Josh Jackson Author

People often like to talk about how writing is done. And as writers we often get asked by both readers and other writers, “what’s your writing process?” “How is this ‘writing’ thing done?”

It’s interesting to hear everyone’s responses. Some folks find it helpful to have a routine, or feel that the best time to write is in the morning. And then there are writers who simply listen to the muse and write when she beckons.

For me, I tend to be flexible. I don’t like to stifle the muse when she speaks. But right now, I do have to keep to a bit of a routine. Let me explain.

I’m not exactly rolling in cash. So when my laptop screen broke in spring of 2024, I did not have the extra money to get it fixed. And certainly there’s no money to replace the whole machine. Only option, use the public computers at my local libraries.

The public library is a terrible environment for writing, like a lot of public libraries these days. The noise is crazy, and the distractions constant. A better environment is the local community college library, which is open to the public as well. It’s a proper academic study environment. Most of the time it’s dead quiet, not even the outside noise gets in, and they offer several rooms where you can close the door for more peace.

At first I was using the bus and walking everywhere it didn’t go, and so I was on that schedule. Now I’m biking, bussing, and walking, so I can be more flexible.

Regardless how I get there, since summer of 2024 I’ve come every weekday and spent about three hours working on my stories in a library.

I usually arrive by 10:30 a.m. and leave no later than about 1:30 p.m. Mostly I write, churning out up to three thousand words each session. Of course, not every day is all writing, and I do have a life, but at least half, if not all, of those three hours are spent writing.

Today I did about 2,500 words, and then switched over to this little piece, something I’ve been thinking about for a few days. My current project finally reached completion of the first draft, about 80,000 words. A full novel, my first. While that’s exciting, it’s also a daunting amount of work I’ve set myself up for in the editing process.

And that’s what I do when I’m done writing or have had enough for the day. Sometimes my hands and wrists hurt and I just have to stop. Our bane of carpal, arthritis. So some days I’m just sitting there, reading mostly, and occasionally typing an edit.

But I show up. That’s the most important thing. I just make sure to show up. I may not be a good writer, or I may be a terrible writer, but no one can say I didn’t show up and make the effort.

How to stay this motivated, forcing myself to work on my stuff every day even if I’m in no mood?

Well, in my past life I was a staff photojournalist. You have to be able to produce content on demand, and you are producing content every day. Whether you’re in the mood or not.

Over time you develop a sort of creative work ethic, in which you learn how to almost effortlessly turn on the muse, to know how to spur her to speak to you.

Not to say that we didn’t reach burnout. I recall at least three times hitting that wall and wanting nothing to do with a camera. Then the next workday dawned and I either showed up and created more, or lost my job.

When you have no choice but to be creative and produce content every day, all day, no matter what, you indeed develop a work ethic around it. You learn how to give enough to not overdo it, but not hold back so much that your work suffers. And over time you learn to be more efficient, and how to do things in ways that save effort or don’t require a high degree of creativity. A lot of our work was merely documentary, needing no artistry. And hey, we were daily newspaper photojournalists in a small city; not every shot had to be a Pulitzer winner.

It was a much harder job than I realized it would be. The physical demands were quite high, as well as the psychological demands. The risks were sometime daily, and often to my very life.

It’s just a bit safer to do this writing thing, that’s for sure.

But now, being in this position of trying to make a go of writing, that work ethic, that level of motivation required to keep creating even when you’re not in the mood, is serving me quite well.

So this is all sort of “old hat” in a sense. Only instead of being suddenly sent to breaking news or being buried with assignments, my biggest worry is how disruptive the library will be today, and whether I’ll be able to fight through it and do decent work.

And don’t worry—I am saving up for the laptop repair. This public library thing worked for a time, but now with so much more to worry about than just writing, I need the flexibility and ease of having my own machine again.

But do I simply switch off once I log off? Nope. Outside of the “office” I keep small notebooks or use phone apps to take notes as I read through drafts. I convert the current project to a .epub format, and do read-throughs on my phone as if I’m reading the eBook. It’s a great way to preview edits and see how the final product will look and work.

I prefer to take notes on paper since as we all know, backing up files isn’t a guarantee. And I don’t know about you, but trying to properly type on a phone screen is a lesson in massive frustration. My pen and paper don’t mis-type a letter because the screen didn’t register a tap. And since I’m from that distant past called the 1970’s I actually recall writing short stories by hand on yellow legal pads. I don’t mind it at all. It’s familiar.

I did switch to a typewriter for a few years, teaching myself to type, but by about 1994 or so I finally had a PC to work on. I still fondly recall the dot-matrix printer buzzing out lines of my short stories. I never thought that one day I’d still be using notepads but that my books would never be ink-on-paper.

So, fellow writers, what’s your writing process look like? How do you approach the work ethic? How do you stay motivated, creative, and engaged with the process even when feeling burned out?

And I suppose most importantly for those of us of certain ages, did the PC in the past, or eBooks now, change your writing process?