The Writer's Diet
or
How To Lose Weight Without

Losing Your Mind

 

Marcia Golub has published two novels, Wishbone and Secret Correspondence. She is also the author of The Open Voice award winning short story, "The Child Downstairs," which was included in Narrative Design: A Writer's Guide to Structure. Her unpublished novel, Tale of the Forgotten Woman, was a finalist for the PEN/NELSON ALGREN AWARD and was twice nominated for the Pushcart Press Editor's Book Award. Her latest book I'd Rather Be Writing is a must for every writer. Marcia teaches fiction writing workswriter's bookshelf and is available through Writer's Dhops at Writer's Voice in Manhattan, where she lives with her husband and son.

 

I've had two obsessions lately-- namely, How I can lose five pounds, and How I can gain five pages. That is why I have devised the Writer's Diet. There are four basic steps.

 

STEP ONE: Put Down that Cookie, Pick Up that Pen

What could be simpler? It's impossible to eat when you're writing...really writing. Ruminating, ah, that's a different story. Ruminating is what cows do, chewing the cud (that's the etymology), so it's perfectly easy to contemplate writing while chomping on a ham on rye. But writing takes hands, whether you use a computer or a pen. The days are not so far off when we will be able to dictate our words to a voice-sensitive console instead of tapdancing on the keyboard, but till that time you can be on the Writer's Diet. What you do is: Don't Think--Write. I'll show you how it works. Let's pretend it's your writing time. If you are like me you say, I'll just head into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Half an hour later there you are heading into the kitchen for a third or fourth cup and a bagel or muffin to soak up the stomach acids. You still haven't written a thing. In fact, after the bagel, you're feeling kind of logy. Maybe if you take a nap you'll feel better. But if you go on the Writer's Diet you say, Think I'll go into the kitchen for a cup...uh uh. Nope. Think I'll write first. And you start. You don't have to write the perfect beginning to a perfect story. You don't have to sing poetry to make the muses weep. What you need to do is write crap. It's okay to write crap. It's expected of anyone on the Writer's Diet. It's why we eat all that fiber, digesting reams of paper. You probably know about freewriting. That's what you do. You freewrite for at least five minutes, anything that comes into your head--no censor, no punctuation or spelling checkups. What usually happens is the freewriting is so boring you will do anything to get away from it, so then you start hitting the good stuff. And when you do you're not thinking about eating anymore. An hour or two go by-- sometimes they fly, sometimes they crawl, but you do not allow yourself to get that cup of coffee and that sweet little something to give you energy. You coax the words out, not the carbos in. And then it's time for lunch.

 

STEP TWO: Ah, Lunch

Lunch is a major problem for me. I have found that hunger feeds my writing soul. Satiety, on the other hand, makes me want to curl up with someone else's book and take a nap. Unfortunately if I don't eat something I get a headache. My neck hurts too. And my eyes. And I become a very unpleasant person to come home to, whether you are my ten-year-old son or my forty-seven-year-old husband. So I take a break. I have lunch. The trick is figuring out what to have. Cookies are very appealing, but we all know you don't lose weight with cookies. How about a lowfat sandwich made with high-fiber bread? Great, say Weight Watchers and many other diet plans. Put down that starch, says the Writer's Diet.

The problem, you see, is the carbohydrate content, which makes us all
want to go nana. So I try to eat something less satisfying, less what I crave, something I may even dislike--a salad, for instance. I hate salad. I will do anything to finish a lunch of salad and get back to writing. But sometimes I hate salad so much I can't stand the thought of eating it. So then I have soup or yogurt. Not very satisfying--in short, perfect.

Another trick I use to get myself back to work after lunch is I leave my computer running. (I'm neurotic about wasting electricity. My father was the Smokey the Bear of Lightswitches--Only YOU can waste electricity!) But sometimes unsatisfying lunches and the wasteful consumption of energy are not enough. Then I resort to eating lunch while walking. This can be tricky with soup, but yogurt is the muses' gift to chubby writers. So I eat and walk, plotting my plots, thinking my thinks, drumming up inspiration so I have something to take with me into the office when I get home again.

 

STEP THREE: Pace Yourself

This step might be considered part of lunch, but it's applicable to other parts of the writing day. Basically, when you can't muddle through whatever you're writing and you want to get up for a little something, nothing major, just a nibble till you get an idea of what to write next, you...don't.

Try pacing instead. Take a walk around the apartment. Go up and down
your stairs a few times. Stroll around the block. If you are athletically inclined maybe now's the time to go for a run. I have a mini-trampoline I sometimes use.Just remember: The athletic activities, while better at burning calories, necessitate stretching and showering, and by the time you're done with all that you may not have the time to write or remember the great ideas you had while you were wooing endorphins.Really, there are two kinds of exercise you need to do on the Writer's Diet. One is the steady, rhythmic, easily-stopped-before-inspiration-gets-away activity, the pacing or stair climbing you can do in your home. That's the one to do when you're stuck on a sentence or paragraph, and the important thing about it is that it replaces the eating you really want to do. Also, if you remain stuck after pacing you FORCE yourself to sit down and continue, even if you have to fake it for a page or two.

The other kind of activity, the one where you sweat, is really for the purpose of getting megadoses of oxygen to your brain.You're not necessarily going to write afterward, but your mind will be working. A lot
of times after running I end up jotting notes for the next day's writing. And those notes make it easier to start fresh the following morning.

 

STEP FOUR: Aggravation, and Lots of It

Aggravation is one of those pluses in a writer's life you don't have to court to have come your way. It is a great boon to anyone on the Writer's Diet. All you have to do is think about how your stuff is never going to get published, or if it is published how nobody is going to read it, how your publicist promised you the moon and now you find out she forgot to mail the postcards to your last reading so no one showed up. Don't worry if that hasn't happened to you. It will.

Besides, there are any number of things to get upset about: Your friend published a story in a magazine even littler than the one you published yours in, but now her story's been given a Pushcart Prize. AND the magazine that was supposed to publish your story has gone belly up. Believe me, the writing life is full of aggravation. You just have to learn to let it bother you.

The secret is to take your anxiety, your depression, your envy, and transform it into nausea. To do this you need to practice the following mantra: No, I don't feel like eating. I'm too upset. Now, if you're like me (and you wouldn't need to be on the Writer's Diet if you weren't) you're probably more inclined to go: I'm so upset, I think I'll eat that entire Giant Chunky and all the Halloween candy, I hope I puke and die, I hate myself. But it's a yin-yang thing (thang?). The cup's half-empty, half-full, who cares? It's all mind over matter anyway, and just thinking about how I'm a writer, not a goddamn performer and why should I have to sell myself and my book and read in the rain to the handful of people who show up and don't even buy my book but expect me to sign their umbrellas, including the crazy guy with the red eyes who asked me about the Lord, then began to rant, and and and I'm just sick to my stomach. I couldn't eat a thing.

I've only been on the Writer's Diet a short time and already I've lost two pounds. Of course they're the same two pounds I always lose when I go on a diet, the ones that find me when I go off. But I'm optimistic about it, and I hope it will work for you too. Let me know. Maybe we can have lunch.