Successful writers are not 'sometime' writers. They don't decide to make April and October the months that they give writing their full attention. They don't write for three days in a row and then not again for three months.
Your goal should be to write something every day. It doesn't need to be 1200 words a day. Even two paragraphs will help you attain that goal. Of course, we will all have days when circumstances make it impossible to write. We hope to have very few days like that.
Today's poster says: 'WRITE until it BECOMES as natural as BREATHING. WRITE until NOT WRITING makes you ANXIOUS.'
By writing every day, the process will likely become natural or a real part of you. Writing every day will allow you to say 'It's who I am.'
I like the last part of the quote that says we should write until not writing makes us anxious. Nobody likes the feeling of tension or anxiety, so strive for that writing every day to feel more peaceful.
How do you manage to write every day? For starters, you need to develop discipline. Making a goal and reaching it are different things altogether. You might start out writing every day for two weeks, and then you miss a day or two. Guess what happens? It's very easy to miss that third day.
Some writers will need to create time to write. You've heard it said before. Get up an hour, or even half-hour earlier, and write when the house is quiet. Or stay up half an hour later than normal. The one problem I find with that is my mind doesn't want to turn off when I do go to bed. My body wants to go to sleep, my mind wants to keep writing.
Create other small snippets of time to write. Think of all the places you end up sitting in a chair waiting for someone or something. With a notebook at your side, you can snatch a little more writing time.
Desire is necessary for you to write on a daily basis. If you don't have the urge, the passion, the desire to write, you are not going to be able to meet your goal. When it becomes drudgery instead of a natural instinct, it's time to evaluate your writing life.
Try to develop these three: Discipline Time Management Desire
Some days when I'm not actually writing, I'm thinking about writing. I might be doing research to answer a question which will allow me to understand my story. Sometimes I'm making notes that I'll use when I sit down and write.
ReplyDeleteI'd consider all the thinking we do about writing as counting toward 'writing every day.'
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