Take your time
Writing takes time.
Yup, that’s the post. See ya next time!
Okay, here’s a little more on that topic:
J.R.R. Tolkien spent 13 years to write The Lord of the Rings. And in the second-edition Forward (Hey look! A citation!), he summarized that time between 1936 and 1949 as:
a period in which I had many duties that I did not neglect, and many other interests as a learner and teacher that often absorbed me.
Tolkien goes on to write about those years in great detail, as was typical of him.
What’s interesting to me is that he had the same excuse we all have as writers (aside from, uh, World War II): chores, jobs, hobbies, and our unchecked curiosity do, indeed, pull us away from our writing. They can drag the process on longer than our patience can tolerate.
The best we can do with all of this is to keep plodding along.
It took me a while to accept “plodding” as the way to go. I wanted to finish my work in one sitting. But when I became distracted, I abandoned the work out of frustration. This built up expectations for my writing that I couldn’t meet. I stopped writing for years; I didn’t want to fail my high expectations.
Now I try not to limit my writing time. For a project like my daily blog, that means I write during a lot of short sessions. On average, I take about two hours to write a post. I still hate my writing, but I can see that I am improving.
There is something that Tolkien wrote in that forward which also caught my eye, in which he addressed why he wrote the books (and to crap all over the people who thought the story was allegorical):
The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.
It’s that part I highlighted in bold that I think is most important. His main goal with The Lord of the Rings was to entertain. And he took 13 years to reach that goal.
Writing takes time. Good writing takes time.
