True Grit Before Toolkit 🕸️ Issue 8
Often, the reality is that the habits you’ve already formed will determine how useful your tools are.
I like shiny things. I’m talking about specifically writer-ish, cool toys. I keep what feels like a semi-tight leash on a potentially severe bullet journal and stationery addiction, but I am still liable to waste hours switching pages and profiles on the internet, and online window-shopping for sexy stationery, technology, and virtual tools. I can find ways to justify the acquisition of almost any product that I want, if it is marginally useful. But just because a thing is useful doesn’t mean I’m in a position to be able to use it well.
As a writer, one needs tools to get things done. Computers, software, writing materials, reference materials, even money itself is a tool.
Currently, I have a few essentials in my toolkit as a writer:
My traditional materials: notebooks, pens, post-its and highlighters, for drafting and thinking on paper.
A mid-spec Surface Laptop that can run the word-processing, note-taking, and Microsoft apps I need, smoothly enough. My most helpful system default app is Microsoft’s Clock, which helps me work in programmed Pomodoro-type writing sessions that help me avoid burnout and digital distractions.
My Passion Planner. Not only does it help me keep track of my day-to-day affairs, but it also helps me plan my writing projects, schedule writing time, and keep track of my writing progress.
Scrivener! I live by this software. I would swear by this software. If I had to give up every application on my computer but one, Scrivener is the one I’d keep. It has changed my writing life so thoroughly that I can’t even imagine myself going back. But it’s not free.1 And when I tell you I made myself sweat to earn that purchase?
Prior to purchasing Scrivener in June 2020, I wrote everything on Microsoft Word. Usually, my process involves drafting a story longhand in a notebook, and transferring it to digital when I’m done with what I call a “vomit draft.” Usually, for short stories, I would just edit entire drafts at once and save them as different documents: version 1, version 2, and so on. But around 2018, my process started to become a lot more complicated. At the same time, I developed a lust for Scrivener.
To me, Scrivener was shiny. I knew that several established writers I followed were using it, and based on my research, the program and interface were flexible enough to accommodate the escalating madness of my writing process. And yet, it took me a handful of years between deciding that I wanted to own Scrivener, and actually purchasing it myself. (Let’s just skip over the failed bootleg attempt.) I had all my justifications ready, and each one was pretty solid.
There was just one problem: my discipline was in the gutter.
Despite all the stories I carried in my head, despite my determination to call myself a writer, I would go long periods without actually writing, in the absence of any reasonable excuse. I barely finished any of the stories I started.
As a teenager, I used to write anywhere, and all the time. I never actually built a discipline around writing because I was prolific enough in my haphazard habits. In my twenties, however, I have had to rely increasingly on constructing systems to get just about anything done, hence, for instance, my current dependence on my planner. I couldn’t fully justify the acquisition of a new, $50 tool, when I hadn’t built up the habits that guaranteed I’d use it well.
From experience, I’ve realized it’s a fallacy to always think that a tool will help you build a habit. Often, the reality is that the habits you’ve already formed will determine how useful your tools are.
And so I made a pact with myself: I would work on my writing discipline as far as possible, until I got to the point where it was indisputable that it wasn’t my lifestyle but the limits of my software that were impeding my progress as a writer.
I held out. I made myself trudge through revisions of stories in Word, writing consistently, and even a little too intensely. And then Word started to drive me mad. I had saved several different versions of a story so that I no longer knew which was which. Trying to edit, cross-reference old drafts, discard certain revisions and keep others, or even keep track of what I’d changed between five different versions of the same text was chaotic. The window-switching was disorienting and Word’s compare feature was finnicky. Word was giving me headaches and wasting my time, and the impediments to my progress had become regular, ridiculous and technical. That was when I knew it was time to buy Scrivener.
And now I live on that application. I don’t regret a thing about what I made myself go through before buying it.
I could have bought that application before I was ready, only for it to languish on my computer, unopened, because I had failed to train myself to write with what I had before giving myself a writing tool. And then I would have beaten myself up for wasting my own money. I might have made multiple promises to myself that I’d build the necessary discipline to make use of the app, and then never actually finding the motivation to do so because… well, the app is there isn’t it? I could open it any time. Any time. And then “any time” becomes some indistinct point in the future that never gets any closer, is always just out of reach, perpetually postpone-able.
Sometimes, all you have is all you need. And until you go as far as you can with all you have, you don’t actually need much more.
Since then, I’ve applied that framework to much larger decisions, like the decisions to apply for funding or training—because funding and education are tools, just as much as notebooks and applications are. Issue 7 of The Spinneret talks about the paradox of pursuing such opportunities, but what I didn’t talk about in that issue was the idea of making sure you’re internally ready for those opportunities before you even start to pursue them.
One can justify the acquisition of pretty much any tool if one tries hard enough. Anything from “this grant will afford me the time to write” to “this software will make it easier to revise and format my work” to “the cover of this journal is so pretty, it will motivate me to open it and put words down.” And while any of these reasons can be true at a given time, I believe that the most important question to ask is: Have I built the required discipline to be able to make the most efficient use of this tool?
Over the past couple of years, as I’ve struggled with the dilemma of how and when to construct a life-long career of full-time creative work, I’ve had to wrestle with the question of whether my internal framework is ready for my external circumstances to dramatically change.
I give myself an imagination assignment: Suppose right now, a genie spontaneously provided you with everything you want: millions of dollars, a chef and plentiful food, a workspace free of distractions, air conditioning you can afford in abundance, inexhaustible Internet data bundles, access to every library you might need for research, all the paper and pens in all the colors and brands you’d like, the perfect desk setup and high-spec tech, et cetera, et cetera. Would you be able to write/finish your book then? Or would you sit in your perfect space, overwhelmed by the prospect of finishing your work-in-progress, and watch Netflix until your eyes bleed? When you sit at your desk to write, will words flow out of you like a waterfall, or will you pick up your phone ten minutes into a writing session and start scrolling mindlessly through Twitter? Would you be able to brainstorm your way out of a plot hole? Or would you lie sprawled on the floor of your perfect office despairing at life because writing is bloody, stupidly hard and you just don’t think you have it in you to complete your project?
I often have to remind myself that money is also a tool, and that my habits tned to determine how useful a tool is, more often than the tool determines my success. And yes, sometimes one can build necessary habits after one has acquired necessary tools, but one might also want to consider how much time and resources they might waste trying to figure out how to do a thing when the stakes are high and they’re on a timer. There’s also the factor of motivation: if you already have all the materials there are to have, what motivates you to build the habits you need to use them most effectively?
I don’t want to acquire tools I’m not internally ready for, just because they are shiny. I don’t want to apply for opportunities I’m not ready to receive, just because they are shiny. Holding back from sending out all the applications I’m even remotely qualified for, especially when I’m this broke, sounds idiotic on some level. But I also know myself, and I know how it would destroy me, to get an opportunity that I feel like I am squandering because I don’t know how to make good use of it. I don’t want to struggle when my blessings land in my lap. Because in this capitalist world, a lot of those “blessings” come with stipulations and conditions.
Take, for example, the coveted Miles Morland fellowship. One of the requirements for being a fellow is that each month of your fellowship, you have to deliver ten thousand new words of your work in progress. Depending on where your discipline and other factors of your life are at, this could either be beans to you… or it could be an insurmountable struggle. Before I ever get into an arrangement like this, I want to be as sure as possible that I won’t fracture under the pressure or the demands.
I want to one day be a full-time author, but what does that mean? It means that making books will literally be my full-time job. People will be expecting me to finish books before they give me money, or that they will give me money with the expectation that I will be able to deliver books, and there will be consequences if I am unable to follow through. It means that every working day that I get up, I will have to do something that furthers the book-making process.
I want to know that I have trained myself enough to be able to handle the life that I want. Do I know how to brainstorm? Am I able to finish stories? Do I know how to edit, rewrite and revise? Do I have the stamina to complete standalone novels? Do I have a mind expansive enough to create and execute a series? Do I have adequate research skills? If I got every material thing that could make my writing life better right now, would it actually make my writing life better right now?
I feel that I am currently in a self-imposed training stage in my career as a writer. And in this stage, the permission I give myself to acquire shinier tools is tiered according to the capacity I feel I have to wield them. It’s a framework I’d encourage most emerging writers to work with as well, if possible.
Now, some Spider Kid news
New publication date for The Year of Return
I that all 12 of my fans have been eagerly awaiting the publication of my debut novella this year. But… you’re not going to get it this year. You’ll get it soon enough, though! The publication date has been shifted from September 2023 to January 2024. When I mention this, people tend to ask me, what happened, or what’s wrong. Nothing is wrong. It was a practical and strategic decision that I’m very comfortable with. The months will fly by before you know it.
I’ll be performing at Araba OA’s book launch
My fellow writer, Araba Ofori-Acquah is having the release party for her debut book, Return to Source, next Tuesday! I had the privilege of being in residence with her at LOATAD last year (I wrote about the residency a little back in Issue 5). If you’re in Accra on Tuesday, 4th April, I’d encourage you to come through. I’ll be performing in a different way than I’ve ever performed before: a modern take on traditional storytelling, à la Green Green Grasses. Details in the poster below.
That is all from me for now!
Until next time,
The Spider Kid. 🕸️
For anyone wondering, Scrivener is sold as a one-time, flat fee purchase, not a subscription model, no additional features that you have to pay extra to unlock or whatever, and I hope it stays that way for the foreseeable future.
This was such a good good read. Especially as someone who just recently acquired some (sorely needed) shiny tools recently and is now building the discipline necessary to make the most of those tools. Thank you for writing.