Writing in longer sessions

In October, we had one of those weird 5th weeks in the month, which means no calls were on my schedule. This happens very rarely and I cherish the few times of the year that it does! But it also presented me with an opportunity to try out some longer work sessions for myself.

As It was time for me to be working on my second draft, I carved out 4 hours at the start of each day to see what kind of progress this would yield while remaining conscious of ultradian cycles. Seeing my focus start to wane around 1.5-2 hours, I’d take a short break, then hop back to it for a completed work session of around 4 hours.

I’ve had work sessions of all kinds of lengths over the last several months, and some of them have naturally extended into 3 or 4 hour work sessions. But I wanted to find out what happens when I tell myself: the work takes 4 hours.

Here are my personal findings and conclusions from those sessions:

⏳ Total days/hours: I wrote for 8 out of the 9 days of the experiment. There were a couple of days that clocked in a little less than 4 hours, whether because of my schedule or because I finished early and clocked out, but I would say I worked about 30 hours in 8 days.

📅 Individual sessions: On the whole, I would say it took me all of the 4 hours to write my second draft scenes. The second draft was easier and more fun to write than the first draft was, but it’s also more meticulous work because you’re crafting a more complete draft, whereas the first draft is just get stuff down and run. By this time in the year, I’m also running out of steam a bit! We had quite a haul in the month of October, so I think as a person I’m slowing down, and that translated into the time it took to do my draft. Although, Leigh and Brandon’s conversation seemed to suggest that they’re writing about one scene per 4-hour session as well…so maybe that’s just how long it takes?

Either way, here are my top takeaways:

• The work takes the time it takes. When I gave myself four full hours, I was able to complete my scenes within the work session. Whether that’s slow or normal, that’s how long it took me, and planning and preparing for that served me better than asking myself to work faster. The amount of time it’s taking should only be a concern if you’re stuck across multiple sessions. And that’s just a sign that there’s a problem you’re wrestling with, and that just means: call in backup, whether that’s your developmental editor or a trusted writing partner. You may need to experiment with different amounts of time, but find what works for you!

• Planning the scene the night before my work session made the work feel easier in the morning! For 4 of the 7 nights, I re-wrote whatever was in my outline to give myself a starting point. Then, I’d write about the conflict, map out the characters, and write down any insights, ideas, or questions I had. When I showed up in the morning, it didn’t feel like starting from scratch, and I had something for my brain to get a hold of to get me started.

• If it isn’t working, try something else. We tend to crave universal rules. We want this thing or that thing to be the end-all-be-all process that yields not just results, but great results 100% of the time. But creativity doesn’t always work that way. We find a process that works for us generally, but sometimes it takes a different angle in that process to capture a scene.

  • Some days, I journaled extensively about a scene and its conflict, and that gave me the ammo I needed to write the scene.

  • Other days, I only jotted down a summary and character diagram, but more than anything, pants-ed my way through the scene. Those days, I needed to just be in the scene and explore it to really understand the characters and what was happening.

  • Lastly, many days I wrote by hand, and those were by far my favorite scenes. Especially after typing them up into Scrivener, giving me a chance to do some light revisions (we’re talking very light: minor fixes to dialogue, slight adjustments in exposition, the kind of stuff you catch on second glance through your scene). But there were some days that I would get stuck — I would start writing by hand and then just feel lost. So I would type up the words I’d written by hand and then type the rest of the scene, which gave me some fresh momentum and added clarity.

• 4 hours is a long time :) By the end of my work sessions, my brain was beat! I think, at least for many of us, long work sessions are something you develop like any skill or exercise. If you want to run a marathon, you don’t start by trying to run 26 miles. You build up to it. So if you want to do longer work sessions and have the time, but are struggling to do it, build up to it. If you’re used to only doing 30-minute work sessions, start there. Then, maybe after a week of consistency, aim for 45 minutes or an hour. And so on. The goal is to build a sustainable rhythm. We want to write many books over our career, not just go ham on one magnum opus and call it a day. As my schedule is currently, I couldn’t write 4 hours every day. But when I have time off, or on a weekend, maybe I’ll start aiming for 3, to give myself plenty of time to warm up, let the work have the time it needs, but hopefully not feeling quite so spent after 😄

  
  

For the first draft, the aim is to just get a completed draft on paper, no matter how rough. But those of you working on your second draft, I encourage you to experiment a little! If you find something that works, obviously do that thing! But if there are days that the work isn’t coming quite as easily, or as you’re trying to work out your process, don’t be afraid to vary your approach. The second draft is still an early draft and there will be plenty of new discoveries as you go along. Longer sessions let me have more concentrated time within my story world and showed me new characters that I needed, my protagonist’s internal arc, and fixed several narrative problems I was facing. 

We can't always force the results we would like out of our writing sessions, but we can come to learn a general rhythm that works best for us. Of course, life happens and we have to adjust our expectations accordingly, but I was very pleased with the results that 4 hours a session yielded. Moving forward, I’ll be keeping to my constraints of about 90 minute sessions while aiming at maybe 3 hour sessions when time allows. Beyond that, I’m glad to know I can make substantial progress with 4 hour sessions when I’m feeling the pressure of impending deadlines.  

Happy writing! (And experimenting!)