The Book-Writing Toggle
Getting stuck is totally normal during the book writing journey. In fact, it can be useful—a time when the pace slackens and new ideas pop in. You get tired of the story, you abandon it and consider a new direction. But I don’t like it.
One easy way to allow myself to avoid being stuck is to toggle. Even when it all blows up, the writing life gets messy and ugly or becomes a dull slog, I keep writing.
What’s the toggle? A new kind of dance for creatives, perhaps—artists have used it a lot. That’s where I learned it, when painting. That way I don’t equate a manuscript’s current mess with my own inability or my life. I don’t take the low points as personally.
To just keep writing. Such an ideal to strive towards, right?
Toggle!
I own two easels in my art studio. I practice having two paintings in process at any one time. This does not work for everyone, but I find great relief in being able to toggle. I always run into blocks when painting—I get tired, I get bored, I get frustrated. So then I switch to the other painting, work on that for a while. It demands a different part of my visual brain, it presents different problems to work out.
When I learned this toggling technique in art, I immediately wanted to try it in writing. I decided I’d toggle between what I call the gathering and structuring stages. They are very different, not unlike two paintings on two easels. For the gathering stage you use certain writing tools. For structuring, completely different ones. They each employ different parts of the creative brain, too.
Here’s how I toggle: I’m drafting, ruminating on ideas for the new book, sketching out characters and locations, researching. That’s all gathering, like putting things in a big basket. I can do this for a while, then I get ancy. All this stuff! How’s it ever going to make sense to a reader?
That’s when I know to toggle. I switch to structuring. It uses a completely separate part of my brain, loves analyzing what I have and creating a flow. I locate the holes to fill.
After a while, new ideas start flooding in. It’s very natural, and it turns on the other part of my brain—so I toggle back to gathering!
What stage are you in now?
Here’s the way to make this work: know what stage you’re in.
If you know, you can relax! For instance, if you’re gathering, you know you don’t have to make sense of anything structure-wise. A total relief, to just being able to write and explore without creating any linear logic.
A few road signs that alert me—if these feelings or tasks appeal, I know I’m gathering:
I’m playing around with an idea or two, not sure where it’s going to go, and that’s fine—I like the openness of not knowing.
I’m free writing a lot, getting those ideas into very rough scenes.
I don’t feel ready to edit yet. I want to keep it loose.
I have research or interviews yet to do. I’m putting in placeholders to remind me (like the journalist’s TK which marks a place that needs more).
I’m resisting the idea of structuring my book yet. It even makes me mad, sad, or anxious.
I honor gathering. So should you.
I’ve watch thousands of writing students move through this stage, and I honor it because it permits our less linear and more subconscious self to feed a story. It operates without censorship and without knowing sequence or logic. Hooray for random!
You’ve experienced this, I’m sure: a nudge to write down a cool idea, that character who won’t leave you alone, some body of information you really want to share. Or maybe an experience that changed you. I start many books with these kinds of inner prompts—it’s the gathering part of myself saying, Get to it! A story awaits!
I allow this stage to be unformed and free. And my books benefit.
So many readers have written me that the endings of my novels, especially Last Bets, is so unexpected! Where did that come from? Gathering. I didn’t know the ending either, when I started.
Are you comfortable with this kind of randomity in your writing?
If you’re a plotter . . .
Some of you prefer starting with a plan. You love the solid outline in hand before you begin to write. You like to ruminate through complete scenes, know your ending, have a clear idea of chapter 1.
Maybe you’re like my student who was an MIT professor writing about his love of math. He took over three long tables at one of my writing retreats, wrote his gathered ideas on index cards, and arranged them into a flow.
The ideas came first.
I love plotters. I sometimes—although rarely—receive a book idea more fully formed and can chart its path easily before I write it. But more often, and this has been true of my students too, I need to explore. I have to gather ideas in a random way to let my books surprise me, go out-of-the-box.
Islands—gathering tool #1
I believe good books have both an inner and outer story. In other words, there’s an outer plot, a sequence of things that happen or points being made. There’s also an inner meaning for each plot point, what it changes in the character or (if nonfiction) the reader. Gathering allows both to grow.
I am talking to those who believe the great plot or brilliant research is everything. Not so. It has to have meaning to your reader. “Outer story” information is crucial, but it’s only half the picture.
The beauty of gathering is that the meaning, the inner story, emerges almost organically.
I write in islands. Islands, a term coined by Ken Atchity of A Writer’s Time, are single scenes, or snippets of information, or a setting description, or a character sketch. They do not necessarily have a beginning, middle, and end. Writers who let themselves initially create in islands rather than via an outline include the inner story more readily, I’ve noticed. Why? Because islands are not gathered in a linear fashion. They appear in random bits. That’s how inner story works too—it’s rarely linear.
If I can free myself from having to write my book in sequence, or chronology, islands can be tackled in any order. To me, this is the real beauty of islands. If I feel like drafting a scene for chapter 10, even if it’s not the next chapter up on the outline, I can do it.
Brainstorming list—gathering tool #2
I love the Brainstorming List. It’s my favorite way to counteract writer’s block. I keep track of any and all ideas, questions, and concerns about my story. I try to add ideas to it each writing session. If I have enough, it’s money in the bank. I always have something to write about.
I keep this list in my writer’s notebook or on my desktop. Or on my phone, then transfer to the main list.
Each writing session I choose an item from the list. I set a timer or a page count goal and begin. I write islands around that item from the list, but I often expand to other ideas. One scene leads to new understanding about a character’s backstory. Another leads to needed research about location. It keeps it fun.
I try to write one challenging item and one or two lighter ones each day.
When to toggle
In the early months of writing a new book, it’s not a bad idea to stay in the gathering phase for a while. Mine it as deeply as you can. Usually there’s a moment of frustration that arises, even boredom. Like in my art studio, I recognize this as the time to toggle.
In my writing life, it tells me I’m ready to structure.
Sometimes it can come as overwhelm: the sheer number of ideas! All those pages! I get a craving for organization.
Here are my signs that I’m ready to toggle:
I begin to wonder, What’s the point of this story?!!
I get overwhelmed: too many islands, ideas, chapters, research, or information. No longer fun to keep accumulating.
I get curious. Maybe I wonder how to start the book—what chapter 1 will be. Or what I might design for the ending.
I get a visual of a clear way to put pieces together.
I’m flummoxed about the murky middle and I need to test ideas on a storyboard.
I realize (horror!) I have more than one story here. I wonder if I can include all of it in the same book.
Letters, journal entries, or important backstory (history) is waiting to be used, but I’m confused as to where these could slip in.
My favorite structuring tool is the storyboard. Here’s my video describing how I use it. Storyboards help you play with possible structures.
Do you enjoy structuring?
I often use outlines as a starting point, maybe because I’m hardwired from all those college classes. But the danger with an outline is this: our linear brain gets ahold of the book and decides the imposed order of the outlined topics is set in stone.
It becomes very hard to change.
Storyboards give me the freedom to not know the entirety of my story yet. They allow me to play with ideas and a possible structure before I commit to it by drafting hundreds of pages.
A good time- and energy-saver.
Storyboards are used by publishers as well as screenwriters. As a book doctor and editor, I was often hired to take a manuscript and analyze its structure. One project was for an agent in New York City. A fifth novel by a well-known writer (someone whose name you’d recognize) had been shopped to twelve major publishers. They all rejected it, saying the structure was not strong and the characters were interesting but didn’t evolve. So I came in as the structure analysis. I storyboarded her book and voila, the problem emerged. Two of the four characters had narrative arcs (inner stories) which stopped mid-book.
I’ve also been hired for storyboard sessions for nonfiction books written in house. A publisher will gather a dozen writers in a room for a day and we’ll storyboard the entire book project from ideas on a list (Brainstorming List!).
If you’re not already a storyboard fan, check it out. Storyboarding is a fast way to discover what’s working and what’s not working with your book. Even after it’s past drafting and fully revised, I use a storyboard to double check my structure.
Honor this stage too. Writing islands forever will keep you isolated from the joy of having a completely structured manuscript that others will also love.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
Use the markers listed above to think about the stage you’re in right now, with your writing project. Are you sailing along? Are you stuck, ready to toggle?
If you feel adrift, maybe it’s because you’re standing at the gateway of the next stage. You simply have to pick up different tools, a different approach, to walk through and begin.