Although I have been writing for years, I am not very good at working consistently, or indeed at all. I can always find something else I'd rather do.
The internet is a disaster - I used to spend hours on RASFC - a usenet forum frequented by some very interesting writers which taught me a great deal: I could justify that because I did indeed learn a great deal and lost hours to vaguely literary chat or 'cat vacuuming'. Then I moved on for a while to 'Absolute write water cooler', which was less enlightening, but still distracting. I missed my old friends from RASFC who had migrated to 'livejournal' or 'facebook' so obviously I spent time there too. It is after all important to keep up with friends, not just because friendship is worth while in itself but because its helpful for writing - conversations are inspirational, revelatory, informative and so I am also available for dog walks, coffee, lunch, afternoon tea and early evening drinks ( especially early evening drinks.) I have even been known to resort to housework or shopping (always for tedious things that I can justify as being entirely necessary) to avoid the business of constructing sentences.
I only ever produce books by tricking myself into work. I have used the alarm clock thingy on my computer to force myself to write for fifty minutes without distraction. When that doesn't work I bribe myself with coffee, chocolate, wine and I set myself public challenges like producing a certain number of words a day.
I didn't have a very productive 2011 and 2012 has been worse so I set myself the task of writing the first draft of a chick lit novel in August.Why? I can hear you ask and it is a good question. It is mainly because I've never written one before and I don't usually do very much in August. Anyway, I am a couple of days behind schedule as I've taken a few days off, but I am at 40,000 words in and hoping to knock the rest on the head before September. It isn't very good ( what a surprise) but actually I don't care - you can't edit air and sometimes you just have to get those words on the page. I'll let you know how it works out.
7 comments:
"you can't edit air and sometimes you just have to get those words on the page."
YES! Placeholder prose beats no prose every time.
Good luck with the rest of the month!
Sounds pretty impressive to me, Nicky! And once it's there you can do something with it which you can't do with a blank page or empty document.
Think yourself lucky you weren't seduced into Authonomy. (No - don't even peek, it's a site that eats days!)
You can't tell a time waster like me that, Jo. I will now have to check it out!
You're absolutely right! You can't edit until you've written something and something is better than nothing! But 40,000 words is good going - keep it up, I say!!
I can always be 'distracted' into writing by avoiding housework - for example this morning I am supposed to be in the middle of tidying my study which needs to be turned into a spare bedroom by tomorrow....
No, I'm going to do it NOW. Good luck with the story
Inspiring blog- its made me pick up that WIP and start whipping it into shape! Lovely post Nicky.
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