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When Is The Best Time To Put Down Grass Seed – In the previous post, “Making Time to Write” I wrote about time (or the lack thereof) and how, as a writer, you need
Even the busiest person can write if they schedule themselves effectively and are determined to stick with it.
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Right now, for example, I’m writing blog posts instead of writing the chapter of “The Terrible Wind and Rain” which is a bit stuck on me.
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I think this is probably the foundation of my writing practice. I try to write, edit or plan every day. Sometimes the results are sporadic and the session doesn’t lead to much but other times sitting down and making myself try is exactly what I need to get into a great flow. If you can crack even a paragraph a day you are on your way.
My best writing times are often right after school, when I’m still in work mode and not yet too exhausted to do anything but laze around.
I like to get out of the classroom and out of the house. I’ll force myself to spend a designated amount of time writing in a quiet, comfortable space before moving on to the next thing on the agenda (usually yoga or coming home for dinner). I usually try to spend at least an hour every weeknight doing this. Most of the time this leads to results. Sometimes it feels a little slow, even useless, but I rarely get less than a paragraph or two, and that’s better than nothing.
To write. Maybe you’re starting that new travel blog you’ve been thinking about. Maybe start a short story or write an outline for a future chapter that you are for
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Got a solid idea. Maybe you’re working on the first few pages of that other idea you’ve been thinking about in the background.
If you travel, keep yourself in the habit by writing a journal about your experiences. If you read a book, watch a movie or a TV series make some notes about it. What did you like? What didn’t you like? What would you do differently? What ideas or themes could you use yourself? If something good, bad, funny or interesting happens to you that day, write down a short anecdote.
If you’ve posted before, maybe you’ve spent time promoting. If you haven’t posted before, maybe spend some time writing query letters.
The important thing is to keep yourself in the habit of writing. If you give yourself permission to skip it just once, you break the habit. If you’re anything like me, do it once or twice and pretty soon you’ll find all sorts of reasons not to write “just this once”.
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Sure, there are legitimate reasons why you’ll need to skip from time to time, but try to save those cards for the times when you really need them.
Write even if it’s garbage. Don’t worry about editing. Maybe there is something that can be saved, maybe not. At worst, you’ve figured out what you don’t want in your story. At the very least, you practiced your craft a bit.
Carefully select a playlist of music that fits the mood of your story and upload it. Make sure it’s long enough to last at least a few hours.
I find that instrumental music is most effective in setting the tone of a scene while still allowing me to focus on the writing. Sometimes music with lyrics can be a bit too distracting. I’ll often pick one of my favorite tracks from the playlist and just sit through the entire track before I start writing.
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One word of caution: this is a focused effort. Don’t use this route to browse Facebook one last time. Shut everything else out and just listen. Take these four or five minutes to set yourself up to write; get yourself into your own head.
“Select Playlist” is because you want to be very intentional about your choices. If there’s a song that’s going to take you out of your zone, remove it from the playlist. You don’t want to go back to iTunes every three minutes to skip songs or choose the next track. Set it once Then write.
I often find it helps to do a dramatic reading of a few pages leading up to where I start my writing for a meeting. Think about how the characters will sound. What kind of emotion will be in their voices? What will the number sound like? Will it be dark and low? optimistic? High energy and fast pace? Read it like that to yourself.
One of the benefits of this is that you end up editing your previous work a bit, but make sure you don’t put on the full editor hat. You read to get yourself in the mood to write. You don’t read to rethink your choices or to catch all your mistakes.
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I usually find that while this process works if you read in your head, it works even better if you read out loud, even if you’re just whispering to yourself. Sure you look a little weird but maybe people will buy your book just to find out what you’ve been whispering about all this time.
After a few lines of reading in my character/narrator’s voice, I’m usually pumped and ready to carry the story forward.
This is a similar strategy to number 7, except this time put the computer down and tell yourself the story as if you were telling it around a campfire or to a child. Tell yourself what happens next out loud and without written instructions.
Oral storytelling is a much older condition than written storytelling and every culture I know has some form of oral storytelling built deep into its tradition. Books may be the means of communication, but stories, even written ones, are still oral in nature and should feel that way. Even though we read books now, what we’re really doing is still just telling ourselves a story. we
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Oral storytelling is a great way to bypass the vocabulary on the page to focus on plot points, character development, and dialogue.
Even before I started writing a novel (in fact, before even outlining a novel), I usually told myself the story in different ways hundreds of times. I tell myself the story when I’m driving to work or lying in bed. I tell myself the story when I go for a walk. Not only does this help establish the structure of the story, it also helps me memorize events, characters, setting and plot as oral storytelling relies on repetition and memory.
Every now and then I like to close the laptop and pull out a notebook. Sometimes it’s because I find myself surfing the web when I should be writing. If after three or four restarts I can’t stop myself from opening new browser windows, I like to switch to good old pen and paper.
There are far fewer distractions and you can leave every piece of technology, including your phone, off and in another room while you do this.
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Take bullet points, sketch a map or outline, or write entire chapters this way. Typing them later becomes an easy way to return to writing mode and offers another editing opportunity.
I often did this to overcome writer’s block and some of my favorite chapters were written down first.
Plus, it’s a great way to ensure you don’t miss your scheduled writing time even if you don’t have technology or wifi handy.
When I travel, I often won’t do anything in the story, but I always write a few pages a day in a travel journal. These experiences turned into blog posts, memories and sometimes even turned into chapter ideas.
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This may seem like an avoidance tactic (and of course you should be careful not to let it become one), but multiple medical studies have proven that exercise helps increase creativity. A recent study in the Netherlands found that people who exercised regularly performed better than those who were sedentary in a variety of cognitive tests.
Anecdotally, these findings have been supported by the creative processes of dozens of famous writers. Charles Dickens was known to walk more than ten miles before his writing sessions. Henry Theroux noted that the thoughts began to flow “as soon as my feet began to move.”
Tolkien, too, developed so much of the imagery, setting, and place names of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings while wandering the English countryside.
Get out and about, run, cycle, do yoga, hit the boxing ring… anything to get the blood flowing, as long as you get back to writing when you’re done.
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Sometimes the best way to refocus yourself and get back on track is to take inspiration from others. Give yourself permission to read something similar in style or with a similar definition to what you write.
But this is not a vacation. During your writing, don’t just read for pleasure. Record. Analyze how the author describes certain details or
