The university where I teach has a wonderful program they offer every January and March called Writer’s Boot Camp. It’s a full week during which we are given space and time to write with no distractions–no e-mail, no phones, no talking. The Boot Camp provides breakfast, lunch, and snacks, so we don’t have to take time to cook or scrounge food. It provides a staff member from the university’s writing center, in case we want to talk through some problems or get help with a draft. It provides a comfortable room filled with people who are writing and who together create an energy and creativity that practically vibrates in the room. Most importantly (for me), it provides a schedule.
I am good at carving out time to write. Even when I am at my busiest, I can usually find at least 30 minutes a day for activities related to creative writing, whether plotting, researching, or actually writing. However, I relish long, uninterrupted stretches to really immerse myself in the world I am building, and Boot Camp offers this. What’s more, the Camp director tells us when to take a break, and for me, this has been a revelation. It turns out that if I press on past my natural break time, I enter an amazing zone of creativity.
Left to my own devices, I take a short break roughly every hour. I usually hit a natural stopping point–the end of a chapter, or a conversation, or a paragraph–and it seems reasonable, productive even, to do some stretches or get a drink or make a quick call. I get back to work promptly, so I’ve never felt my pattern of break-taking was a problem. On the contrary, I might have argued that I had perfected the ideal writing rhythm.
At Boot Camp, the writing sessions are 75-90 minutes. On the shorter end, this is only fifteen minutes longer than I would work outside of Camp, but I’ve discovered that the extra time makes a world of difference. I think these extended sessions are effective for me for two reasons. First, I don’t stop at natural stopping points, like the end of a chapter. I keep going, and then the break comes after I’ve begun something new. Stopping in the middle or at the beginning means that when I return to work, I can begin immediately. I don’t have to rev up and think about how to start. I just write.
Second, sometimes the extra time feels a little uncomfortable. I really want a break. I have to resist walking away from my computer or, worse, clicking away from my document into the deep, dark void of the Internet. In resisting and being just a little uneasy, I often find myself accessing a remote part of my mind, a place where good ideas wait. Postponing break time leads me to this remote and wonderful idea place.
During this month’s Boot Camp, I’m in the very early stages of work on a new novel. This means that in every writing session I am making up people and places and problems. Yesterday, in that uneasy extra time before the morning break, I invented a legend; as I waited for lunch, I figured out what motivates one of my main characters; and in the pre-break moments of the afternoon, I solved a sticky problem in my plot. In each case, the burst of creativity came during the extra time.
Boot Camp ends tomorrow, and I will return to the regular business of my life. I will provide my own meals, I will fit writing in to a schedule crowded with a range of commitments, and I will decide for myself when to take a break. All time is not equal, and my Boot Camp experience has revealed that the extra push before a break can be the most productive, most imaginative, most valuable time. As I structure my own writing sessions, I will push past comfort into that remote creative space in my head. Just fifteen more minutes.