of local filmmakers about an idea for a dark comedy. This will be my first effort at blocking out some structure for the story.
For me there’s ritual involved in starting a writing project. No specific ritual, just something to let my brain know the level of involvement required. Today that’s as simple as finding my favorite chair at the Starbucks, paying up for one of their Reserve coffees, and getting the right music piped into my headphones. I dial up the most recent album from a band named Beach House and hit shuffle.
This is raw conceptual work, so I don’t expect anything to happen fast. After a couple of hours I have some solid notes on the film’s inciting incident, its central crisis, and the resulting climax. For now that’s enough. I’ll leave the details to start working themselves out in the back of my mind.
The screenplay is investment writing. It might be years before someone puts up the money to get it made. It might be never. Writing for an ad agency is what puts the food on the table. My office is a 10-minute walk away.
When the elevator door opens I notice a barista set up in the lobby, brought in as a surprise treat to make coffees for the staff. More caffeine! It never hurts to have the brain running a little hot.
The ad agency where I work is housed in the shell of a 19th century factory. It has high concrete ceilings, giant industrial windows and a noisy open plan made out of glass and metal. I love the energy of the place. On a good day it feeds the writing.
The advertising business has become more fragmented and immediate in the years since I first started. A print ad that I once spent weeks perfecting now might be due by breakfast tomorrow. This is going to be one of those days where the work comes at me like I’m a short order cook standing over a red-hot grill.
Write a series of Tweets and Facebook posts announcing a client’s partnership with the National Wildlife Foundation. Re-work a script to mention a newly available 19-inch alloy wheel. Attend a meeting to kick-off a new print ad, due in a week. Update a digital and newspaper campaign to include some awards a car model has won in the new year. Deal with a flurry of emails questioning the length of the legal disclaimer in a radio ad I’d produced the previous day (I asked if anyone had any idea which part of the paragraph the lawyers had written I could safely remove, and that extinguished the email chain).
Mostly it’s mindless muscle-memory work, since the big idea thinking for the campaigns is already done. When you’ve gotten the conceptual groundwork right, the writing goes quickly. Like nailing boards on a fence once all the posts are in the ground and true. But still, there is a lot to get through. It takes a big bite out of the day.
I do find an hour to duck away to the health club. Often it’s the most productive hour of the day, and I come back with some nice ideas scribbled on the piece of paper I keep in my back pocket. The physical trainer at the club talks a lot about forces of opposition. Like stretching your legs in one direction while your arms are pushing in the opposite. The same principle applies when you’re trying to coax an idea out of a reluctant brain. Often the best way to write is by doing something else.
The day ends as it began, with more conceptual work. An art director and I have been trying for days to find a moment to put our heads together on a campaign for a new performance car, and we’re up against the deadline. The temptation is to try and knock something out individually when things get so busy, but the ideas are never as good that way. It’s better working as a creative team because the forces of opposition come into play again. I’m sitting across the table from someone whose brain is wired differently from my own. Verbal playing against visual. Funny against serious. Literary against pop culture. The mash-up chemistry works and after a couple of hours we have enough good ideas to move the campaign on to the next step.
Some days I can conjure up a second wind for an evening session, especially if there’s a decent beer or Manhattan on the rocks involved. But not today. The electricity running through the neurons in my brain is starting to feel like it’s sparking from a frayed electrical cord. So this is the end of my notes from a Thursday spent writing. Hopefully somewhere in here you found a few tips for writing like a pro.
NOTE: If this is anything like your writing process, or completely different, I’d love to hear it. Just hit Reply. And please help get this out into the world with shares, recommends, etc.
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