JL Lycette on How I Write When I Have A Demanding “Day Job”: It’s Okay Not To Write Every Day

Many people are proponents of writing consistently every day and setting goals. For example, 1000 words a day. 

But what if you can’t write every day. If you have a demanding day job or a busy family, or maybe, I don’t know, you just don’t like writing every day. Can you still be a writer?

I am here before you (virtually) to show you that, yes, you can. My first book was published last month (March 2023), and my second book will be published later this year, in November 2023, and I do not write every day.

I didn’t start writing fiction until I was 43 years old. By that time, I had a busy (non-writing) career and family. How the heck was I to fit this new writing habit into my already busy life?

It’s a good thing I didn’t research that question back at the beginning, or I might have given up. 

When I started writing my first book in 2016, I didn’t know if anything would ever come of it, let alone whether it would ever be published. But somehow, I had this story idea in my brain and characters that wouldn’t leave me alone until their story was told.

I mostly wrote on weekends in large chunks of words. I didn’t know at the time that it wasn’t common to write 4000-5000 words in a day. And one weekend, which I remember now like a fever dream, I wrote 10,000 words in a session. (A feat I haven’t been able to repeat).

It was only when the book was finished, and I googled “what to do when you finish writing a book,” that I came across all the writing advice.

But here’s the thing I’ve learned about advice: take what works for you, leave what doesn’t. If the idea of writing in long sessions for hours on the weekends horrifies you, don’t try that. Maybe writing in smaller sessions each day works for you. 

I mean, does it matter if you write 1000 words a day or 7000 words in a weekend? As long as the words eventually get written? One could paint a little bit each day or a lot for an entire weekend, and both approaches will result in a finished painting. 

I mostly write on my laptop, in Word (yes, I’m a dinosaur), but sometimes I grab a notebook and pen; or in the middle of the night, I have to write something in the Notes app on my phone. Sometimes on the commute to work, I get an idea and have to scribble it as fast as possible on a blank piece of paper in five minutes before starting my day job.

Some days, when I get home from work, I’m in the mood to write. Most weekdays, however, I don’t have the energy. So I don’t write those days. I wait until the weekend.

There are a lot of caveats to my advice. First of all, my kids are older. They’re tweens and teens, and they actually sleep now. Like, a lot, on the weekends. So I can write for hours on those mornings before they wake up. I’ve had other parents write to ask me to please tell them how to write with young children. And my answer to them was: I don’t know how parents with very young children write. Maybe some of them can comment here and tell us.

But here’s the thing, none of us are superhuman. Don’t try to hold yourself to some imaginary standard that probably doesn’t even exist. That’s something I’ve had to learn in both my day job and my writing journey.

The best way to write is the way that works for you.

I hope this post will help you to write the way you want, when you want, and not beat yourself up if you can’t—or simply choose not to—write every day.

JL / Jennifer Lycette is a novelist, award-winning essayist, rural physician, wife, and mother. She has a degree in biochemistry from the University of San Francisco and attained her medical degree at the University of Washington. Mid-career, she discovered narrative medicine in her path back from physician burnout and has been writing ever since. Her essays can be found in Intima, NEJM, JAMA and other journals; and online at Doximity and Medscape. She is an alumna of the 2019 Pitch Wars Mentoring program. Her other published speculative fiction can be found in the anthology And If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing: Parenting Stories Gone Speculative (Alternating Current Press). The Algorithm Will See You Now is her first novel and is a 2023 Screencraft Cinematic Book Competition Finalist. Her second novel (title and cover reveals coming soon!) will be out in November 2023.

The Path From Journalist to Novelist

I had known since pretty early in my life that I wanted to be a writer. My parents had given me the complete works of Mark Twain when I was in fourth grade, after I had devoured Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. By middle school, I was a fan of Edgar Allan Poe. As a high school freshman, The Catcher in the Rye moved me to my fourteen-year-old core. I wanted to write novels that affected readers the way JD Salinger had affected me.

As I prepared for my first year of college, where I planned to major in English, I made a fateful decision. I added journalism as a double major along with English. That, I thought at the time in a rare instance of good decision-making as a teenager, would enable me to get a day job until I wrote the Great American Novel and became rich and famous. I figured that might take a couple of years.

More than forty years later, I retired from the newspaper business.

I started as a reporter and then editor before moving to the business side, management, and eventually executive positions with media companies. But my career in the journalism world carried me and my family to places around the world, from small towns to major cities, from eight years in Washington DC to five years in Tokyo.

With a family, a mortgage, a career, paying for braces, saving for my kids’ college, and often sixty or more hours in a workweek, fiction took a back seat. I never stopped writing fiction, but it was a hobby. A short story here and there. A few attempts at novels that never got off the ground.

Then, in my forties, a character showed up in my head and wouldn’t shut up. I took dictation while she gradually revealed her story. That took a few years, but it eventually became a novel—my first book written, although it would be the second book of mine published after numerous rewrites over several years. I had to learn how to write a novel first.

Writing a novel turned out to be a bit more complex than writing a news story, an opinion column, or a 5,000-word short story. Who knew?

A number of writers and interviewers over the years have asked me how journalism prepares a writer for fiction. Many are a bit skeptical of any connection between the two. Journalism didn’t just impact my fiction writing but formed my style and voice.

What does journalism teach about writing that transfers to long-form fiction? Quite a bit, actually.

First, the basics of news writing is the standard:

  • Who = characters

  • What = plot (what happens)

  • When/where = setting (last night in a liquor store robbery or a two hundred years ago in an English nobleman’s castle)

  • How = narrative arc (how does the story unfold; how does one event lead to the next)

  • Why = character arc and theme

In journalism, we’re taught to use quotes and proper attribution from the subjects and sources (the “characters”). Only use the best quotes, the important parts that tell the story in the characters’ words. In fiction, we call this dialogue. But in a news story, just as in fiction, you can’t (usually) just write quotes. You have to fill in the story in narrative form.

The advice my journalism professor repeated ad nauseam was “Write tight.” Use just enough words to say what needs to be said. Strip it down. Find the simplest, most direct way to convey the story to the reader. Don’t wander around aimlessly or try to write pretty sentences. Make your point and move on. Don’t write a 2,000-word story if you can tell it in 500 words.

There are many more connections and continuities between short-form journalism and long-form fiction, but it doesn’t fit every writer, of course. Every author has a different style. Every genre has different expectations. Longer, more complex sentences, more detailed description, deep dives into philosophical musings in narrative form—all of these appear in many works of fiction that would be edited right out of most journalism, and for good reason, but can work well in fiction.

There are also newer writers who feel compelled to write deep, complex sentences and detailed descriptions because they think that’s what writing is supposed to be. But as the famous author Elmore Leonard has said, “If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.” I think my journalism professor said something similar four decades ago.

Journalism has infused my writing style. Simple, direct, natural. Dialogue as realistic as possible, and kept to the important parts, leaving out chit-chat and conversations that don’t drive the story forward. The bare necessities of description. Just enough to create an image that the reader can fill in the details in her own mind.

An exercise my literature professor gave me years ago—just a voluntary project, not a class assignment—to help see the difference between writing styles as my own voice developed was to read a dozen or so novels. Start with a book by Ernest Hemingway, then read one by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Then read another by Hemingway, then another by Fitzgerald, until I’d read them all. These were two of the greatest authors of twentieth century America. They wrote during the same time period (mostly). They were friends (mostly).

I loved Fitzgerald’s beautiful and complex prose, use of metaphors and similes, descriptive phrases that made me stop and see something routine or mundane in a different way. He used vivid imagery with delicate phrasings and precisely chosen words. I would often stop and reread a sentence just to wallow in the beauty of his prose. I’d think to myself, “This is how I want to write.”

Then I’d read a book by Hemingway. The writing style was polar opposite to Fitzgerald. Simple, direct, almost plain, terse. His description was minimal yet effective. Yet this simplest of writing styles held a depth. The characters and their emotions, their pain, would pop off the page and surround me. He was a master at realistic and spare dialogue, letting the characters speak as they really would speak, not forcing them to say words that were from the writer.

Hemingway’s advice on writing was, “A writer's style should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple and vigorous.”

Despite the beauty of Fitzgerald’s prose, Hemingway’s writing felt more natural and powerful to me.

It was no surprise when I learned Hemingway had been a journalist.

A few other famous writers—you’ve probably heard of them—who started their careers in journalism include names like Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Joan Didion, Carl Hiaasen, Susan Sontag, Anna Quindlen, and many, many more.

Robb Grindstaff is the author of four novels of contemporary southern lit, and more than twenty published short stories. He’s been editing other fiction writers for fifteen years, including traditionally published, agented, and bestselling independent authors, and also regularly teaches fiction writing courses. Robb will be an instructor this June at the Novel-in-Progress Book Camp, held in Racine, Wisconsin (between Chicago and Milwaukee). The Novel-in-Progress Book Camp is sponsored by the Chicago Writers Association, the Wisconsin Writers Association, and HerStry LLC. 

Kanchan Bhaskar on The Healing Process of Writing

By Kanchan Bhaskar

I never considered myself a writer or had the urge to become one. Although, I have always been an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction. I am fascinated by writers’ courage and admire the expression of their thoughts and feelings but could not fathom the driving force that made them hold a pen and paper in their hands to build their narrative. 

My children have pushed me for years to write my story and get it out there. It was not until my therapist Leslie told me I needed to share my compelling story of transformation from a victim of domestic abuse to a survivor. “Become their advocate, Kanchan. They need you”. I teared down and hugged her, standing in her embrace for good thirty seconds. And she failed to hide her emotions too. Writing my story and reaching out to people in adversity became my core purpose, my mission. 

On my way home from the clinic, I called my three children one after the other, “Mom is ready to write.” They were thrilled to hear the eagerness in my voice. I came home fully energized and inspired. I straight away routed to the garage and looked for the box labeled Kanchan’s notes, loosely filled with written legal papers, inked in napkins, post its, papers from notebooks turned yellow bearing my emotions and mental thoughts scribbled on them throughout my years of agony. I picked up the box and brought it to my patio. I then moved my writing desk to the patio, opening up into a nicely trimmed lawn with pine trees, facing a church, across the road surrounded by mature oak trees which brought in soulful vibes.   After all, I needed an environment to write. Isn’t that the way authors bring out their thoughts? I had to follow their practice to become a writer, I kiddingly smiled to myself. However, my patio is my favorite space in my whole house where I spend most of my time, after work and on weekends. 

I was all set to take off-blank sheets from my printer, my surface pro, although my first draft was to be on paper, and a set of my preferred black ink gel pens.  After chronologically arranging the papers from the box and sketching the framework, I started to write. It came as a surprise and a pleasant revelation that I had the flare to express. I was astonished and enthused in the same breath when I read back the pages voicing my emotions on paper. “I can do it,” I said to myself. However, putting out my tumultuous journey of living in the imprisonment of an angry, alcoholic and violent husband was going to be treacherous.  I was trapped under his control, power and sadist behavior-solitary, isolated and alone for years. But, my commitment to writing kept me going day after day, page by page, diving back to my deep embedded hurt, which I believed was gone, that I had moved on, turned out to be not true. I realized it was going to be a tough jaunt, tougher than I had envisaged. 

It brought back the remnants of the torture and suffering, transported back the symptomatic, physical, mental and emotional pain in my body. It was a roller coaster ride, soaring high in the sky one moment, bringing a smile of joy, hope, desire, tenacity and empowerment of the times when I got free, turning into moments of loud shrieking noise coming from my heart with the downward spiral reminding me of the gory episodes, the torment and distress, the depressive spells and the silent agony.  I went through a period of PTSD. But the core purpose of writing my story, sharing it with the world, and reaching out to people of domestic violence did not deter my spirit from writing. I was as relentless now as I was when building the ramp toward my freedom along with my three children, who were casualties of the gruesome environment. 

Reaching out to people was my only mission and there was no stopping me. I was needle focused, generating chapter after chapter. There were times when I had to take short breaks- walk in the nature or meditate to remain sane and centered. Then, I had to take a couple of longer breaks to come out of the PTSD spell, and overcome writer’s block. I took a vacation to Munich, Germany and Vienna which I always wanted to do. Hallstead was my favorite in that trip, setting serenity and calm in me. I felt inner happiness and sensed the true healing enrapturing me. I recognized writing my narrative of distress and pain were going to cure my crushed heart and soul which it seemed had not yet completely healed. 

I had just suppressed my pain in the wake of moving on and enjoy my newly found freedom. Now, I allowed myself to create more space in my heart and brain for acceptance and forgiveness to keep working on the core purpose of my life. I came back from my retreat full of exhilaration and warmth in my heart to begin the chapters where I had left. In the previous chapter, I had already escaped and survived, protected my children and brought them to a safe place. I had to complete a few more chapters of my life. My journey had not stopped after coming out as a survivor. Now, I had to live my life and catch up for the days lost. I had freed my body but there was more healing to be done to free my mind and soul. Thus the journey towards spirituality began. 

Faith in universe had taught me orderliness follows chaos, peace follows war and joy is not far behind suffering. I had a firm belief joy will come in my life someday, one day. I read spiritual books, listened to podcasts and interviews of spiritual gurus and learned men. Met and talked to seekers, like me. Mindfulness, surrendering to anger, greed, lust, attachments, and ego were some of the fundamentals of spirituality that touched my inner self. While writing the chapter, “Rekindling my spiritual journey”, I reminisced, how I gained my inner strength, humility and gratitude. How serenity and tranquility brought me to clearly see and admire the rising orange ball from the east side of my house, stillness in the trees, the white swans gliding in the infinite sky, the water falls, the star studded atmosphere, the ever changing shapes of moon. I could once again laugh at jokes, and move my body at the turning on of music. I had come full circle with a regained identity, dignity and close to my bare Self-Who I was. The choice to write my memoir was the wisest decision I took. I feel fully recovered and healed now.  

Kanchan Bhaskar (Kan-chan Bhas-car), an Indian-American, is a first-time author. She holds a Master's Degree in social work and a certificate in life coaching. She is also a certified Business Coach. Being a successful Human Resource professional, her expertise is in training and mentoring. She is a certified advocate, speaker, and coach for victims and survivors of domestic violence. Kanchan lives in Chicago. Learn more about Kanchan on her website: kanchanbhaskar.com