26 Comments

Firstly, I love that photo of the Costa Rican Jungle. I lived in Costa Rica (Jaco, Playa del Coco and Arenal) for 3 years. It's beautiful. I'm wondering if it has factored into your thoughts on Utopia/Protopia. It certainly has for me!

Sedondly, I know that I am just not able to focus on being alone with a computer for so many hours a day. I'm very social and like to be up and moving around a lot more. I find I work best in coffee shops, in classes (even when I am the teacher or facilitator of that class), or by taking breaks to listen to podcasts and cook. Setting a schedule and having accountability deffinitely is key for me. Part of why I like being on Substack is that it forces (er, facilitates) regularity. I know I have something "due" every Monday/ Thursday and Friday, so I get it done just to hold myself accountable. It's very helpful to have those deadlines and schedules!

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I so agree with you about having deadlines on Substack! As for Costa Rica, it's so cool you lived there! We spent a month there and had such a wonderful time, though we were primarily on the East coast and I hear the West coast is even more amazing. It was pretty rugged where we were. I do think the jungle setting inspires me greatly in my utopian work though. Whenever people ask if I am a mountain or an ocean person I always say I'm a botany person. Anywhere with lots of lush greenery is my favorite place.

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Endel looks really interesting. I sampled a few tracks on Spotify (feel very reticent to do 7-week sub trials atm!). Would you say it's worth it? Better than starting it off on Spotify and letting the radio there do the work (I find this great for eg Brian Eno).

Asana is great! We use Airtable for the editorial calendar for On and Reads, which works really well. Wondering what tools others here use esp if you have any collaborators on posts. Maybe we need a calendar inbuilt into the Substack Editor?!

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It's worth it for me. It always keeps me in the zone! I bought a life long pass for $120 and feel very good about it.

I would love a calendar built into the editor!!!!

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I would love to and I tried. It appears to me that only you can change it from your side. All I can do is unsubscribe from Novelleist as robinbullard@icloud.com (RoBull), and then resubscribe as rubenbix@icloud.com (Ruben Bix) with a new subscription which will cost me extra. Maybe you can fix? Sorry to ask you to change it for me but it would be great if you can...

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For a structure-averse, inspiration-driven mortal, a highly-organized, task-oriented, methodologist like yourself seems like a separate animal species. That said, I wrote the first draft of my serial novel while I had a 40-hr/w job, and like you, I was determined to get to my desk early each morning and work until I had to run out the door. (No therapeutic soaks in a bathtub for me!) I quit that full-time job in part to be able to finish the book which now is being released two chapters a week on substack. I'd love it if you took a look!! And I feel less shy about asking now that I see you subscribe to over 200 substacks! Mornings are the best time of day for me to write and I resent any interruption before eleven or so. These days, it's the chapter illustrations that are driving me to my desk and taking most of my time. I'm not an organized person but, if things are going well and a good result is forming in front of me, I can spend an entire day at one task. (I'm lucky that my boring job is just three days per week now, though those days are long). Anyway, I do love that you shared your system. I subscribed to the Novelleist before I started publishing my book so don't be confused by the pen name which is different than the one I used for your interesting column. It's here: thenaturepreserve@substack.com

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Oh that looks so cool, thank you for sharing it with me! I think you can change the email address associated with your Novelleist subscription, so that your commenting account links to all of the fiction you are doing at The Nature Preserve. That would probably help a lot with discoverability!!!

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Love this post.

"I read until I can’t help but write" - I did this for a while and then stopped doing it, chastising myself instead for squandering valuable writing time on reading, but I think you're so right. Going to try this again for the next few days.

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Reading is my best source of inspiration! Especially when I read a wide variety of topics, really expanding my mind!

Good luck!

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Bravo on your amazing discipline. I bounce from thing to thing all day. Depending on what has my attention and passion at the time. Or what needs doing. I have spans of “obsession” that can last days or years. They have allowed me to record an album, write a novel, crank out hundreds of short stories, learn many things, etc. But I couldn’t do the same thing every day. I tend to follow my interests. Fortunately, they are many! 🤣

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You are a very good writer and musician so that definitely worked for you. I was always afraid of being a master of none! But then, that’s why I’m taking up adjacent hobbies now. I have the vocation (writing!) and the hobbies (all the other arts!)

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I think that is a great plan. Music is my foundation. What I am best at. Writing is a later in life hobby. But I have several other hobbies. Then I never get bored. 🙂 I just don’t have enough time for them all. 🤣

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Love your ideas. I tend to write at the end of the day, around 4:00. That routine began because my work day started at 6:00 and I did not have free time during the day. My employment has changed since I began writing in early 2018, so now I have morning hours open, but I continue to enjoy writing at the end of my day. With so much to learn on Substack I'm using the morning hours to read other's work and try to figure out how best to grow my newsletter.

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Love reading this. I'm a process/systems type, so always get frustrated when writers who publish are like, "I write, you know? For like hours." Not helpful.

Know what you mean about the 1st draft. Read something from Terry Pratchett, is that the 1st draft is you telling yourself the story. Blew my mind, and immediately made the initial drafts on subsequent scenes that much easier to do.

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Oh I know. That is so not helpful!!!!

And I love that framing of it: "just you telling yourself the story." But then, the whole book is kind of like that, I think? I definitely write the story I want to read. And I have no idea if others will like it!

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I treat it this way: that first draft is present tense like I'm describing how things happen, just me and other me sitting around going through a blow-by-blow of "then what happens" kind of thing. Then the next pass I rip that all apart and go with dialogue, as if I'm reading it to someone who's not me.

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Oh, that’s very interesting!!!!!! Do you actually read it out-loud to someone? Or just imagine that you are?

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I'll read it back to myself, see how it sounds? Find a lot of things that trip us up as writers get ironed out when we read them even to ourselves, and go, "Yeah, that? Is not good."

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Thank you so much for sharing your rituals, Elle. This came at a perfect time for me. As a chronically ill writer, I've really struggled with finding the energy to scratch my writing itch (and y'know, do my work) without making myself unwell. I literally had to sit down with my husband at the weekend and come up with a plan so I can work more sustainably. It can be really challenging when your brain and your body just forces you to stop, but you kind of want to push through to finish what you're working on.

This week I'm starting to go back and experiment with routines and rituals that are flexible enough to me to work for when I'm not able to produce much at all, and I found a great deal of comfort and inspiration in reading about your routines. Thank you.

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Interested to know how you got on with this Natasha?

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Hi Hannah,

I've been out of the country and my own set-ups for a while (visiting my mother-in-law in Germany) and I've found it very hard to have routines here. But I'm trying to pay attention to a few little things I want to make sure I do every day, and I've figured out what I want to do when I get back home!

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Oh yes, it's all about finding the rituals that work best for us. In Mason' Curry's book Daily Rituals, my biggest takeaway is that we all do something a little different. But yours reminded me of Agatha Christie's ritual, which was "write when her husband was at work." They traveled a lot so it wasn't easy for her to have a routine. So she just wrote when he was gone!

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Love that!

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Aug 23, 2022
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I definitely do that with my work. And I’m trying to unlearn that habit as we speak!

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Aug 22, 2022
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Right. It’s the 10,000 hours rule. As long as you keep doing it, for a long time, you get there!

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Aug 22, 2022
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Mmmm... that's a good one too!

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