Short preamble: There is much more that can be said
about each of these tips but, to save on the tl;dr posts, I summarized to the
best of my ability. If anyone would like a more thorough look at any of these
feel free to let me know and I will attempt to expend on them in a later blog
entry.
Set
a Schedule
It is so easy to find an excuse not to write every day.
Jobs, kids, wives, husbands, chores, pets, and errands all seem to crash in on
us and leave little time left in our increasingly busy schedules to breathe let
alone sit down and write a 2,000 daily word goal. If you want to make a career
out of writing then you have to treat it like a career. You have to treat it
like a second job. This means setting goals and deadlines for yourself and
sticking to them. Write at whatever time of day you are most comfortable
writing. If you are an early riser, take some time before school or work or
before you get the kids up. If you’re a stay-at-home parent, take the time to
write when you put your kids down for a nap. Or after dinner. Or before bed. It
doesn’t matter when you find the time, just find the time. Find an hour or two
somewhere in your day to dedicate to you and your characters and stick to that
schedule. If your quietest time is in the evening between 8pm and 10pm, make
sure you are at your computer with an open word document typing between those
hours every single day.
I put well over 40 hours a week for a year into my
writing while I was working on my first novel on top of my 40-hour-a-week day
job, busy social calendar, and planning my wedding. The stress paid off in the
end.
Unplug
I know it’s hard. It’s like a chocolate addict working
next to the Hersey factory who keeps staring out the window telling themselves,
“Just one little trip.” Unfortunately that one little trip will usually engulf
your very existence and you spend the next four hours weighing the pros and
cons of almonds and crisped rice and whether or not it ultimately robs you of
chocolate. The internet is tempting. You have various messaging programs, daily
blogs, email, social networks, news, games, and this sort of thing right here
which all contribute to distracting you from getting writing done.
Make it all go away. Don’t even allow temptation to get
the best of you. It’s an excuse. If you are the sort of person who likes to
write early in the morning, unplug your internet when you go to bed the night
before and don’t allow yourself to plug it back in the morning until you hit
your daily writing goal, whether that be in word, page or time count. Do the
same thing in the evenings or nights if you like to write before bed or when
you get home from work. Okay, you don’t actually have to go to the extreme of
unplugging your Ethernet cable the night before you write, but you get my
point. It’s amazing what one little trip to check your Gmail Inbox (which you
already know is empty since you checked it thirty seconds earlier) will do when
you find yourself drifting off to tumblr, YouTube, Reddit, or Facebook. Just
say no.
Battle
Buddy
Find a fellow writer (or writers) local to you and get
together once or twice a month (or weekly if you can swing it) for a
day/evening/night of writing. Spur each other on. Set time limits and mini
challenges. Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and see who can get the highest word
count. Then do it again. Writing is intimidating enough; you don’t have to go
it alone. Good support networks of friends who write are almost crucial. Share
ideas, spur one another on, give constructive critiques and listen to feedback.
Someone is bound to share a little nugget of inspiration that triggers the
onslaught of gusto from your muse.
Perks!
Reward yourself. Give yourself little gifts for
finishing your goal for the night, give yourself a slightly bigger gift for
every 10,000 words, give yourself something even better at your half way point,
and so on. Positive reinforcement, even from little old you, goes a long way.
Ideas for Perks:
- Special coffee or sweet treat that you love from your local coffee shop or bakery.
- Rum.
- Half an hour of reading/watching TV/surfing the net/playing a video game.
- Buy a new journal/notebook/sketchbook.
- Go to your favorite sporting event.
- Rum.
- Go see a movie in theatres.
- Candy.
- Buy yourself a new outfit.
- Rum.
- Buy a new eReader (This would fall under the category of “Oh my God I just finished the whole manuscript!!”)
- A really big bottle of rum. (I said that already, didn’t I?)
Just
Make the Bed, A.K.A Man Eats Car
There is this amazingly awesome article which
breaks down the daunting task of writing a novel in terms of cleaning up a very
messy apartment. I highly recommend said article as it is more in-depth and
motivational than I feel I have the ability to summarize. I will be as succinct
as I can and say that writing a novel may prove to be a difficult, long and
treacherous road, but it doesn’t have to be done all at once. A blank page is
all sorts of intimidating, but just do it one word at a time and pretty soon
you will go from a sentence to a paragraph to your first chapter. Pretty soon
you will have the whole thing complete.
Natalie Goldberg writes about this concept in Writing
Down the Bones. The Chapter titled Man Eats Car is more about metaphors, and it
always struck me that the perfect metaphor for writing is that chapter title.
The man who would eat the car wouldn’t do it all at once. He would start small
with nuts and bolts. He would move to spark plugs and radio knobs, gradually
moving up to bigger fare. When all was said and done the man would have been
successful because he did it piece by piece.
Treat your writing in that manner. You are only one
person. Don’t expect to have everything written all at once. Take the time to
allow your thoughts to flow. Don’t let your inner editor get the best of you,
don’t let the internet distract you, don’t let your family come in and disrupt
your process. Just go with it. Piece by piece you will be able to eat the car.
Until next time.
Cheers!
~Hoshi
