Artistic inspiration ignores the law of supply and demand. – Mason Cooley
I’m often asked how I manage to keep up the breakneck pace I’ve maintained for the past two years, and my usual answer is “I honestly have no idea.” Now, that’s not entirely accurate; the primary secret is just plain hard work, over 12 hours of it most days (and that includes Saturday and Sunday). As I’ve said before, my husband travels a great deal for his work, and since he supports me I can devote most of my waking time to the blog while he’s on the road. Obviously I have to stop to cook, answer the phone, tend to my animals, take care of personal hygiene and all that, plus go to town for groceries and errands once or twice a week, and when my husband’s home I only work on the blog while he’s on his own computer writing reports or the like. On rare occasions I even take short trips, such as my recent one to Atlanta for the Southern Harm Reduction Conference. But other than all those exceptions (and the extremely rare instance of physical illness), I generally spend most of my time right in front of this computer.
Now, not all of that time is spent writing; obviously a lot of it is taken up in reading other websites, looking for news items for my TW3 columns, answering correspondence, dealing with support issues such as index maintenance, etc. And the time I do spend actually writing is more productive than the typical person’s because I’ve never believed in the myth of multitasking, which steals about 40% of the productivity of those who believe in it; when I write there is no music or television on and I’m focused only on what I’m writing and nothing else. It also helps that I run my blog on a tight schedule: exactly one post a day, no more or less, queued for automatic posting at 10:01 UTC so that everyone in the world can see it on its posting date (though at different times of day). This consistency allows me to take advantage of good writing days to get several columns done, and I needn’t worry about taking days off because I’m usually a good bit ahead. Furthermore, I keep my columns to an average length of 750-1500 words (though a few are shorter and TW3 columns come in at about 2000); if I have more to say than can be said in the allotted space, I break it into two or more parts.
But those are all practical considerations; writing also depends on creative impulses that don’t always consent to keeping a schedule, and that’s where “I have no idea” becomes true. What I mean is that I really don’t know how I’ve managed to churn out over 800 daily columns without more than an occasional (and always short-lived) case of writer’s block; apparently Aphrodite has asked the Muses to watch over me. Still and all, I’m not going to lie and tell you it’s always (or even usually) easy; in fact, it’s quite often exhausting. The fact that it’s extremely rewarding, and the frequent praise I get from my readers, more than balances that; however, I’m still wary of the possibility of burnout, and so I’m ever-so-slowly decreasing my workload so as to give myself more time for other commitments (including working on the new house, catching up on my reading and maybe doing that book everyone keeps insisting I write). The Sunday links columns are an example of that decrease; I put them together as I spot likely items all week long, so by Saturday all I have to do is arrange them in an aesthetically-pleasing fashion, add an epigram and index the thing. I’ve also changed some of my indexing standards, which won’t affect y’all much but decreases my behind-the-scenes work.
There is one more way in which I’ve been slowing the pace lately, and though it wasn’t originally intentional it seems as though it’s become inevitable. For the first year, I tried to answer every comment or email which asked a question or gave me a compliment, and to do so promptly; lately, however, I’ve found myself unable to do so. I still read every single comment y’all post and every single email y’all send, but all too often I find myself so busy that I put off replying until later, and then I can never catch up. And when those comments contain praise and/or good wishes, I feel rather ungrateful and rude for not replying. Maybe that’s silly, but it’s partly my nature and partly my upbringing; even though I intellectually know that with the dramatic growth in readership something had to give, when I neglect to provide a personal response to each and every complimentary comment, I feel like a lazy bride who can’t be bothered to do her thank-you notes. So though I’m still going to spend as much time giving personal responses as I possibly can, I have to recognize that some days will be better than others and it may be that the busy ones will start coming more often. What I’m trying to say is, please don’t take it personally if I don’t reply directly to your comment, or if I take a few days to respond to your email; it just means that I’m tied up with work or circumstances. I sincerely appreciate every single reader who takes the time to send me kind words or encouragement, even when I don’t reply; in fact, the desire not to disappoint my loyal readers may be the most vital ingredient in the magic formula which keeps me going.
Having run my own website (including blog), four FB pages and an equal number of Twitter accounts for four years, I know EXACTLY where you’re coming from. Keep up the good work, you are an amazing woman doing an amazing job <3
I have to call bullshit … since I’ve been reading this blog over a year now and I haven’t noticed a drop off in … ANYTHING.
The book – you need to finish. I could write the most awesome book in the world on my life and I’d be a millionaire except for the fact that I suck at writing, vocabulary, punctuation – basically everything you have to have for writing.
BUT YOU – are an excellent writer. You keep everything at an appropriate grade level for a general audience. You are very methodical in how you write out your arguments and you go “point by point”. You have the material -and the talent to write a NYT bestseller – and I’m convinced that’s what it would be.
Make yourself rich so that “Maggie’s Man” can finally haul his ass in from the road and spend some time with you!
By the way – I’m in the middle east again and, although ECCIE is BLOCKED by the Bahraini government … “Maggie McNeill” is still live here!!
The first thing I do EVERY morning is read Maggie. That’s how good she is.
Dean Clark
I don’t think your readers will or ever have taken it the wrong way when you aren’t able to respond to their every comment or correspondence. It’s frequently the case that bloggers are almost or entirely absent from their own comment sections (this includes some of my favorite writers), although I have no idea what their correspondence records look like. For the size of the Honest Courtesan, your rate of comment and (my perception of your) correspondence is almost hard to wrap my head around.
A Muse
Prosti in college at a university in the P.I., now age 52, but good gawd the woman appears 33 and easily attracts the attention of any man, any age especially men in authority positions, PhDs and MDs. Picked up a copy of Coming and Crying and just the title describes this woman, precisely. A Muse her self-description. My question, Maggie, what is a mid-life crisis going to look like for this woman?
There is no reason that people can’t look young through their sixties. Eventually time does catch up to you but it’s not as soon as Doctors will tell you. We live in the “before embarking on ANY exercise program please consult your physician” era. I blame it all on Doctors and their sorry, over-conservative “lowest common denominator” advice. It’s completely infected the Western world.
I stumbled across this blog–don’t even remember how–a couple of months ago. I have now completed reading all of the back chapters (except for the fictional interludes which I hope to get back to), and will add my kudos to the long list of others. Anyone who has tried to write publishable material knows how demanding the task; writing consistently quality material for deadlines greatly compounds those demands. You have provided a needed perspective for many, whether provider, client, reporter, enforcement, or–hopefully–even some of your opponents. Thank you.
I’m continually impressed by the quality and consistency of your work. I’ve bene blogging for almost nine years, off and on, and I never seem to find the time to do more than dash off a couple of quick notes on something.
I tweeted this like from the Oatmeal, but’s worth posting again. This really describes the creative process well: (http://theoatmeal.com/comics/making_things)
PS – I do think I’ve taken one tip from you and tried to do a lot less multi-tasking. Difficult in my job and with a kid, but it does help a lot! Multi-tasking is the biggest fraud of the 21st century.
Anyone who’s tried to write a blog will know just how difficult it is to maintain their output. Most bloggers post every few days at best, some only every few weeks. Producing a daily, quality piece takes a lot of work.
I’ve just has a twitter discussion about references and citations, and the lack of appropriate software to mechanise this tedious task. We agreed that EndNote and similar programs didn’t do what was needed; people wanted the ability to cite from a reference, as much as they needed the references “managed”. Scrivener was good for drafting, but no good for formal referencing. (I’m thinking mainly of academic papers.)
Do you have a system? Would you share it with us?
Mendeley is good.
“The first thing I do EVERY morning is read Maggie. That’s how good she is.
“Dean Clark”
Me too.
Re the initial photo (circa 1946?) — Maggie, you’ve talked about only writing at your computer; you haven’t mentioned also needing to program the thing.
Maggie’s is one of 4 blogs that I make a point of reading every day.
Korhomme, I’ve used one of the early versions of AskSam for nearly 20 years. In its primitive form, it’s a database that is merely textual but you can set up your own formatting to make it (essentially) relational. Its html is clumsy, but then I got it in 1990 and have never upgraded. I’m still using the it on the original laptop Compaq I bought with it. I’ve never used the new versions, but PC World review it here.
I have what I call my “thinking music” – mostly Bach and Handel that I play in the background when I’m going through masses of stuff and pulling out references. But when I actually start writing, I like it quiet.
If I didn’t allow myself music while writing, I’d never get anything written. You can talk all you like about how this will “slow me down,” but you don’t get much slower than stopped, which is what this would do to me. If I tried to do that for hours a day, very day, I think I’d go nucking futs.
I’m glad it works for you, and it obviously does work for you (see next paragraph), but it would not work for me.
OK, with that out of the way: let me add my praise to that of others. There’s a reason I’ve been reading this blog since it first came out. Yes, I originally looked in because you’re a friend of mine, but I’ve had to tell friends before that sorry, it’s just not for me. Maggie, you do well, and you are doing good.