Stop Staring at The Numbers and Trust the Process

You Can’t Tell, But You’re Getting Better

What if a weightlifter measured his biceps each time he went to the gym? He would drive himself insane.

The more successful the weightlifter, the less he even thinks about progress. It’s all about the process. He intuits that this is the best place for his focus after much trial and error.

The same is true for writing. It will simply take great volume before we are focused on the right stuff. However, we can help ourselves by consciously reminding ourselves that it is not about the damn progress. It is about the process.

In some ways, writers have it worse than weightlifters, because we have a phenomenon of sudden gains. One day, your shit might just take off. That may seem like a blessing, but it’s really a curse.

Our brains can’t resist that “slot machine” effect. Give a huge award, rarely and randomly, and we will become addicted forever. That may help in motivating us, but we will be motivated by the wrong thing. Number and progress, not process.

That’s why you see writers with moderate success who suddenly can only repeat themselves. The parts of writing that are not directly rewarded: thinking, reading, reflecting; they are forgone for the addict-like search for more recognition.

There are steps we can take to make sure we have a sustainable writing career.

Trust the Process

The process will not show you progress each time you sit down. The shift is too small to perceive on a day-to-day basis. So we can’t rely on that to motivate us. That is a road of frustration and try-hard products.

Have faith that you are getting better without being able to see it. Trust that many, many people who have come before you have shown that deliberate practice is the key to improvement.

After a while, the writing becomes the reward in itself. I care less and less about how well each article is going, and more about how much I really just enjoy sitting down to write.

Here’s another piece of faith: It has been shown that creatives have no idea which of their works are going to be received well and which are not. Further, the thing all greats have in common is pure volume. Do you know how many shit paintings Picasso painted?

Can you really accept that as truth? I know I struggle with it. Despite all evidence showing that I can’t produce good art at will, I still try to control the outcome. I am learning, again by volume alone (I write 14 stories a week), that I have to simply keep writing.

I didn’t start at that high volume all at once, though. That would have just worn me out. I slowly introduced more and more load over time and added plenty of rewards.

Reward the Process

Make your place of writing your “turf.” Make it feel like a place where you go to do the thing you love.

There are many, many ways to make the turf more enticing. Here are a few of mine:

• I drink a french press of coffee every morning when I sit down to write
• I listen to Sigur Ros, or Binaural beats
• I use noise-cancelling headphones, for easily slipping into the flow
• I take breaks where I do breathwork, meditation, cold showers, and walks, which fill me with energy
• I put plants and beauty all around me
• I never do anything else here
• I learned to touch-type

The coffee seems to have made a positive association more than anything.

Beyond that, making it feel like the place where you feel like the master of your world is really important. We are territorial creatures, and I would be willing to bet that this taps into something primal within us that feels stronger in familiar territory.

By learning to touch-type, I have not only physically improved my typing speed, but I have also given myself the feeling that this is my zone.

All these little touches feedback into one another, and soon enough, my desk is a sacred place, which puts me into a flow state nearly the moment I sit down.

Focus on Helping Others

Everything so far is an exercise in getting us out of our heads. The process is a great way to do that.

Another powerful tool is to try to stop thinking about yourself so much. This is difficult, especially for new writers, because we want to have any amount of success to prove that we can even do this.

However, if you can make a practice of asking yourself, “Who needs my help?” on a daily basis, your writing will improve.

Again, it will improve so slowly that you won’t be able to perceive it. Make this a part of your process as well. Trust that it will take you to the place that you want to go.

From Time to Time, Look at Your Work From Years Ago

If you’ve been writing for at least a couple of years, it can be nice to go back and look at the work from back then.

Remove your ego from the equation; you are not the work and its flaws, you are the process by which you overcome those flaws.

Looking at older work can actually help you more properly identify with the process and not the results.

You will be amazed at how much you will have improved in a matter of years. Humans have a bias that is measurable and consistent, which makes us overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can do in a year.

Relax, Don’t Try

At first, you’re going to try too hard. That’s the rookie syndrome, and there is really no way around it.

After a while, you begin to relax. This is natural because you have been writing for so long that you no longer think that relaxation means not writing. When you were starting out and you had no habits, it did!

Trying too hard is a natural part of an initiation. You see it all over, not least in sports.

Relaxation is the reward for pure volume. And it’s really the only way to make really transcendent work. You have to be so relaxed that the unconscious can come up and say something true, unique, and worthwhile.

It takes a lot of imitation, bullshit, and missing the mark before that happens.

The Upward Trajectory is Bumpy

Slumps are just going to happen. Like any graph with an upward slope, there are going to be some valleys in there.

Here’s what we do: NOTHING. Ignore them.

The advice is the same: trust the process.

Doing worse for a day, or a week, or even a month, is nothing to even concern ourselves with. It is a function of statistics, and in no way indicates that we need to make any adjustments.

Do not sell your stocks in a panic. Stay the course.

Seek Flow

Flow is the psychological state that is so ubiquitous that I’m not going to even explain it. If you don’t know, look it up. Read the book. It will change your life.

Flow is such a powerful creative force, it is worth seeking above almost anything else.

Expand those times when you lose track of time. Do anything you can to get into them. Make your turf, like we talked about, but also learn about the state. Internalize its qualities and learn to recognize them.

With daily access to flow, the improvement will come quickly.

Never Trust Negative Emotion

Everyone has negative emotions, but do everything you can to rid yourself of it before you sit down to write.

You may think it helps you produce your art, but you’re wrong. Positive emotional states are far more powerful and effective, even when you want to communicate something dark (just look at David Lynch, who makes dark art, but is the most wonderful and positive man alive).

I am a neurotic son of a bitch, and even had bouts of suicidal ideation. Here’s what I do to keep a positive mind:

• Meditate
• Wim Hof breathing
• Cold Showers
• Micro dosing mushrooms
• Good diet
• Meditate on death
• Yoga
• Journaling

Do what you like, and forget this rest. This isn’t a contest.

I do all of these because I feel that it helps, and I slowly introduced them over years of experimentation.

Don’t Edit, Become a Better Person and Try Again

Unless I am submitting work to someone very specific, I don’t really edit much.

I proofread, and take out a lot of fluff, but to me, there is no point trying to edit very much. Editing is easier than writing, and the temptation is always there, but I find that I need to edit a loss less than I want to edit.

I listen to feedback, take it in, think about the state of mind that caused me to write that way, and try to do better next time.

Not everyone is going to be like me here, but I find that this works well for me. Your mileage may vary.

Final Thoughts

The core issue is where to place our identity.

Do you want to identify with that green circle with the numbers, or do you want to identify with something you can control?

If you truly want to become a writer that lasts, you better pick the latter.

And if you do, settle in. This is going to be a long and interesting ride.

Happy writing!

Originally published at https://www.taylorforeman.com on August 16, 2020.