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Taylor Jenkins Reid
Taylor Jenkins Reid
Taylor Jenkins Reid's Writing Routine:
Taylor Jenkins Reid's Writing Routine:
"When I’m working on my books, I’m very regimented. I start with my idea, and I know how the story begins and the story ends, but what’s in the middle I don’t know. So for my first drafts, which can take anywhere from four weeks to eight weeks, I write a certain amount of words per day and that’s what I have to get done. So if that takes me four hours and I happen to have a few hours free in the afternoon, then good for me. I’ll try to catch up on books that I’m blurbing or something like that. But, most of the time, it takes me a full day. Every single day I’m waking up and I don’t know what’s happening in the story, and I’m sitting down and I’m figuring it out, Monday through Friday, 8 to 6."
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, 2017
Read Feb 2021, May 2021, and May 2024
Daisy Jones & The Six, 2019
Read Jan 2022 and June 2021
Malibu Rising, 2021
Read June 2021
Carrie Soto is Back, 2020
Read Feb 2023
Why I Chose Taylor Jenkins Reid:
Why I Chose Taylor Jenkins Reid:
I’ve read four of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novels: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones & The Six, Malibu Rising, and Carrie Soto is Back. These books, though they all tell very different stories, focus on the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, respectively, and there are some characters that make appearances in multiple of them. My favorite of the four is The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which I’m sure is partly because it was the first of her stories that I read. It follows Monique, a reporter who has yet to get her big break and is approached by Hollywood ‘60s star Evelyn Hugo to write her biography. Hugo is famous for her iconic acting roles, but also for having married seven different men throughout her career. The novel jumps back and forth between the present day, with Monique, and the ‘60s, where Hugo’s story unfolds for the reader. The novel is an exploration of what it means to love, and the risks people take to protect those that they love. I think about the characters in this novel often, even to this day.
Reid’s writing style is addicting to read. At times, her narration is so natural that it seems to be written as a stream-of-consciousness. Yet, in other moments, she shocks the reader with lines that are deeply insightful and thought-provoking. I think this is why her novels have been so commercially successful – though they tell stories that readers most likely can’t directly relate to, they speak to the experience of being human in a beautiful way.
Passage from Taylor Jenkins Reid's Writing:
Passage from Taylor Jenkins Reid's Writing:
"Please never forget that the sun rises and sets with your smile. At least to me it does. You’re the only thing on this planet worth worshipping" (Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo).
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
976.75
976.75
average words written per day
41.25
41.25
average minutes spent writing per day
How the Experiment Went
How the Experiment Went
This was one of the writing experiments that I was most apprehensive about, just because it is very similar to the writing routine I tried when I was working on my first attempt at a novel. In that case, I ended up getting burnt out and lengthening scenes more than they needed to be because I wanted to hit the daily word count, which made my writing much more sloppy and less to-the-point than it could be. However, I set out to attempt this routine with a different mindset than I did originally, and I think I succeeded to a certain extent. Something that helped with this was that I vaguely knew the plot of the scenes I was working on this week, so I never felt like I had to pad the word count because I didn’t know what would happen next. I also set my goal as writing 900 words a day, because in the past weeks, I’ve written slightly under that, so while it would stretch what I’ve done in the past, it wouldn’t do so in an extreme way that I wasn’t able to handle.
I found it a bit difficult to focus this week. Part of that was because I was overwhelmed with school outside of this project, and I also knew that the scenes I was writing this week were some of the most pivotal in the novel, and I wasn’t sure how best to craft them. Thus, I don’t feel like the writing I did this week was the very best that I am able to do, and I’m sure these scenes will get rewritten when I do my second draft. However, I think having the word count of 900 allowed me to push myself to keep writing even if I didn’t feel like the scene I was creating was my best, and it allowed me to do the first step of writing anything – getting ideas down onto the Google Doc. If nothing else, this routine helped me make sure I sat down each day and added on to the project in a substantial way.
To the left is my data for this experiment. Over the course of the four days, I wrote 8.5 pages on my computer, which is more than most other weeks. On average, I wrote 976.75 words per day. I worked an average of 41.25 minutes per day. Out of a maximum possible score of 20, the week got a total of 11 points. Overall, though I rated the days this week lower than in some other weeks, I think Taylor Jenkins Reid’s routine taught me that sitting down and having a tangible goal to meet each day, as long as it doesn’t become more important to you than the quality of your writing, can help persevere through scenes that are difficult to get through/visualize upon a first draft.
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