Easier said than done, right? Here are some suggestions for making it happen.
1. Commit to writing for at least two hours every day. (Why? Because 1½ to 2 hours is the maximum that most of us can endure mentally and physically before needing a break.) So write for at least 90 minutes without getting up from your chair. Seriously. No breaks, no distractions, no getting everything else done first. And especially no e-mail and Facebook.
2. Write every day for two weeks. For most of us, that is enough to make it a habit. And I promise that if you do this, you’ll find out how much more productive you become as a writer. Try it.
3. What to do when you have holidays to observe and celebrate? Or when you are too ill to write? Or when you can’t possibly find even 90 minutes in your day to write? That is when you must write even 15 minutes each day. No matter how tired or busy or even sick you are, write 15 minutes each day. Here’s why this works:
- The hardest part of writing is getting started. We amateurs procrastinate minutes, hours, and days. (The pros – some of the best and most prolific writers – report procrastinating weeks and even years.) We’re afraid we won’t have anything to write. We’re afraid that what we write will be terrible. We’re afraid we’re not up to the real pain that good writing requires. For some of us, it’s only when the pain of what we would lose by not writing – fellowships, degree completion, book contracts, jobs – feels more real than the pain of actually writing that we even begin to write.
- If you make yourself write 15 minutes a day, you have overcome the biggest hurdle – getting started. I’ve never known anyone with the goal of writing 15 minutes a day actually limit writing to just that 15 minutes. Once you start, I promise you won’t watch the clock. You’ll write for 30, 60, even 90 minutes before you realize it. (The trick is that you tell yourself you only have to write for 15 minutes and that you can endure anything for that long. Once you start to write, the anxiety will begin to disappear and you’ll write longer.)
- Writing everyday contributes to continuity of your thinking and generating the ideas you need to write. Your mind will function differently when you write every day. We all think about our writing every day. But the cognitive processes involved in writing are different from those involved in thinking. Your project moves forward when you write… even if you write a gosh-awful first draft." —
Break Writers’ group, Columbia University (via writingadvice)
Sage advice for writers. WRITE. I must do this.
“Let me let you in on a little secret. When you are learning to write, you are going to suck. You are going to suck a lot. You’re just going to keep sucking for a while, and feel like you’re sucking, and actually that’s a sign that you’re completely on the right path. (…)
You know, you don’t have to be afraid that the first thing you turn out is going to be a huge masterpiece, or it’s going to be that big novel that makes a billion zillion dollars. Don’t worry about that. Don’t worry that it’s not good. Nobody- that’s the great thing about writing and not publishing right away — you can write tons of stuff that sucks.
This is precisely why when people write to me when you’re, you know, sixteen, seventeen and eighteen and you say, “I’ve written a book. I write stories all the time. I wanna publish them. How can I do that.” I say, “No, don’t do it, not yet, stop. Because you haven’t sucked enough yet.” And you may be thinking, “No, I do, I really really suck. You’re underestimating how much I suck, Maureen.” But I’m not. You haven’t sucked loooooong and hard enough. (Did I actually say that?)
Trust me, sucking is not just part of the learning process. It’s part of the professional process as well. First drafts, like the one I turned in at one o’clock this morning, basically exist to suck. They’re wrong. They’re the first pass. They’re my first attempt at the story. And they’re going to get changed and ripped apart. I mean, lots of writers I know, we sit and we laugh about the incredible sucktitude of our first drafts. But you have to go there and you have to try stuff out and you have to suck at it big time.
Have you heard this phrase, “Writing is rewriting?” Well it’s a hundred percent true. You don’t just write something once and then you’re done. You write it and it sucks. Then you write it and write it like five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five, whatever times, and *then* you’re done and it goes from ‘suck’ to ‘sort-of-kind-of-suck’ and then it kind of goes all the way to ‘awesome,’ and that’s the journey. It goes from ‘suck’ to ‘awesome.’ (…)It’s good to say it out loud. Say it with me now. It feels good. One, two, three, “I give myself permission to suck.” - Maureen Johnson
(Thanks to em-pathy!)
Forrester: No thinking! That comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is… to write, not to think!
I like to hide away my writing. I have this horrible habit of writing with the intention to share it, but then I save it away with my others drafts never to be seen by any eyes but mine, and all right, a few faithful readers of my work, like my mom or my boyfriend. To actually share and present my writing for people to see and read terrifies me. Sharing my writing is like standing stark naked in front of a person, and attempting to hide myself, but failing.
I am afraid of not being good enough. A poor writer. One who thinks they have a writing ability, but in reality they are just many of the people who lack that inherent talent that some people just have.
I have this need for my writing to be utterly perfect. Even journaling about my day has succumbed to my unrealistic pressure for the writing style to resemble the finished product of a Sylvia Plath novel. I want every sentence to be a masterpiece. I want to capture people, and for them to… want to read more.
Writing seems to be the necessity and the bane of my existence. So, as my father urged me as I told him many times of my want to start a blog…
“Just do it.”
These same words I am going to apply to my writing as well. Write no matter what. Work at it. Write everyday whether it be good or bad. Just do it
And I have found that when I do “just do it”, inspiration visits.
