18 | Chip chip chip; Drip drip drip

There’s this thing I’ve been telling myself lately. A sentence I’ve been repeating in my mind, or occasionally saying out loud when the words feel the need to spill out of my mouth. Except it’s not even really a full sentence, it simply alludes to one. In reality, it’s just two words, each repeated three times.

Chip chip chip; drip drip drip.

I’m not sure where it sprung from but it’s managed to prove itself sticky, clinging to my neurons, firing itself off at least once a day. Let’s call it a mantra, although really it’s more of a reminder.

It’s mostly to do with my creative work. A reminder to myself that the work doesn’t get done all at once. That it instead gets done one little piece at a time, with all those pieces working to create the whole. That if I keep chip chip chipping or drip drip dripping away at something I’ll eventually get through it. Trees have been felled with this method and mountains levelled, so I’m pretty sure it’ll also work with writing a novel.

There are many ways you can say this same thing, many mantras you could create to remind yourself of this fact, but for whatever reason this is the one that has stuck for me. Perhaps because it distills the idea down to its core. Reducing a whole concept to just two words, their repetition a demonstration of how the concept works. You don’t chip or drip once, you keep doing it, a little bit at a time.

One of the things I find most interesting about mantras or reminders is the need for them at all. When it comes to the meaning of this one, that most bigger work takes time and consistency to get done and that a little bit every day will get you further than trying to do it all at once, this is something I know to be true. I can’t tell you when this lesson first played itself out in my life, but I have put the theory to the test and found, repeatedly, that it holds water. Likewise, I, and likely you, have also heard many others preach this lesson in one way or another. It’s not a new idea, and my chip chip chip; drip drip drip, is just a reimagined way to say something that we’ve been saying for lifetimes. So why, given all this, do I need a reminder at all? I don’t need a reminder that fire is hot or that water is wet or that DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, so why do I need a kitschy way to package this lesson up in order to better help repeat it to myself as a constant reminder?

My theory? I don’t. Or at least consciously I don’t. That little fact is probably sitting in my brain right alongside the fire, water, and DNA ones. The thing that makes it different, is the application. And here’s where it gets interesting. Because despite knowing that consistency and slowly chipping or dripping away at something will get it done, there seems to be times when I “forget”. That forget is in inverted commas here, because I don’t think it’s a normal forgetting, but a willful one. I think it's procrastination in process. I think it’s choosing the easy over the hard. Except, or at least it feels this way, it seems to be my brain making the choice here, not me me. It’s giving me macro doses of amnesia so that I “forget” that consistent work will see things done, and in so doing, stops me from poking my brain every day and asking it to jump on that metaphorical treadmill and start running.

Only problem here is that I am my brain.

Either way, this is the reason for my repetition, for my constant reminder to myself, for making it a mantra. Mantras in meditation are ways to focus the mind, promote concentration, and reduce stress. So, great, if I can bring all three of those elements into my writing work while also fighting back against my brain’s potential sabotage, then I will repeat my mantra to myself all day long.

However, the real trick here is to take the theory and make it practice. Take the ideology of Chip chip chip; drip drip drip and find ways to make it concrete and tangible. For my work, writing, there are a number of ways to do that. My favourite is word counts.

A daily word count is chip chip chip; drip drip drip taking form. Hitting the word count is the singular drip or chip, and making it daily is the repetition. For me, at the moment, for my major project, a novel by the name of Severed Thumb that is now in its final chapters, I aim for two thousand words a day. Not a small number – thankfully I have the time – but also a number that is achievable. If I start early, I can get this done by lunch, which then gives me time to chip and drip away at some other projects and smaller tasks. The other nice thing about word counts is that they help quantify a project so you know just how many chips or drips are required to complete it. That makes completing the daily drip or chip feel like a greater accomplishment, at least to me. I’m not just adding one more drip to an endless bucket, I am one drip closer to filling it.

Whether I complete this daily drip or chip is another matter, as sometimes life or my machiavellian brain, get in the way, but the fact remains, if I want to write a roughly ninety thousand word novel and write two thousand words a day, then, that novel should get written in fourty five days. Knowing that, quantifying it in that way, is a hopeful exercise for me. It's reducing a mountain into a far from endless number of moveable stones. It’s telling me just how many bites it takes to eat the elephant. And from this comes a drive to do exactly that. To complete each drip or chip and see the work done.

There is another writing exercise I do as well that also takes the personification of chip chip chip; drip drip drip, and it’s these, my Stray Thoughts. For this one, I don’t focus on a word count, but a time limit. Half an hour, every weekday morning. It’s a part of my routine, one I thoroughly enjoy. I get up, make a coffee, drink it alongside either watching some video essays on writing or creativity, or reading newsletters and emails about the exact same topic. I find that wakes me up and gets me in the right headspace. Having read or watched other people talk about writing or being creative makes me keen to do so myself. I also avoid my phone in the morning for as long as I can. I find any kind of social media has an opposite effect. Filling my conscious and subconscious with hundreds of different macro bits of information makes it near impossible to focus. And so, Stray Thoughts. Half an hour of almost stream of consciousness, albeit around whatever the topic happens to be that month.

What I get done in that half hour differs day to day. Sometimes, I hit upon a particularly thick vein of thought and the words are just waiting there. Other days, I don’t know what my own thoughts are and have to find a way to discover and unpack them, and so the writing is slowed to allow time to think (that said, I believe thinking is writing, so that’s just fine). Still, chip by chip and drip by drip, they get written. I aim for between four to five thousand words per post, and so while some days I might get as little as two hundred words done, on others it can be many more. For today, I have four minutes left in my session and so far I have written three hundred and eighty words, which I’m going to say feels pretty standard. If I do this roughly around fifteen times, I should have a Stray Thoughts done.

Chip chip chip; drip drip drip.

Having done Stray Thoughts for over a year now, and found that my morning chip or drip is a useful and steady practice to slowly but surely create these essays, I wanted to see if I could do something similar with a different project. One of the things I like about writing Stray Thoughts is that it is just half an hour, done early enough that it feels like I’m stealing time while the world is still asleep. Both of these factors remove any kind of pressure from the writing allowing a freedom I don’t always feel with my other writing.

So, I wanted to see if I could do the same thing on the opposite end of the day. Steal a half an hour at night and begin to chip and drip away at something else. Write a story in that time, one that only exists because of the secret stolen time.

But, I also know, I am not a night person. I’m a morning person. An early bird. I like to rise with the sun. From experience, I know that my best work gets done earlier in the day, and that by the time the sun has headed off to the opposite side of the planet, I’m not much good for anything, let alone brain grinding creative writing. That said, I was still keen to give it a go. To get my brain to grind one final time before I put it to bed. If anything, it only felt more like I was getting away with something. Like I was stealing a story from my bedtime self.

I knew it couldn’t be just any story, however. It needed to be one that fit the brief. Stray Thoughts is all but stream of consciousness. I generally don’t have a plan when I start one, I just put fingers to keyboard and see what comes. Then, once I realise what I think I’m talking about, I make a few dot points around some other thoughts I might want to include, but still mostly just see what comes out day to day. As such, I wanted to find a story that could exist in a similar space, that could be written with the same reduced level of preparation.

Which is also opposite to how I normally work. While I love a bit of discovery writing, I am also somewhat obsessed with story structure and have become more and more of an outliner as times gone on.

But all of that was okay because this was also an experiment. A way to push back against my routines and presuppositions and see if I could do something almost in direct opposition to them.

And so, an idea for a story fluttered through my mind, and landed on this branch of an idea for a stolen make-it-up-as-I-go-along project.

It started with walking. I walk most days. I often walk the same route, which is out alongside a river/aqueduct, retracing my own steps, walking in the shadows of who knows how many other Damians. Sometimes I’ll be listening to something as I walk. Sometimes I won’t. Sometimes I’ll actively be trying to brainstorm and plot for a story. Sometimes I won’t. Sometimes I notice all the many things around me, looking at them for something new or interesting to photograph or just seeing what jumps out at me. Sometimes I don’t. Either way, one thing I like about these walks is that while they are all achingly similar, no two are ever the same.

I have also been fortunate enough to go for some incredible walks overseas. Travel walks are different beasts entirely. They are wholly focussed on seeing everything around you. On passing through a completely new countryside. On ensuring that everyday you are somewhere new.

And so, I think the idea came from a combination of these two kinds of walks. Both passing through a new landscape where everything is beautiful and interesting to you, and doing the same trudge everyday and finding the beauty in the mundane. Having both.

Then the last piece was fantasy.

I grew up reading high fantasy. I was an unequivocal fantasy nerd. I started with Raymond E. Feist and David Eddings and Emily Rodda, but soon I was adding a score of other writers to this pantheon; Robin Hobb, Robert Jordan, David Gemmell, Tamora Pierce, Terry Goodkind, and many others. I have read about countless worlds, innumerable cities and villages, and spent time with the many characters that call these places home. I have been with them as they’ve faced monsters and villainy, learnt magic or weapons, and ate bread slathered in butter and honey (as seems to be a constant and appreciated fantasy staple). I have since moved away somewhat from these high fantasy worlds, but only into other genres that still add a touch of the fantastic to our everyday one.

And so the story idea. Walking meets fantasy. That was it. That was its entirety. But, like a constant drip or chip, this idea was persistent. It kept banging away on the inside of my mind, ensuring I looked at it. The more it did, the more I could start to see the shape of the thing. Because of the walking element, it would be a road story, but one with low stakes. A cosy fantasy where despite being in a fantasy world there would be no monster bashing, no dueling with swords, no incredible feats of magic. Just a lone walker, traversing across the countryside while these bigger fantasy stories played off at the periphery.

I started chipping and dripping away at the idea. I went for some walks and did some brainstorming. Not around the plot, per se, just the character and the world. I needed to know who this person was if I would be following them on this journey. After a few outings and with a score of notes, I was satisfied. The shape was a little bit more in focus, but would only become defined, I decided, through the writing, which I would steal each night, a little bit at a time.

It turns out, my brain isn’t a brain at night. It is a pudding. That first night, I sat up in bed, pulled my laptop to my lap, Holly already asleep beside me, and began to type. Or at least, that’s what I intended to do, but as mentioned; pudding. I went for words, tried to engineer sentences, and instead heard my pudding humming to itself sleepily. I shook myself to a little more alertness and put my pudding to work. It is slow and sluggish compared to what I can get done during the day, I am squeezing the last few drops from a mostly dry sponge, and the exertion required is much the same. However, I also find it strangely pleasing. I am thankfully amused at my befuddled sleepytime pudding, and with enough tipping and tapping away at the keyboard, am slowly able to get some words on the page. Chip chip chip; drip drip drip.

My secondary hope for this project, outside of stealing a bit of extra time from my day, was that by doing so just before I go to sleep, my subconscious would be so infused with the story that I would awake with ideas and lines waiting for me. Also, that I would drift off into a cosy fantasy world where I would pleasantly spend my nighttime hours. I wouldn’t say this has happened exactly. Sure enough, I do occasionally have a thought pop into my dome, one I value highly enough that I’ll roll over and make a note of it in my phone, but otherwise, after my half hour of writing, my little pudding is done for the day. The sponge has been wrung dry. And that’s okay, I’ll take what I can get.

It took a few tries to get a real flow going, but after a few nights I found my character's voice. It’s written in first person, and so this voice is a large component for the tone of the story and one I wanted to get right. But I found him and I like him and I’m looking forward to writing this story with him. Also, having now got a section out that I feel does correctly express his voice, I can use it as a lodestar, a guide to map the rest of the writing by.

Like I said, it’s slow going, and half an hour isn’t a lot of time, especially when you're working with a pudding. But that’s the point. I might get three hundred words done or thirty, but I’ve still added some words. I’ve still made one more drip or one more chip and while it may not feel like a big step, it is a step, give me enough of them, however many it may take, and I’ll get this story done. I’ll write a novel.

That time that I steal, I think it’s important to remember, is passing regardless. I think that’s what I like about it. Even if I am writing words with the help of a pudding, and making about as much progress as a lame snail, well that’s fine because at least I’m using that time. Often, I’m all too aware of time passing, a day, an afternoon, an hour, where I didn’t use it to any satisfying degree. I’m not as productivity obsessed as some, where every minute of the day needs to be accounted for, pinned to a spreadsheet and filled with an activity that has a measurable output, but I still get frustrated when I feel like I’ve wasted time.

Waste here means that I haven't added value to my temporary existence. Time spent working at being creative is never wasted, by my measure. Similarly, time spent relaxing and recharging isn’t either. The value for both is entirely different, but that there is value is clear. Waste, I think, usually comes from a self imposed or indecisive limbo, from forfeiting that time to a kind of nothing, scrolling on my phone, letting the tv play episode after episode of a show I’m barely watching, things of that nature. In these moments, I feel like, while the time has still been stolen, I’ve robbed it from myself. A chip or a drip has been missed.

It’s at these times that I feel I need the reminder, which also makes me realise that the reminder isn’t so much about the concept of chips and drips, but to make sure I’m chipping away at the projects I want to topple and dripping into the buckets I want to fill, because the chips and drips are happening regardless.

We exist in chips and drips.

It’s a simple concept, putting some time aside every day to slowly achieve an outcome, but it’s one that can also feel overwhelming at times largely because of its grinding consistency. When you're excited to start chipping or dripping, it’s easy. Day one, done. It’s front of mind. Day two, much the same, maybe even day three. Day four comes along and you're feeling tired. You push through anyway. Day five, you’re tired and busy and before you know it the day has passed and you didn’t find the time to drip or chip at your desired long term goal. Your chips or drips went elsewhere. That’s the way it goes.

But it’s also the reason for the reminder, the purpose behind the mantra. So that when the drips and chips are happening all around me, I can press pause for a minute, take stock, and figure out how to find some time and space to line up my axe or position my bucket and ensure some of the chips and drips are going where I want them to.

And so, at those moments, I’ll say it to myself, in my head or out loud.

Chip chip chip; drip drip drip.

And now maybe you will too.

Thank you so much for reading these Stray Thoughts and until next time make sure you chip or drip away at whatever makes you happy.