I’ll grab a coffee and write a few lines
“Being a writer is easy.”
“What??!! No way buddy. Writing is the hardest thing ever.”
You would think these two friends are talking about two totally different topics. They are, of course, just reflecting their experience of writing. As we alluded to in the last post “Write two three four”, some of us are lucky enough to have time we can allocate to our dreamy world of writing and others long for such moments. To get that piece finished, you must have a firm commitment in your mind about
why you want to finish it,
what it will look like when it is done,
what it will mean for you,
what you want to do next.
It is important to reach some agreement with yourself about these thoughts. Then your mind, knowing why it is driving the writing, can be comfortable and productive. You may or may not want to include a timeline. It is good to have a notion of when the current journey will finish, but some people tend to beat themselves up attempting to meet time constraints, becoming anxious and slowing production.
Daily or weekly word targets are often a useful substitute for the tyranny of the calendar’s daily impositions of: “You must finish X by this date and X+Y by this date”. Calendars can become a public record of your failures, for all to see on your refrigerator or office desk. You don’t have to beat up on yourself to be successful.
Word counts may be a more relaxed and easier way to manage planned outputs, readily massaged until you can find what best suits your situation. If these things don’t work immediately, you have not failed. And that is key to winning this arm wrestle with life, time and word output. Celebrate unfruitful times when you manage to write a trifling few paragraphs in an entire week, or month. Even if you grind to a halt and never write another word (let’s hope that doesn’t happen), you will have done more than millions of people who merely talk of all the ideas they have for a wonderful novel or poem or short story or journal article and who write nothing. You have made the attempt.
I prefer word counts. They let me know I am doing something. Miniscule portions though they may be. Tick off one hundred words, then another, and another. Before you know it, there is a hefty chunk of one thousand words in your document and you will be smiling at the pile of words expanding to whatever target count your genre demands.
That is why working to a clock is not good for some of us. It tends to force us into the uncomfortable, obligated to sit for the regulated period, while our mind stirs at all the other “to-do’s” life demands of us.
Replace these…
Clock and calendar
Busy calendar
Full calendar
You mostly only need this…
This is all about grabbing those moments and where to find them in a busy life. Sometimes you may have only as long as it takes to drink a coffee. That’s long enough to put another paragraph into your unfolding work.
Allow your mind time to breathe, time to work up chapters or cleverly crafted paragraphs. A well-written sentence can be a thing of joy once we are satisfied with its message, knowing a reader will be strongly affected on reading it. Break out the drinks, or eats, and kick up your heels. You are allowed a little self-praise. Smile.
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.
Mark Twain
Think how that paragraph is important in your tale or how it links to other passages or how it expands your characters, settings, timeline, plot. These, and many more, are key to success. As a time-poor writer you need to do this because it is something you can do 24/7 when you cannot be glued to an office chair, relentlessly dragging words onto the page and panicking when they offer too much resistance. This is when writers become tired and disillusioned. You are not that writer. You are the one who has few opportunities for such luxury. You will sit down, ready to write at any time or place, at any time of day or night.
My advice for you is such because, once you set the creative wheels spinning, you can put doubt aside and walk away from the work, freeing your mind to create the webs of links you need to establish, forming stronger elements in your unfolding narrative. Take a small(ish) notebook everywhere to capture those fleeting moments of genius (read “Writing is a 24/7 activity” for further on using a notebook).
Good luck with your writing. Just a reminder, not to compare your output volumes with others. It is quality you are aiming for when daily life pressures demand that you have slivers of time to create on paper, but acres of time for your brain to figure things out.
Let us know how you go.
See you next time in our article: Why do people get off before the final stop?
Have a great day
Damon
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