Reading time: About 3 minutes
Writer Nate Birt says he asks himself “what’s the most ridiculous thing I can come up with today?” when his fiction writing gets jammed up. Read this interview to learn the other strategies he uses…
Nate Birt is a writer and founder of Silver Maple Strategies, a communications and fundraising consulting firm helping nonprofit organizations. He is the author of two non-fiction books, 7 Secrets of Highly Effective Social Impact Communicators and Frozen, But Not Forgotten: An Adoptive Dad’s Step-By-Step Guide To Embryo Adoption, and one horror novella, That Awful Box. Nate and his family live on a small farm outside of St. Louis, Mo.
I was excited to talk to Nate about how he approaches writing.
Q. Roughly how much time do you spend writing every day?
It depends on the project(s) I’m working on. Normally, I’d say I spend between 30 minutes and two hours writing during the business week. If I’m working on a book, I try to write six days a week (hat tip to James Scott Bell). Sundays are always a no-writing day.
Q. What’s a simple activity or habit that makes you a better writer?
I love learning the habits of successful writers and experimenting with them. I’m particularly fond of blocking off the same time slot daily and dedicating that time to the craft.
Q. What interferes with your writing?
My own internal resistance – “I could/should be doing [fill in the blank].” Most of my writing has been journalism and news in some form. So the idea of delayed gratification (say, for a book) is extremely daunting.
Q. How do you persuade yourself to sit down to write on days when you really, really DON’T feel like doing it?
I leverage my cranky and super playful: What’s the most ridiculous thing I can come up with today? (I’m speaking here about fiction, specifically). And oddly, when I do that, the ideas still come. It might just be a paragraph or two. But you know what? I wrote that!
Q. Is there a particular motto or saying that you’ve found helpful for writing?
Goals expert and author Jon Acuff sometimes remarks that he doesn’t like to run, but he likes the feeling of having run. I feel similar about writing. I like the feeling of having written. So I try to keep up the practice (though admittedly, I’m between projects, and I don’t mind it 😊).
Q. Which stage of the writing process do you enjoy the most: researching, writing or editing/rewriting and why?
I actually really enjoy plotting – mapping out the story in my mind, thinking through how one thing leads to the next. And then my next favorite part is what I’d call channeling the muse. I have no idea how it works, but some days, you feel like you’re floating. And you get unexpected revelations about characters and plot twists. I love that.
Q. What’s the best book you’ve read (either fiction or non) in the last five years?
My friend had me read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road this past year. The character development, the chilling setting, the dialogue—it’s all superb. And no quotation marks in sight! That really fascinated me. Paul Tremblay’s horror short-story collection Growing Things is also up there – the emotional depth of his characters and the experimental nature of his stories such as, “A Haunted House Is a Wheel Upon Which Some are Broken,” are thrilling to me.
Q. What book are you reading right now?
I’m reading Keith Rosson’s Fever House (can you tell scary books matter to me?). It’s gritty and wonderful government-zombie intrigue. Rosson has a way of making you care about people and does a masterful job of illustrating how people fall into (and out of) conflict with each other.
Q. What do you think is the biggest misperception that new writers have about the act of writing?
I think the mental game of writing is vastly underappreciated—and I’m grateful to all the writers who’ve documented for the rest of us strategies for overcoming imposter syndrome.
