I have found from experience, for me, that if I write myself out day after day, I stall. So the roughly three hours a day with a minimum of three to five pages is my goal. But, if I have more pages in me and they are flowing nicely, I keep at it. When I feel the story starting to fade, I stop at the point where I think the story still has some energy and pick up on it the next day. I have also learned to mostly let a story lay dormant when Im not working on it. It never lies completely dormant, of course, but at least my conscious mind is not constantly batting it about, which allows my subconscious, especially while I sleep, to sort out the problems and work on it without me being immediately aware. I know thats the case, because the next morning it seems to have been handed to me on a plate and the writing takes place easily enough. I polish as I go by stopping at any stall during a writing day and going over what Ive written. The next morning I go over what I wrote the day before and continue from there. On days where I easily arrived at more pages than my minimum, I may end up reading part of what I wrote the day before, finish out the new work, then look it over. Frequently, when I get to the middle of the book or story Im writing, I experience a lull. At that point everything Ive written seems terrible and a mess and I feel like Ive created the biggest turd since Cyclops dropped one in his cave by the sea. I stop, start at the first by rereading, and generally find that Ive merely lost a bit of momentum, and I correct again as I go if anything pops up. Its easy to do that, because most of the corrections have already been made. The momentum of rereading then carries me on to the end. I take very little time off after finishing a project. Maybe a day, rarely more than a week, and sometimes I start looking over the project the next day. I polish it as I reread it, but I dont have a major rewriter looking me in the face, or multiple drafts. I tend to be one of those that starts hot in the morning, and burns down until Im cool. I know some writers who need more time daily, or feel they do, as they start cold and generate heat. Im the other way around. Again, about three hours for me. We all vary, and I realize this may not be exactly the method you need, but if your method isnt working, you might consider going at it in this fashion. It might work for you, and if not, you might find your own method through experimentation. If something isnt working, change it. But give whatever method you have at the moment time to shake out, or fail. Writing is mostly about will, wanting to do it. As I have said here before, and recently, I always felt that when I was working jobs I didnt really like, but had to work, that if I could go to a job I hated every morning, do it as well as I could, I could find a few minutes a day to write, doing something I truly loved. Discipline is mostly about choice. Is the next episode of Castle calling you more than your desire to write? Maybe you shouldnt be a writer if it is. DVR it. And if you can work it all in, writing, reading (an absolute for any good writer), film, TV, which can also be inspiring and good for writer, but shouldnt be the writers main meat if they are a prose writer, but if you can work it all in, more power to you. But writing has to be a dedicated part of your day if you really want to be a writer. I find there is a lot more time to get things done in a day than we think. I learned this when I was a house dad with two kids. Nothing takes more time than raising children. But I still wrote. I found time between naps, after they went to bed, and sometimes while they were playing. I kept my (then typewriter) ready, and when the moment was there, I jumped on it, learned to write in short, concentrated bursts. Now I have my morning shift of about three hours, and from time to time I work another shift or two during the day. But the morning carries me most of the time, and has allowed me over the years to write over 40 novels, and about four hundred short stories, articles, essays, introductions, reviews, and so on. It allowed me to write 18 screenplays, sold 15 of those, some of them animated scripts, and though none of the longer screenplays were produced, they paid the bills, and I gave them my best. Add in comic scripts, a couple of one act plays, and things I cant even remember at this point, and most of it written by this method, it has turned into a successful way to work for me. So, if youre having trouble, I throw this out there as a method you might consider. I realize some of this is repetitive, and like things Ive written before, but I get asked the same questions repeatedly here, and the answers are the same. But maybe there are some new tidbits here for those of you who have read this advice before, and maybe someone who hasnt will find even more thats beneficial. The thing thats most important is to realize the time is there, that inspiration is you, not a supernatural muse. Sometimes you feel more inspired than other times, but most days if you go to work, and you do it long enough for it to become a habit, and a habit doesnt form in a few days, then you will discover that you can open the door and let your muse out more frequently than it ever wanted to appear before. Life can slow us down. Age slows us down. Illness, but I have found that by making writing a steady part of my life, I can rely on it to get me through rough patches, make good patches even better, and at the end, well, you have a lot of things written. Write steady. Write well.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 15:22:02 +0000
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