Can One Be Too Productive?

This has no specific connection to historical fiction, but it might be worth thinking about anyway in this month of NaNoWriMo, when we’re all pushing ourselves to write as if the devil were at our heels. Is it possible to be too productive? I think it is, and I may have broken that sound barrier lately… to my detriment.

A Case of Logorrhea

We all know the cardinal rule of writing: butt in chair and fingers on keyboard. This sort of application is easier for some people than others. There are those among us who tend to be obsessive about whatever we do (you know who the rest of you are). Other obligations permitting, we can park ourselves at the computer and write—something—for eight hours a day. It’s a job, right? But the sense of responsibility can become a sense of frenzy. That’s how momentum works: once you start spouting, it gets easier. It develops its own imperative. The result: a bad case of logorrhea, that is, a pathological flux of words.

Just Do It… Or Not

Now, a first draft doesn’t have to be good; it just has to be done. I’ve worded away at stories where I had no clue as to the outcome, just producing pretty darned good scenes, full of dramatic tension and snappy dialog. Trouble is, they led nowhere. One could take the logorrheic output and spend time banging it into shape. Sit on it for a few months and come back to it fresh. There’s plenty of raw material; just prune away and come up with something that is good. That’s another cardinal rule. But once the frenzy is upon us, every aspect of the writing becomes a forced march. Our agent is waiting. A publisher has accepted one manuscript and is drooling for another. We feel obliged to keep the pipeline flowing. Produce a novel a year. Two novels a year. One every three months. It can be done. But should it?

The Importance of Doing Nothing

Any artist, in any medium, will tell you that creativity happens in a space of mental leisure. A state, as the French would say, of oisiveté, where the conscious shuts the heck up and lets the unconscious ferment quietly.  Do you see where I’m going? That’s just the opposite of the frenzy of logorrhea. Yes, we crank out scenes...but we can’t see the big picture, the plot, the arc. That has to bubble up quietly from below the conscious, and not just at first, when we’re actively “plotting,” but at every step where connections suddenly reveal themselves, plot twists explode, wholly new directions start to emerge. And then there’s that incubation period, during which you don’t even look at the manuscript. But when you go back to it, your hidden copy editor has been at work, imagining…

Those of you suffering from writer’s block will curl your lips and say “Overproduction is a problem?” But it can be. Any extreme can be. Writing fiction is a blend of the right brain and the left, of perspiration and inspiration. Don’t let NaNoWriMo push you into the forced march of production that will drain writing of its fun and lead to burnout. Why don’t we declare December Sit-On-It Month?