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John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck's Writing Routine:
John Steinbeck's Writing Routine:
"Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material."
"Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised..."
"In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration."
Of Mice and Men, 1937
Read March 2016 and Feb 2021
Why I Chose John Steinbeck:
Why I Chose John Steinbeck:
I first read Of Mice and Men in seventh grade as an assignment for my English class. At the time, though I’d loved to read all through my childhood, I had somewhat stopped reading for pleasure in my free time. This may have been due to how busy I was, but I also think part of it was that reading wasn’t a priority for me anymore. This novel changed that for me, and made me fall back in love with literature permanently. Of Mice and Men follows George and Lennie, two migrant ranch workers looking for work in the hopes of one day owning their own land. The plot of the novel is not what sticks with a reader upon completing it – it is the relationship between these characters, and the difficult decisions they have to make in order to protect each other.
When I returned to this novel years later to revisit these two characters, I was shocked to learn that it’s just over 100 pages long. I would have guessed somewhere around 300, which speaks to Steinbeck’s ability to construct characters and a setting that feels substantially explored in such limited space on the page. I will continue to revisit this novel over the years because of its ability to explore themes like found family and working toward dreams you’re not sure you’ll ever fulfill. Steinbeck’s writing transcends time in its ability to relate to modern audiences, and he has inspired me to want to create characters as memorable as George and Lennie one day.
Passage from John Steinbeck's Writing:
Passage from John Steinbeck's Writing:
"'I see hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads. Hundreds of them. They come, an’ they quit an’ go on; an’ every damn one of ‘em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ‘em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out there. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody never gets no land. It’s just in their head (Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men)'”.
Writing Data:
Writing Data:
11
11
how I felt about the quality of my writing over the course of the four days, out of a possible maximum of 20 points
293.5
293.5
average words written per day
19.5
19.5
average minutes spent writing per day
How the Experiment Went
How the Experiment Went
John Steinbeck’s writing advice came to me at the perfect time in this experiment. On the cusp of fall break and after a heavy writing week prior, I was getting a little burnt out with my writing and productivity in general. So, Steinbeck’s routine was a huge comfort for me. Pulling back from writing upwards of 1000 words in a day and letting myself focus on one page each day let me forget about the fact that the project I’m working on will one day become a full novel, because thinking about the big picture can be super overwhelming for me at times. So, I went into this week optimistic that it would provide me with the freedom not to think too hard about how the novel will end, for example, but rather focus all of my attention on the scene I was crafting at the time.
Unfortunately, this week I was having trouble doing anything that required my full attention. Many of my other classes were becoming more time-consuming, and I was extremely tired from working non-stop over the past weeks. Thus, Steinbeck’s routine was a comfort for me, because it allowed me to spend less time than usual on my writing, but even doing so was more difficult than usual. Though I think the writing itself that I produced during this week is good quality for a first draft, I rated most of my days a far lower rating than in other weeks.
Over the four days that I followed John Steinbeck’s writing routine, I wrote a total of 8 pages in my notebook (two each day). I decided to stick to two pages per day because I often feel like the first few minutes of writing are a warm-up, and writing just one page by hand per day wouldn’t allow me to get into my usual flow at all. So, I stuck with two hand-written pages as my “one page” that Steinbeck refers to. This equaled about one typed-up page each day. I wrote somewhere between 320 and 450 words per day, which is far less than in the past week. Writing took me between 20 and 30 minutes, coming to a total of less than an hour and a half of writing throughout the week.
To the left is my data for this experiment. Overall, though life got in the way a bit this week, and I wasn’t able to be as locked-in to my fiction writing as I was in past weeks, Steinbeck’s routine allowed me the flexibility I needed to still keep writing daily without the pressure of high word-count output each day. Thus, while my week came to a total of 11 stars out of 20, I think that I just didn’t have the capacity to reach a much higher number this week, and it was Steinbeck’s routine that allowed me to still write at all, even if it was less than in other weeks.
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