Richard Dansky

If you are reading this, you are most likely someone who reads extensively about writing. You have no doubt read or heard a great many bits of advice, suggestions and recommendations as to how to make your writing better. You have almost certainly been told multiple times what the secret/key/Maguffin to good writing is, often in ways that contradict each other with jagged and relentless ferocity. You have been told to do everything except dip yourself in lemon herb butter and conjure the spirits of the ancient lobster gods of Lemuria before sitting down at the writing desk and taking quill in hand.

And I am here today to tell you that the secret is none of the above.

At this point, having spent the better part of twenty years writing novels, roleplaying games, book reviews, nonfiction, video games, academic papers, blog posts, book reviews, and internet humor columns under the pen name “Elfpants”, I can say that I have found precisely one factor that correlates 100% with writing well. Everything else has its ups and downs, its pluses and minuses, but there’s one element that, time and again, matches up with when I’ve done my best, my fastest, my cleanest work.

Get enough sleep.

That’s it.

Look, I know some of you were hoping for something earthshattering. Sacrifice a spotless purple goat on the new moon, maybe, and get the magical power of adverbs. Do a specific exercise and in just 3 sessions per week of 30 minutes each, your writing abs will be rock-hard and cut like a Belgian diamond. Keep yourself on a strict diet of no prepositions. Whatever. The gimmicks don’t have it. The gimmicks are often precisely that: gimmicks. What matters is putting yourself in the best position to do your best work, and that starts with getting enough sleep.

Get enough sleep, and your brain functions better. Your brain functions better, and you think more clearly. You think more clearly, and your ability to do silly little things – like utilize language constructively -  is improved. In short, you write better. If, on the other hand, you don’t get enough sleep, pretty soon your brain starts running like Atlanta public transportation during a snowstorm. Surprise, buttercup: If you’re not thinking well in general, the parts of your brain that are thinking about writing well aren’t going to be magically exempt, even if you have a deadline.

This is not to say that getting up an hour early to get some writing in before work is a bad thing. On the contrary, a scheduled, structured approach that includes a solid sleep schedule is a great thing for writing. It means forgoing sleep excessively, for whatever reason, will ultimately negatively impact your writing.

Don’t believe me? Consider this possibility: You stay up late writing because you’re on a really good roll and don’t get to bed until the wee hours. In the morning, you get up at your usual time, still exhausted, and don’t get a lot done at work. Because you’re not getting stuff done and you have a deadline, you stay at work a little later, just to make sure everything gets done. That, in turn, means you get home a little later. Which means by the time you sit down to write in the evening, it’s already getting late. Plus, you’re still tired, which means it takes longer for you to get the amount of work you want in, which keeps you up even later to make your word count, and…

You get the idea. As romantic as the idea of the magically inspired writer pounding heedlessly away into the wee hours, fueled by the sheer glistening fires of artistic creation might be, it’s not a sustainable model. Sleep debt is the sort of thing that racks up interest in a hurry, and it takes payments right out of the middle of your brain. I know for a fact that on days when I’ve gotten enough sleep, I write better. I have more ideas, and better ones. I work faster, and cleaner, and just plain better. And on days when I’ve pushed too hard or too far the night before, I lose the good ideas before I can write them down. I work slower. I get distracted more easily. I need more breaks, and I’m a helluva lot worse at Facebook Scrabble.

Anecdotal evidence? Sure. But ask a lot of writers, and I’ll bet you get a lot of similar anecdotes.

So read all the other stuff. Pay attention to it. Learn it. Try it. Do it, if it makes sense to you. Find what works for you – exercises or word counts or schedules or writing groups or whatever – and go for it. But if you want it to have the best shot at succeeding, if you want to give yourself the best chance to do good work, do this one thing.

Get enough sleep.