Call it a resolution or a re-commitment to your goals. The first of January can mean a great many things to a writer. It could bring on dread knowing that another year has come and gone and you are still hoping to start that novel you’ve been talking about. Or it could mean that the novel you worked on all last year is taking you longer than you expected. The dawn of a new calendar – may be a reason to join a workshop like those offered at Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop in Denver.
I think it is an ideal time to switch up your writing schedule and try something completely different. Even if writing has been going okay for you prior to the start of another year. If you find the change doesn’t work for you and didn’t give you a new sense of vitality in regards to getting to the page each day, go back to the tried and true of what worked.
But a change in scenery for the writer could be just what a stale story needs…
It’s been awhile. I discovered that sometimes when facing deadlines, it is important to focus on priorities. Over the last few months, I’ve started two short stories, progressed on my novel, and prepared my eBook for my editor, who returned it just after Thanksgiving. I figured I would have the book done and loaded on Smashwords within a week. However, I started an adjunct teaching position, continued to look for full time employment, and I have been preparing my home for the holidays. This sounds like excuses. But, as anxious as I was to hurry through the editor’s comments, I forced myself to go slow and pay attention to detail. I still may have missed a few commas or semi-colons, it can be hard to line edit without making changes to the text.
I knew I was going to have to accept that the book would never be completed to point that I would still make changes. It was time to let it go. This week, I made it the priority – and still life slowed me down. Happily it is now available on Smashwords, yeah!
I read recently or heard, I can’t remember exactly, that one of the hardest habits to develop is a good habit while the hardest habits to break are the bad habits. One of my 2012 goals will be to make writing a habit in my daily life. Sometimes I think it is, then days will come and go without one word being added to my novel. Oh, wait, I need to amend that goal: I will make writing (my novel) a habit in my daily life. I enjoy other forms of writing, but I want to finish my first novel by January 31st and a second novel by December 2012 so it is important to clarify that writing daily won’t count if I continue to work on short stories, articles, and blog posts. Yet, I also plan to have a significant number of those things completed by December 2012 as well: Short Stories (12), Articles (24), blog posts (52).
Any day is a beautiful day if it includes writing (if you’re a writer). This would apply to a painting if I was a painter; sculpting if I longed to sculpt; sewing if sewing made me happy; acting if I was an actor; dancing if a dancer. If you desire to be something the simple act of doing it makes the whole world seem brighter. While, I suppose, doing something else, something without passion or real purpose, could make life seem overwhelming and dark. For me and so many writers I know writing makes me happy. Author Laura Resau (Queen of the Water, The Ruby Notebook) said it best when I interviewed her, “I have a compulsion to write. When I don’t write I get grumpy. I get headaches; I am miserable. Writing helps process experiences and if I am writing, I feel more my life is more beautiful and interesting and I am happier to be alive.”
Over the last few weeks, I have been happily playing with different forms of writing. Some days I wrote a lot and others very little. But while I was writing, I was also working on a website for non-profit, volunteering at Lighthouse Writers Workshop (Mary Karr came to town for weekend event: Writer’s Studio, benefit dinner and Craft Talk – it was fabulous with a capital F!) Interviewing for jobs and applying for others. I also had family issues, health issues, diet and exercise issues, two interviews with local Colorado writers, and a house to care for and manage and weekend jaunts to the mountains.
Saying good-bye to someone so young (49) reminded me that we have a very limited time to enjoy this world and if writing for as little as one hour a day is required to help make that time more enjoyable then do it.
I learned in an interview with Connie Willis (Doomsday, Remake, Lincoln’s Dream) that she started doing it (writing) out of fear of being 80 and regretting never having written or never trying to be a writer. After a few short years of writing and learning to write, she finally had a story published and from that single story she went on to become one of the most popular science fiction writers of our time. Over the years she developed her writing schedule – two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. During LWW’s recent Craft Talk, Mary Karr (Liar’s Club, Cherry, Lit, Sinners Welcome) spoke about locking herself in her office for six hours a day to write – forcing herself to work until she met her quota. In another interview, this one with author Doug Kurtz (Hunter’s Island, Mosquito), he explained that when he first started writing fiction, he was young and single enough to devote 5 hours or more a night to the task of writing but since life now includes a family, he’s learned to write on the fly and to keep his work with him. He explained, “If I have ten minutes, I can make those ten minutes count.”
If you yearn to write try scheduling 10 minutes a day to devote to your writing. If at the end of the day you feel unfulfilled – up the time to 20 minutes and if at the end of day you still have a longing that hasn’t been quenched, continue to add time until you discover how much time you need to devote to the act of writing for you to feel – that the day was a beautiful day.
250. One page. 250 words in 12 point font, double spaced, auto indent paragraphs with no line or space added between paragraphs (which I hate by the way, why does MS Word default to this stupid setting?). One page times 5 days a week times 52 weeks equals 260. Take off for vacations, busy deadlines, weddings, funerals, or graduations and at the end of a year the quota could still be held at 230 pages times 250 words will get you novel that comes in at less than 60,000 words. Not quite enough for a full length novel.
This is not how I write novels. I don’t have the drive to write one page a day. I want to write five pages a day. I often do when I get into a story. So, why don’t I have a bookshelf full of completed novels? Because for a long time, I did not set writing quotas and as a student, I didn’t do much writing outside of schoolwork.
In the article,How to Set and Reach a Writing Quota Yahoo contributor, Wanda Leibowitz writes “There are two basic ways to set your writing quota: by process, or by product. Setting a writing quota by process means pledging to log a certain number of minutes or hours, and setting a writing quota by product means promising to output a certain number of articles, stories, chapters, poems, lines, or even words.”
I am returning from vacation which was preceded by a harrowing week of rewrites for my capstone project: What Makes a Writer a Writer, now filed at DU as a complete and done deal. I will never have to write another word on that particular project. To write it I was working against a quota set by product with a deadline of August 11, 2011. I graduated on August 12, 2011 determined not to have to still do any school work once I walked across that stage and accepted the diploma (holder).
Anyway, the project was sixty-two pages counting front and back matter, between August 6th, 2011 and August 11, 2011. I rewrote, edited, fixed, almost every sentence in the paper and I had to add crucial material to two sections and re-organize two others. In order to get this accomplished I could not think about writing for a certain number of hours or minutes. I edited and wrote to exhaustion, napped or slept, woke up and did it again.
Needless to say, I crashed afterword. I napped and slept my way through August 13, 14, 15, and 16. I am still in down mode. I don’t plan to set any quotas until August 22nd. Then it is game on! I have two projects, one a non-fiction and one a fiction, that I am determined to finish by the end of the month. I will begin to meet these goals by setting my writing schedule – my quota using the process of writing for an “X” number of hours a day.
Writer by Writing 