Small chunks and tapestries
And day two of the little 10x10 Experiment / Issue 1,436
Oh, hi friends!
One of the best parts about writing this newsletter is getting smart recommendations from other people.
Thought you might appreciate this advice on consistency, from my friend Virginia Smith:
It's not quite 10x10 but thought you would appreciate that I've been slowly but surely chugging through The Power Broker thanks to a system of just committing to reading 10 pages a day, which is exactly enough to make progress without getting overwhelmed and quitting <3 <3
Ten pages a day is brilliant! Could even be another fun way of trying out the 10x10 experiment.
More from Virginia:
My reading system of setting a timer for 15 minutes in the morning or committing to a certain low-ish page number per day has suddenly gotten me back in the habit of reading books after YEARS of barely doing it, I now shout it from the rooftops hahaha.
Also grateful this newsletter allows me to stay in touch with friends like Virginia; we worked together 15 years ago at The Daily Beast.
Newsletters aren’t projectiles you launch into the world. The best ones are threads, stringing one person to another, one thought to another, and create a tapestry you will never be able to fully see.
The 10x10 Experiment — Day 2
My recap for posterity:
Ran 3 miles and realized my body needs time to acclimate to warm weather. Wow. I was tomato red after 30 seconds.
Wrote my 6 pages — another “life” scene for a character from my musical that won’t make it into my musical but told me more about who she was and the weird things she does, which is great because I will never in my life sit and write a biographical description of a character because that’s not how my brain works and I just realized this can be a new strategy and it seems very useful!! Also remembered the actual writing never takes as long as the internal debate leading up to writing. Another wow.
Read for an hour, starting Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell. (Heard about it from my friend Hurley Winkler’s wonderful Lonely Victories Substack.) Extremely good and applicable beyond novel-writing. (Although maybe I’ll write a novel this year? Idk!!!)
So I hit my 10 for today! Erm, yesterday. Getting on today, now. If anyone wants to share what they’re tallying up, I’m all ears!
And remember: Small chunks do the work for you.
Excited to hear what you think of Refuse To Be Done!
"The actual writing never takes as long as the internal debate leading up to writing."
PUT IT ON A MUG!!!!
Having stared at on in my dresser for months, this year I read a 930 page historical fiction novel (The Eighth Life: For Brilka) because I committed to three pages a night (and of course, you get hooked in, you read more...). I will add that the writing on those 930 pages was SO SMALL that I had to wear special reading glasses each time. It was worth it — I got to learn a bunch of Soviet history that i've wanted to learn for years. And those big, multi-generational yarns are satisfying, once in a while (though content warning throughout because: Soviet history)