Writing rhythms, word erosion

I've just returned from some time away from my desk, travelling along the south coast of Victoria, at the bottom of Australia, watching the power of the sea pounding the coastline, eroding away the land and continuously creating new shapes and lines and curves.

This reminded me of the way editing erodes our words, hopefully in a good way. Removing the unnecessary, changing the shape of sentences and paragraphs, creating new ways of seeing the story.

The regular movement of water and waves also made me think about the daily rhythms of writing and rewriting. I regularly listen to a podcast, So You Want To Be a Writer, which, in turn, regularly talks about writers' writing rhythms. Working in snatches of time, writing between 10am and 2pm, writing 2000 words a day. But it gets more complicated, doesn't it, when you are working on multiple pieces of writing. One SYWTBAW episode mentioned a writer who was writing two novels at once, and discussed the pros and cons of doing this. What if you are working on more than one kind of writing? I imagine there are many writers who, say, write freelance pieces or do copywriting for income while writing that great novel on the side.

I write both non-fiction and fiction, with the emphasis on the former, and always have multiple projects on the go. I quit an academic career in 2023 to focus completely on research and writing for a while. I cope with the many projects by dividing my days up between them. Monograph Monday is for preparing the materials, mostly 70+ oral history interviews, for my next history monograph (which I plan to actually write in 2025). Fiction Friday is for my current novel and other fiction related tasks, like short stories for competitions. Tuesday to Thursday are for all other non-fiction work, with each month prioritising one of the three journal articles and one book chapter I am currently working on. Scattered around the focus project are overseeing two special academic journal issues, helping coordinate a research network, attending a writing group, supervising my last PhD candidate, preparing talks and conference papers, putting together a collaborative funding application, supervising a research assistant, and so on and so forth. Weekends? While I prefer to leave that for things around the home or even going out, some time is inevitably given over to updating social media, listening to writing podcasts, and catching up on urgent tasks.

Fiction only gets one day? Yes, in terms of writing focus, but I read every day (at the moment mainly as research for my latest novel), and always jot down ideas as they come for Fiction Friday.

Compartmentalising my time works for me, for now. I know that on this day I will work on this task and just get on with it. But I cannot help wondering what it might be like to just work on one piece of writing every day and get it done faster, especially my novel... And I do hope you have found your best writing rhythm.