Reading time: About 3 minutes
Frances Peck gets reliable results by using an accountability partner. Read more about her strategy in this interview….
Frances Peck returned to creative writing later in life, after building a career as an editor, ghostwriter, and instructor. Her debut novel, The Broken Places, was a Globe and Mail best book of 2022 and a finalist for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. Her second novel, Uncontrolled Flight, made 2023 book-of-the-year lists at 49th Shelf and Consumed by Ink.
I was excited to talk to Frances about how she approaches writing.
Q. Roughly how much time do you spend writing every day?
It depends on what stage my manuscript is at and what else is going on in my writing life. Dredging up the first draft is by far the most gruelling part for me. I have to cajole myself into doing it, every freakin’ day. If I have a lot of busy work beyond the writing, I try for three one-hour sessions a week. If the busy work is quieter, I go for five. If the words flow, I’ll stay longer than an hour. I also have a weekly date to write for two to three hours alongside friends in our library’s silent room. When I’m revising, I’ll be at it way longer. More like two to five hours a day, four to five days a week. I love revising and get lost in it.
Q. What’s a simple activity or habit that makes you a better writer?
Having an accountability system. If I tell someone I’ll do something, I do it. I’ve teamed up with a writer friend who’s similar. She and I set weekly goals, then message one another as we hit them. “Did my second one-hour session this week. One more to go!” That type of thing.
Q. What interferes with your writing?
The busy work I mentioned earlier. My first two novels came out in quick succession, so I’ve been in promo mode for over two years. Promotion engages my champagne brain. Events, book clubs, interviews, podcasts, travel, networking—it’s all fun, fizzy, and energetic. That’s great, but it’s the total opposite of the mindset I need to be in for writing, which is more like…what? Warm milk or something.
Q. How do you persuade yourself to sit down to write on days when you really, really DON’T feel like doing it?
I imagine messaging my accountability partner at the end of the week and saying I missed my target. That’s usually enough. The reason I prefer weekly goals is that it gives me some free days. If I’m sick or there’s a family issue or too many competing priorities on a day I planned to write, I’ll shift to another day. As long as I hit my weekly target, I’m on track.
Q. Is there a particular motto or saying that you’ve found helpful for writing?
“Write crap.” It’s Sharpied on a hot-pink sticky note beside my monitor. [Ed note: I agree and have written about that here.] It reminds the writer in me to crank out the first draft, any old way, and it tells the editor in me to shut up until the draft is done.
Q. Which stage of the writing process do you enjoy the most: researching, writing or editing/rewriting and why?
Hands down, revising. Deepening the characters and themes, sharpening the language, cutting — are immensely satisfying tasks. The act of sculpting is what brings out the quality that is (hopefully) hiding in the draft. I like research too, but am careful about my time there. It can become a bright shiny distraction from drafting.
Q. What’s the best book you’ve read (either fiction or non) in the last five years?
I read constantly, in so many genres. No way can I pick one. But I will mention two Canadian authors whose work I admire tremendously: Karen Hofmann, whose Lund family trilogy is a treasure waiting to be discovered; and Bill Gaston, better known but still not the household name he should be. The humanity of their fiction, their absorbing and complicated characters, and their pitch-perfect styles just blow me away.
Q. What book are you reading right now?
I just finished Bill Gaston’s The Good Body, as poignant and hilarious a novel as you’ll find. Next up are back issues of The New Yorker, which a friend passes along. Not books, but they’re a staple of my reading diet.
Q. What do you think is the biggest misperception that new writers have about the act of writing?
They think a good writer sits down and writes good material. It just doesn’t work that way. I say that as an editor and instructor who spent decades helping people improve their writing. And I say it as a writer who fixes up her own work, then has it fixed more by other editors. What a good writer does is show up. Type some stuff. Do it over and over again until you can type “the end.” Then make it good.
To visit the author website for France Peck, go here.
