JOHNNY DEPP'S BATHROBE

I have no idea how to write a book. I’m fascinated by how other people do it, but there is clearly no
consensus. So here’s my method: three pages a day. Today I’m on page 36.

My first book took me eight years to write, and the second one took 15 months, and both experiences
were completely different, and now I’m on book number three, which I need to have done in 13 months,
which for some writers (Susan McBride) would seem like a piece of cake. I am not of their number.

So I get up every day around 5:40 a.m., my Inner Clock yelling, “Wake up! The house is quiet!” and I
drag myself out of bed, promising myself a nap later in the day and then I head downstairs and turn on
the coffee machine and computer and fight the urge to clean the kitchen. Then I write.

My goal is not to write beautifully. My goal is to write 3 pages. I might get on a roll and write a flowing
paragraph or a long conversation (dialogue is great because it uses up a lot of room) but usually it’s a
sentence, a refill on the coffee, another sentence, take out the garbage (which isn’t exactly cleaning the
kitchen), another two sentences, empty the dishwasher (getting close to cleaning the kitchen), half a page
of dialogue, wipe off the counters (which looks a lot like cleaning the kitchen), then a sudden and
possibly exciting chapter ending, something I try to do near the top of a page, so I can put a page break
in, which is like getting a free page. I can say I wrote three pages that day, when, if you want to be
picky, it’s actually only 2.3 pages, with a lot of white space. Ending with the words: To Be Continued . . .

If all the stars are aligned, I get these pages done before the other creatures of the house arise and
start talking and/or whining (if I’m lucky, the humans talk and the dogs whine, and if I’m not, they all
whine) and demand breakfast, help with diapers and buttons and the tying of shoelaces. Plus the locating
of important legal documents and stuffed animals (Author as Divining Rod). Later, when our beloved au
pair starts working, I return to those pages, and if they’re still not done, I’ll return to them again late in
the day, when everyone’s asleep.

3 pages. That’s it. While it’s not drudgery, it’s not always fun. Because most of my Inner Genius, when it
comes out at all, comes out in the 6th or 7th draft. Or the 11th or 12th. So I have to suffer through some
really pedestrian, maudlin, cringe-inducing, or just plain dull writing while I get the first draft cranked out.

Why 3 pages? Because with my last book I did 2 pages a day, and it worked fine until 3 months before
deadline, when I was on the 5th draft but it was still a big mess and then I had to hide from my children
--at Christmas time--in an upstairs bathroom to wrestle it into shape, and I came out looking like Jack
Nicholson at the end of The Shining (or Johnny Depp in Secret Window)(there was a bathrobe involved,
and really scary hair). I don’t want to spend next summer hiding in the bathroom, so I’m upping my early
production quota to 3 pages a day. I’d try for 4 pages, but then I’d look like a Stephen King character
year-round.

Because it’s not just those 3 pages, of course; there’s the research, revision, and plotting (also known as
outlining, but I try to avoid the “O” word). There’s daydreaming and night dreaming and doodling.
Nancy’s partial to Post-its. My weakness is dry erase boards. It’s the preschooler in me. I need pictorial
representations of this mess that will eventually run into the hundreds of pages. I do have a 3-page
document ambitiously entitled “Plot” that starts out as a detailed description of what I’ve written so far,
then decomposes into “and a bunch of other stuff happens and then whatsisname shows up, someone
else dies, and somehow they find the thingie.” (As you’ve figured out by now, my editor does not, like
Nancy’s, demand book proposals. Synopses. Plots. Outlines. There is a God.)

Lee Child, who writes fabulous thrillers, told me, when I was in my Jack Nicholson/Johnny Depp bathrobe
phase last year, that everyone’s second book is the hardest, but that the third book writes itself.
It’s possible he was being kind, throwing some rope to a drowning woman. He’s that kind of guy.
It’s also possible that his books write themselves, but that my books, if left alone, would take
themselves to the movies and binge on popcorn. In any case, I’m not taking chances. I’m slogging
onward at my 3-pages-a-day pace, 7 days a week. In spite of the Inner Witch that cackles at me,
saying, “it’s all shit! You’ll be deleting it all tomorrow! Hahahahahahahaha!”

. . . To Be Continued . . .

Harley Jane Kozak

Comments

[Cornelia Read]

"Fight the urge to clean the kitchen"? Wow, now THERE'S a sentence I have never uttered/thought. "Clean the urge to fight the kitchen," more like.

However, I am highly familiar with the "it's all shit! You'll be deleting it all tomorrow!" interior voiceover.

[nancy]

Just the kitchen? Harley, that's pretty good! I used to have a housekeeper who came every Thursday, so I fought the urge to clean all week until Wednesday night when we all did the pre-Janet pick-up. Now that we moved (and oh, do I miss you, Janet!) I haven't faced the ordeal of hiring someone new, someone perfect, someone---well, who's Janet. So I clean almost every day. It's part of my procrastination routine. My house looks fabulous. My garden is the envy of my nieghbors.

I wrote my first book with a baby on my lap. She drooled into the keyboard, and I typed one-handed. Between us, we killed two portable typewriters (yeah, I'm dating myself, huh?) during the creation of a 612-page historical romance. Why didn't I think of hiding in the bathroom??

3 pages? I like it! It's managable, yet it's a challenge every day. You go, girl!

Nancy

[Jean]

Harley, 3 pages a day – easy to say but can be hard to do. I'm on my second book in a series and I’m finding it hard to make it fresh for the reader. (I hate that) I wrote the first book while my baby was getting up 4 to 5 time a night. During the day I napped when the baby napped.

When I'm stuck in my writing I also walk around the house and pick it up, then I head back to the computer.

Jean

[Sonja]

Thought I was the only one who had to hide in the bathroom to get any work done. :-)

[Mark]

Really makes me appreciate how hard writing can be.

Have I mentioned I like this blog?

[Karen]

I had a writer friend tell me that if I wrote 4 pages a day, I would have a book in 3 months. So I tried it. And it took me 5 months, because I had to do stuff like go on the Queen Mary 2 for a travel press trip and take an hour every week to watch "The Amazing Race" besides basically having a life. But it was definitely doable. And I agree with Lee Child about the second book. I thought mine was pretty good but my editors gave me pages of notes, so I'm back to the drawing board, trying to recapture what I did in the first book. Problem is, my mood is different now (the first book was written four years ago!) so I have to regress. Which creates all sorts of other issues...

[JJ MacMillan]

I edit in the morning and write at night when it's easier to believe that every word I utter is priceless. I can get eight to ten pages out before 1AM.

Then, in the morning, I put on a hockey mask and pick up my machete and cut it down to three or four pages.

I actually have "Omit Needless Words" on a sticky attached to my monitor, but I tend to only see it in the morning.

[kitty]

I know this will sound naive ... it does even to me ... but it's a relief to know that I'm not the only one who struggles with each and every syllable.

[ovagirl]

Love love love these posts about your writing processes. Inspiring, encouraging and still entertaining. Fabulous.

[Andi]

And somehow they find the thingie" is how I want EVERY book to end.

And I KNOW I know I know you have 3 kids but Harley, I still bet that you look better in that ratty bathrobe than I do on my best day. And you're damn lucky you're so cute and adorable or I'd @$%&^!( HATE you for it.