Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

Procrastination. It has to be one of the biggest problems a writer can face, right up there with lack of self-discipline. We dress it up in a lot of fancy terms, we have our excuses but what it boils down to is: we’re not writing. We’re distracted. We’re blocked. These excuses lead to one thing, failure.

If you read just about any how-to book for writing, they’ll tell you that you need to treat writing like a job. You need to make time for it. There’s only so much noodling around you can do. Making notes, making outlines, they can helpful tools but at some point you need to move beyond those and actually put pen to paper (or should that be fingers to keys?) and write.

Sometimes the word ‘job’ has negative connotations for some of us. I’m not, and I don’t think the how-to authors are, saying you shouldn’t have fun writing. You should. If you hate the thing you’re writing, you can almost guarantee editors and agents will, too. You need to like the story you’re working on. That’s important. If you’re just writing fanfic, you could probably be looser with your discipline. If you’re aiming to get something original done for a publisher, you need to be actually working on it. Not just talking about it.

Today someone on my writers’ group asked how do we quiet the distractions and write? I put that question to you. How do you do it?

Lately I’ve been failing to quiet them at all. Part of it has been I’ve been ill but the other part of it is I can’t keep myself offline. Well that is where my friends live and it’s my social outlet. That said, I don’t need to be obsessive checking my inbox or playing around on facebook. I need to just say no. And I do but for me the easiest way of doing this is to take myself away from the computer and work on paper.

I also use music a lot to help myself concentrate. Sometimes I find sound tracks that feel like the characters and put them on. Sometimes I just put on peaceful ‘spa’ music to help clear my mind.

Also, I’ve found having a few good friends you can IM/email/call helps especially if you’re stuck. Having a sounding board really helps with the blocked feeling. I’ve found talking it out really helps to get things moving. My friends often see things from other angles or toss out suggestions that just click, even without them reading more than a description of where I’m stuck.

Cleaning up the house, I found an old Writers’ Digest. It suggested trying to take 15 minutes a day and just write one page with the idea of a page a day makes a novel in a year. It’s not a bad idea (much like doing morning papers but a little different in that you’re not trying to get your mind fresh). I think we can easily find 15 minutes to try and write.

And for those of us stuck in the middle of our novels (and who doesn’t get stuck there?) Check out Justine Musk’s thoughts on how to handle the dreaded center.

I made minimal progress this week. I’ve added another 2,629 words to my two short stories (mostly the threesome). I really wanted to do more but I’ve been playing around which I guess is the whole point of this weekly blog

14357 / 175000 words. 8% done!

Comments

[bob_fish.livejournal.com]

Oh tell me about it. The thing is, if I'm avoiding cleaning the flat, I get writing done. If I'm procrastinating about work or writing, I get the sudden urge to clean the kitchen. Uh, win/win?

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

hahaha sure, sounds about right (but seriously if i don't clean those dishes now I'm gonna be eating off paper towels)