In Defense of Jumping Down the Rabbit Hole

Flying in the face of the 'don't stop' writing advice

One of the most repeated pieces of advice for writing a first draft is this: Don’t Stop Writing.

Don’t stop your draft to look anything up. Don’t stop the rhythm to consider names. Just write TK Class or TK restaurant or [Something clever? IDK?] And keep going. Don’t let yourself get sucked down the rabbit hole of the internet, just keep swimming and never stop.

There is a reason for this advice, to be sure. The allure of Wikipedia rabbit holes is a powerful source of procrastination. It often feels easier to not write than to face the blankness of the page.

And no, you probably don’t need to spend twenty hours becoming an expert on hardanger – a kind of Scandinavian handwork – in order to mention that a character’s grandmother is doing a craft while watching TV. 

Or do you? 

Because what you learn about hardanger becomes a part of the grandmother character, which informs who your character is and how she moves through the world. Maybe while you go down this rabbit hole you realize that Scandinavians are notoriously bad at showing feelings (I say this as someone raised entirely by God’s Frozen People), which then begs a number of questions. 

Is Grandma bad at showing her feelings? And if she is then what does your character feel about that or do they understand that Grandma shows she cares by making her grandkids beautiful things instead of telling them that they are precious to her? Or maybe she’s not bad at feelings? Maybe she’s the exception. How did she get to be this way?

And maybe while you’re figuring Grandma out, you realize that this would also affect who Mom is and how she moves through the world and how she relates to her daughter/your protagonist. 

Maybe it opens up a whole new subplot, completely unexpectedly. All because you let yourself go down the rabbit hole.

A piece of hardanger that my grandmother made for me before she passed. I mean, look at it? So intricate. A person who can make that has a million stories inside them.

This is on my mind because I’m moving through a first draft right now. A new first draft. A different first draft of a different project than the one I was working on a few months ago. There are a few reasons for that, some of them creative and some of them strategic. But regardless of the reason why, this book, it turns out, is absolutely begging me to write it. 

The outline came together more quickly and seamlessly than anything I’ve ever done before. As if the whole book has been percolating in the back of my head for months and is now ready to emerge almost fully formed.

And also, at the same time, as with any first draft, I’m finding myself regularly hitting little things that I have to figure out. For me, it’s mostly descriptions, as I am the absolute opposite of a visual reader/creator. I don’t picture things in my head as I read or write. So inevitably I’ll be barreling through a scene and then realize – Oh, what does the house actually look like?

And this is where the DON’T STOP! Advice rings at the edges of my consciousness. Just leave that for later. It doesn’t matter right now. Keep going. 

But it DOES matter. It matters to me. Because beneath the question of what does this house that my protagonist lives in look like? Are many more questions.

Did her father have to buy a new house when my protagonist and her brother came to live with him a few years ago since they’d been with their mom before that? Or did he already have a 3ish bedroom house? And why?

How did he decorate this house? Is it reeking of History Professor energy – artifacts or old maps and rare books on the shelves? Or is it minimal because he can’t be bothered to put things on walls? Is the couch new and leather or second hand and worn? Did it come from somewhere meaningful? A friend, maybe, gave it to him after the divorce because he didn’t have one, then?

What kind of house — Victorian/Ranch/Colonial etc — would this particular person buy and why and do they like it and why or why not? And what does my protagonist think of this place where she lives and what does that say about her?

And what do these decisions say about my story and the deeper Thing I’m trying to say?

Gabby suggests taking a nap in a sunbeam instead.

It all matters. It’s all important. It all affects everything that comes after. Because in making these decisions I had to stop and think about a character I had not fully thought through before. I had to consider the relationship between my protagonist and her dad in a deeper, more meaningful way. 

So, I spent a while on Zillow looking at houses because visual references are absolutely essential to me, and I didn’t get as many words down on my draft today. But the work I did do is absolutely essential to moving forward with these people who now live in my head.

I had to stop today in order to move forward tomorrow.

And yes, at some point you really do have to stop perfecting your Pinterest board and get back to the draft, but if a question stops you cold when you’re writing, if your brain perks up and says What does this place look like? What classes would she be able to add last minute? What name would this person have that reflects my idea of who she is? 

I say screw conventional advice.

Go ahead and jump down the rabbit hole.