Fitting in creative writing around full time working is tricky, however I’ve tried a few tricks of my own to make it possible.
‘The only way to write is to write‘, but have found working full time with a long commute that time just falls away into Twitter and TV if I’m not careful. So I used some techniques I learnt from both academia and writing courses.
When I studied for my bachelor’s degree with the Open University, I studied by distance learning while working full time. I fitted in my studies around my job, doing my first module back in 2007.
I had a long commute back then, so similar to now. I was lucky in some ways, behind able to transfer some credits from my studies in Bristol a few years earlier to skip the first year, but that meant I was straight into getting my head around the second year chemistry theory.
To find time, I took advantage of the shift pattern I was working back then to study in rest days (6am starts were tough but had some advantages). I submitted tutor marked assessments about once a month, so was never far from the next deadline. Doing coursework wasn’t too bad as I could use annual leave to meet deadlines (with the odd extension) and then revise for end of module exams.
But for my final years’ project and lab project write-ups it was more demanding. Rather than answering questions in tutor marked assessments and learning the standard theory from the course books, I needed to create a piece of original work. For me, that made fitting these more open ended projects into a working week, and handing them in on time. So I had to create some tricks to move forward. At the time this was about chemistry, however this later provided a reasonable model for fitting in creative writing. Here’s how that worked.
1. Weekday sprint, weekend sessions
Thinking back to my OU lab write ups back in the noughties, I tried to do it all every day but that wasn’t practical. So midweek, I used to do tasks rather than tackle the big parts of the projects. I’d do simple things such as plot a graph and fill a table with results. At the weekend, I could sit down for longer sessions and do more brainy things such as plan the layout, write the text and fiddle around with the formatting. This way I felt like I met my expectations and didn’t feel crap about doing only a bit after work.
A few years ago when I finished my PhD I started to take my creative writing seriously. The trouble is, I had high expectations but not much practise in writing stories. I’d get that urgent need to feel like I’m a proper writer and expect myself to have something to immediately pitch to an agent and publisher to satiate this existential crisis. I found myself trying to sit down and churn out hundreds of words on say a Tuesday night after getting stuck in traffic on the way home. Reader, this didn’t work.
So I set about applying my distance learning strategy to creative writing. In the week I set myself tasks during the evenings and the odd lunchtime, and used the weekend for longer planning, editing and higher productivity things.
More specifically, during the week I aimed for one sentence a day minimum I wrote action, just typing what someone does in a scene to deal with obstacles in the way of their goal. These are small sessions of ten minutes to one hour. Most days I can do a couple of hundred words, a small push toward creating a story.
Then at the weekend it’s about churning out thousands of words. It’s also the time I think of character goals in the next scene, working out how they fit into my plot outline and putting in details like character mannerisms, sights, smells, the feel of the world to bring it to life. These are longer sessions of one hour up to a full working day, to really produce pages of story.
2. Finish it.
Like the Open University write ups, at the very least my writing needed to be a completed thing. Hopefully something I’m proud of, but more importantly a completed thing. If I’ve written it I could legitimately call myself a writer. Not just a collection of unfinished pieces, but a whole thing people can read. Using that mentality, I wrote my first short story since school: Tanker. It’s cli-fi (climate fiction), where a company have converted oil tankers to transport warm water from Africa to northern Europe, the heat difference between the warm water and the ambient used to produce electricity, but a pair of young elephants have snuck on board and the technician receiving the ship has to work out what to do about it. In hindsight I found out I’d made some errors: elephants are in fact matriarchal whereas in Tanker the female one’s father had been the head of the herd. Also the elephants talked, and talking animals aren’t to everyone’s taste. Nevertheless I created a thing that didn’t exist before. I was a writer.
3. Get Help
Like I said, I hadn’t written stories since school, I know a lot of writers get this before they get a writing habit going. I needed to get help . I’d written a short story but my goal was to write a novel, or a script. To be a professional writer, not just a hobbyist.
Here the lesson was from my PhD rather than my OU studies. Part of that was researcher development, where I put together a portfolio of reflections from seminars, workshops and a portfolio of my work. Here I wanted to make time for my writer development.
I got a copy of the UK Scriptwriter’s Survival handbook, which advises to split one’s writer time between writing, writer development and having a life / looking for inspiration. I was putting in time writing and living but not development.
I signed up for a screenwriting course with University of East Anglia using Futurelearn (fantastic resource), found out about character arcs, plotting, pitching and a taste of script formats. But, I’d never written a script before, so I wanted to write a longer story in prose to then adapt when I had time to familiarise with script writing software.
4. Push It
Real good. From short story to novel. I joined a local writing group, and did a 15-minute write from a prompt. Starting with ‘And now look at what you’ve made me do‘ I created a page or so about a pair of messy bloke private detectives tasked with looking for a monkey in Brittany. I may still write this. However, I felt this was just writing about versions of me. I wanted to reach out of my comfort zone and write characters that feel real and different from each other. I started keeping a notepad in my pocket, a tip from a fiction writing course from the OU on futurelearn, to make notes on people watching and character ideas. I also have a diverse group of friends I’ve drawn inspiration from (hi friends!). I stuck with them being private detectives but needed something for them to investigate.
5. Use it
Like the line in Blade Trinity. I’d post a link to this but it’s preceded by blood and gore so I’ll leave it to you if you want to google the reference (basically Dracula is so bad that unsociable Blade becomes a mentor).
I used my screenwriting course to write character profiles for my two private detectives. As for something for them to investigate, during my PhD I created a character in my poem Graffiti Goddess, where a piece of Bristol street art comes to life and she rampages through the city.
From there I had the structure of a story. Putting as a log line: “A pair of private detectives take on a young witches case, but it concerns a rampaging deity”. Or from the other perspective, “a deity is summoned to the streets of Bristol but a pair of puny humans want to stop her”.
6. One draft, two drafts, three drafts, four
Using these techniques, and joining Writers HQ for a couple of one day retreats, I completed the first draft of what is my debut novel in summer 2018. I’m doing an editing your novel course with them, and have created a plan for a structural edit of the novel. I’m currently writing the second draft. So even though it’s a work in progress, it is nevertheless a novel.
I’m a writer and I write.
Joe Russell March 2020
Disclaimer: Other creative writing courses are available. I’m a member of Writer’s HQ and have done some Futurelearn courses but I’m not writing to publicise their products, do pick what resources feel right for you.
doph writes 