Tori Pearmain

Whatever way you look at it, writing a novel is hard. You need an idea you believe in, the skills to structure your novel and create relatable characters, and frequent doses of perseverance. Even prolific authors who have sold hundreds of thousands of copies of their books talk about how sometimes they don’t like writing. So it’s unsurprising that writing advice has become such a huge business. You will find thousands of courses, workshops, podcasts, blog posts and videos about how to improve various aspects of writing and produce that bestselling novel, not to mention the many books about writing books that are on the market. Despite the vast selection available, I’ve waded through a lot of advice that I simply cannot do and I suspect there are other spoonies out there who have experienced the same. (For those who don’t know what spoon theory is, read this post.) Here are my thoughts on some of the most popular pieces of writing advice that I cannot put in to practice and what has worked for me instead.

The writing advice that hasn’t worked with my chronically ill life

1. Write every day. This is the hardest to own up to because it’s the one I would love to be able to do most. I have a full-time job and most of my weekday evenings are spent horizontal on the sofa or in bed, clawing back spoons so that I’m able to make it into work the next day. That compulsory rest time pushes everything else to the weekend including chores, life admin, and seeing friends and family. Realistically, the weekend is generally when the magic combination of a spare few hours and the energy to write come together. If I bank up enough energy at the weekend, I might be able to write for half an hour on Monday or Tuesday evening as well. Those who don’t understand chronic fatigue may think I’m putting things off. But I’ve lived the dangerous reality of pushing myself each day for several weeks and it taking months to get my health back on track. Even my love of writing and drive to write a novel isn’t worth that.
2. Wake up an hour earlier to write or write and go to bed an hour later. I am quite lucky when it comes to sleep and my chronic pain. My sleep is disturbed once or twice a month by all-over body pain or particularly bad stomach cramps. When this happens I know I need to prioritise rest more than usual for the next day or two and then I’m usually back to the same level of energy that I had before. I have other chronically ill friends for whom sleep constantly evades them and adds another layer of tiredness to their already fatigued body. In either scenario, reducing sleep for the period of time required to write a chunk of a novel is likely to have an overall impact on health. Avoiding a big delay to your work being complete, like a big health crash, is imperative. This piece of advice is often touted as a “you can magic up time!” catch-all that anyone can do. Rest assured, there are plenty of good reasons why giving up sleep may not be the right approach for you.
3. Blast through your novel in a month. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has given many people the momentum and community of support they need to start and finish a book. There’s a long history of authors who have sequestered themselves away for long periods of time to get a novel finished, such as through a writing retreat or, at the more extreme end, booking a hotel room for a few weeks. What all of these methods have in common is they involve you accepting major disruption to your normal routine for a limited period of time. I’m quite familiar with disruption to routine. My body frequently says no when I want it do something, whether it’s washing my hair or going out for dinner with a friend. The prolonged disruption to routine, however, isn’t something that would be good for me. I have little adjustments around my house that make things easier for me which wouldn’t be in another place. I monitor my steps and know how long it takes me to get to my local shop and pharmacy, so that I can judge whether I have the energy to walk there or not. Having been chronically ill for a few years, I’m now a pretty good judge of how much rest I need to build into my week in order to be able to go places and see friends. Even if I could create circumstances that meant I didn’t have to work for six weeks, I would still have to build in rest, make sure I kept up my stamina by walking the right amount, and have the control over my meals to make sure nothing my stomach can’t digest got into my food. It’s the same reason why holidays became a lot more difficult to navigate after becoming ill. What’s more, with the rest I need, chances are six weeks wouldn’t be enough. This is all without mentioning the costs associated with this method.

What’s worked instead

1. Consider writing to be your third priority. The best piece of advice I’ve had on writing came from a fellow disabled author. As a writer, what is most important is that you have enough money for the necessities and your health is good enough for you to be able to practice writing. These are prerequisites to you making time to write and sometimes they will take up all of your time. That is absolutely fine. I’ll say it again if that’s what it takes to convince you! Prioritising your health first and ensuring you have enough money to live on are important parts of your writing life.
2. Strive to cultivate faith in your writing practice. The first year after being diagnosed with a chronic illness was a huge learning curve in working out how to listen to my body and act in the way that was best for it. Some weeks, I feel pretty good and can manage work, writing and socialising. Other weeks, I barely manage one of those things. Sometimes writing has had to take a backseat. After my first symptoms began with a vengeance, I didn’t write for a year and four months. But I still considered myself a writer and, when my body was ready, I came back to writing. Since then, I’ve had breaks of a few days, weeks, a month. And that’s ok, because now I have proven time and again that at some point, I will push on with writing my novel. Give your writing the respect it deserves by ensuring you keep everything saved, even a couple of sentences of an early idea. Reflect on your writing from time to time so you can marvel at what you’ve achieved. And when your ready, show your work to a trusted reading buddy who will root for your work, so they can celebrate it too.
3. Mix the parts you have to push through with fun stuff. There are different parts to the writing process that every author has to move through: initial ideas, first drafts, editing. I’ve yet to come across an author who enjoys every bit of it and that makes complete sense. Each of these ideas require different skills and will play to the strengths of different personalities. During those times when you feel like you’re having to slog through writing, find the odd fun thing to do to keep writing fun. It could be a writing workshop, going to an author talk, picking up a writing magazine and trying a few exercises from it, or giving yourself permission to write a couple of pages of anything you like. A massive help for me has been the Criptic Arts Writing Salons which are free online monthly writing workshops for disabled authors based in the UK. Trying something new in a supportive group often gets me out of any writing funk.

For those of you who struggle to write with chronic illness, I hope this post shows that there’s another pathway to achieving what you’d like to. Look out for more posts from me as I document my journey to becoming a published author. If you’d like me to expand on anything in this post, please leave a comment.