A Creative Method Used By Famous Novelists

“Novel writing is a rather uncommon endeavor and, when it is undertaken, appears quite susceptible to extinction.” 

– B.F. Skinner

At age 19, Irving Wallace wrote his first novel. His secret? A work chart that tracked how many hours he wrote a day. 

His charts included three parts:

  • The date he started each chapter
  • The date he finished it
  • The number of pages written in that period
Here’s an example of one of his charts:

A glimpse of Irving Wallace’s chart and how well he tracked it by the number of pages written. Source came from a study of self-control techniques by famous authors.

Since he was a self-employed contractor, Wallace felt the need to discipline himself with these charts. It motivated him to write. Or it discouraged him on days he didn’t do as much. Either way, it made him accountable. 

And it worked. By 1989, Wallace had published 16 novels and 17 nonfiction books.

In studying Wallace’s progress chart, I realized he was the first to make me aware of the act of accountability. 

This is when we make ourselves accountable by documenting our work rather than just saying it. 

Quantify Your Daily Progress

Over the past few years, I’ve struggled with writing blog posts.

What I learned most when I evaluated my ineffectiveness as a writer is that I don’t make myself accountable to write something new each week. 

It’s like saying that I’m going to lose 10 pounds in 2 months. But unless I commit to going to the gym twice a week and track my meals each day, my chance of success is random.

I need short-term goals to reach long-term success.

For instance, if I commit to writing two articles a week, I’ve done something entirely different:

  • I’m focusing on short-term goals
  • I’m putting a number behind my goal

The success behind goals is linked to how people think in quantifiable terms.

Another example is how we measure the success of our reading by how many pages we’ve read. We measure the success of our career by how much money we make. We measure the success of our strength by how many days we exercise per week.  
 
Put Time Into Your Work
 
If we again look at creativity methods made by famous novelists like Wallace, we can see that the greatest creativity hack is simply putting in the time to work.
 

Ernest Hemingway put in 6 hours a day. Aldous Huxley wrote for 5 hours a day. Stephen King is said to read and write between 4 and 6 hours a day.

You see, the greatest creativity technique isn’t waiting for inspiration. Or waiting for that creative moment. 

Creativity is determined by how hard you work. By how well you track your time each day as a writer instead of waiting for something to magically appear on paper.

Write Something Rather Than Nothing

If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy, or both. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

In a world where everyone writes from blog posts and social media posts to self-published novels, it’s essential to learn the art of writing.

As a writer, I’ve realized that I’ve built this false perception that everyone achieves success from day one.

The truth is that writers write every day. They catch ideas like catching butterflies. Inspiration arrives on some days while dullness arrives on other days. 

Ideas are elusive. They must be pursued.

Writing well, and finding your voice, takes hours. It takes volumes of work and practice.

Novelists understand the challenge of writing 200+ pages to complete a story. They understand because they treat it as their profession, not as a hobby. We as writers also have to understand that challenge.

2 Steps to Writing Creatively

If we want to write a novel or become a better writer, we can follow these simple steps that helped novelists:

1. Track your progress, and make it quantifiable (track daily word count, hours worked per day, and pages written). 

2. Create short-term goals. focus on what to write that day instead of what you’ll write in one year.

Writing is more than motivation. It’s a process. You have to create trackable progress that helps you achieve long-term success.