Wow, two posts in a week!
Call me butter because I’m on a roll…
A friend of mine who wants to write his own book recently
asked me how to go about doing that.
It’s a testament to how few people actually end up writing books(despite
so many saying they want to) that he came to me. There are loads of authors out there with
more talent than I, yet so few have gone through the process from start to
finish.
As I was writing down my advice, one piece popped up to me
out of the rest – carve out dedicated time everyday to write a specified number
of words for your book. At least
500. Preferably 1000. And do not stop until you get there. Don’t get up for breaks, don’t surf the net,
don’t talk to your kids – nothing. Stop
telling yourself you can do it by writing 100-ish words at a time over the
course of the day(it takes me about three or four minutes to write 100 words
when I’m focused), because you can’t.
Why do I say that?
Because it takes me about 100 words to get into the groove of
writing. First, you have to remember
where you left off, and then you have to remember where you were trying to
go. It takes time, and chopping up that
time is disjointing. You lose focus and
your plot points when your writing time gets split between five different
sessions as opposed to one, especially if you can only manage 500-100 words a
day. I can almost always tell during the
editing process where I left off for the day, so part of my editing time is
spent smoothing out the flow between the writing sessions.
Write. Don’t goof
off(as I’ve come to do) – just write.
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