I’ve just finished “Lifelong Writing Habit” by Chris Fox. Chris has written a number of writing books in addition to his prolific production of fiction, mostly in the science fiction and fantasy genres. This craft book focuses on learning to use habits to become more productive.
As we all know, habits are ingrained behaviors we do without thinking much about them. Mine include getting up when the cats won’t let me sleep any longer, feeding said cats, and putting on the coffee. The biggest decision I have to make in my still-sleepy brain is which can of cat food to feed them. My cats are finicky (is there any other kind?), kind of like two-year-olds in that a favorite food becomes something they don’t like at all without any warning. So I try to make sure to feed them a variety with the hope that they won’t tire of any particular one just when I’ve laid in a two-months supply.
But back to habits.
Up until recently, the next thing I did was turn on my computer, check my sales so far this month, then get sucked into the vortex of Facebook. It’s something to do while I drink that first cup of coffee, and I tell myself that it’s productive because I catch up on the latest advertising techniques and publishing news and all that. Except that I generally also get lost in cat videos and outrage. Several hours later, I’ve run out of new Facebook postings and get up out of my chair. Reading “Lifelong Writing Habit” has convinced me to abandon that habit, no matter how strong the siren call of it is, and start my day differently so I will be writing before I’ve exhausted myself with social media drama.
Because all those angry postings are drama and drama is exhausting. During the World Series, the announcers talked a lot about “stress pitches.” It takes a lot more out of a pitcher to face a batter when the bases are loaded with no one out than when there are two outs and the bases are empty. Similarly, if the score is 10-to-1 in your favor, it’s easy to face the next batter. If it’s 10-to-1 against, there’s more stress. So while in recent years, it’s been all about the pitch count to determine how long a pitcher can stay in the game, the announcers were pointing out that if most of those pitches were stress pitches, keeping a pitcher in for one hundred of them was likely to result in disaster.