Writing: There’s No One Way to Do It

Binaries can be useful. In coding: 0 or 1. In medical tests: positive or negative.

But not everything fits into a binary, and for writing (and any creative endeavor), binaries often harm rather than assist our understanding.

For instance, I’ve read a lot of advice for writers that says a serious writer does THIS while the unserious writer does THAT. Usually, what that advice boils down to is that the advice-giver found it useful to do THIS instead of THAT—because there are rarely true absolutes for writers. There are few techniques that every writer must use in order to be the kind of writer they want to be.

Take the idea of how much writing you get done and when you do it. I’ve seen a lot of advice that tells me that every day, I need to write for a set amount of time or produce a set amount of words. The amounts vary, but the message is the same: successful writers set a daily goal and do all they can to meet it; unsuccessful writers do not follow a daily plan.

Another common admonition relates to prioritizing writing: serious writers put their writing above everything, and unserious writers let other things take precedence. This idea certainly isn’t new—Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a version of this in 1929 in his classic Letters to a Young Poet, where he tells his reader that if they decide they “must” write, they should “build [their] life according to this necessity; [their] life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.”

But both of those ideas for what makes a successful writer are false binaries.

Many serious and/or successful writers work at a certain time of day for a certain amount of time or a certain number of words, always. Many serious and/or successful writers have put writing at the center of their lives, always.

And many serious and/or successful writers haven’t.

One of my favorite poets, Lucille Clifton, raised six children and talked often about how her writing developed alongside her parenting and was influenced by it. In a 1982 interview by Rudine Sims in Language Arts, Clifton says didn’t have a daily routine and “[wrote] in spurts.” On the days she did write, “when [the kids] were little, I did stop when they needed me, and if I lost some idea, I’d just hope I’d get it again.”* Clifton was a serious, successful writer who didn’t write on a set schedule and whose writing shared priority with her family.

But setting up a binary about what good writers do and don’t do is not just something that I see in advice for writers; it's something clients tell me they do to themselves. They read that a certain famous author writes every day until they hit 1,000 words or that this beloved writer left their job and family to write in Italy for a month and decide that’s what they must do too, even if this plan won’t work for them. Even if this plan won’t get them the results they want.

For instance, say a writer decides that to write a successful book, they need to sit in front of the computer every weekday for two hours. After all, that’s what their favorite author does. But this writer has a full-time job, an elderly parent who lives with them, and a commitment to a community organization they believe in. When they try to put in those daily two hours, they sacrifice time with their parent, shirk duties at work or their community organization, or lose desperately needed sleep. Soon enough, they stop putting in those two hours, and they decide they’ll never succeed as a writer. Their book remains unwritten.

But it doesn’t have to be. They can set aside those false binaries and find a way to write that works for them.

Maybe a few times a year, they create their own writing retreat by staying at a friend’s house while they’re away for the weekend.

Maybe they collaborate with a ghostwriter instead of doing all the work themselves.

Maybe they team up with some friends for a virtual writing group that writes once a week at a set time while cheering each other on via texts.

Or a hundred other possibilities.

A lot of times, these binaries, these rules for writers that others tell us to follow or that we set up for ourselves, require a lot more control over our lives than we have. They don’t allow for the fullness of our lives, where family and real-life experiences and financial security are as important to us as writing (and those full lives that are often the inspiration for our writing).

But there are ways to write besides a rigid everyday routine. There are ways to complete a book that don’t require us to make impossible sacrifices. We can be writers in the way that works for us.

After all, we’re talking about a creative practice. Can’t we also be creative about how we fulfill that practice? Can’t we break the binaries?

* Sims, Rudine. “Profile: Lucille Clifton,” Language Arts. Vol. [1]59, No. 2 (February 1982), pp. 160-167.