That may not sound like much, but the results have been nothing to sneeze at. At that slow and steady rate, I've completed several novels and seen them out into the world.
All my life, I've both needed and resisted structure.
I guess I'm contrarian that way.
But whether I'd like to admit it or not, every time I've succeeded at anything important, there's been a daily practice involved. And, for me, it has to be daily. I can't do something on Mondays and Thursdays, or every other day, and get the same results.
Even though my creative side decries fences, saying it wants to run free, all evidence shows that I'm actually a lot more creative when I have some constraints. So my entire writing life has been a push-and-pull between these conflicting ideas. I might chafe at rules (even when I'm the one who made them), but I have to begrudgingly admit that they're effective on me.
My rule is that I have to write every single day, come hell or high water.
I set the bar for what counts as having written relatively low: 250 words. One page. Because even on a horrible day, when I have a fever or when some crisis hits, I can write at least that much. Because even with arthritis, I can write that much by hand on the back of receipts if my technology fails or I'm trapped in traffic or other disasters strike.
One key to making your goals is setting achievable, realistic goals. Of course, I want more than 250 words each day (and I often get them), but I can *always* get 250 words, so I'm setting myself up for success.
When I started trying to write 250 words a day, it was difficult. It sometimes took me hours…and I struggled to get those hours. My kids were young, my dog was impatient, and I had tremendous guilt about taking that time away from other ways I could be of use to my family and the world. But, if I was going to realize my dream of being a writer at any level, I was going to have to make a commitment and stick to it.
So I did.
As writing 250 words a day became easier over the years (I've done it in as few as 15 minutes on a good night), I raised the bar a little, shooting for 800 words on school days and 2000 words on non-school days. But that's the stretch goal. As long as I write 250 words, the daily writing chain continues to grow.
These days, I make 800 pretty regularly. On nights where I have to settle for *only* the 250, it feels like settling, and leaves me more determined to make more words the next day.
The longer the chain became, the less likely it became that I would break it. After nine years, if I get to bedtime and haven't written, it's like some kind of alarm going off in the back of my brain. I won't be able to sleep until I do it.
Plenty of nights the words are no good. Often, when I come back the next day, I start by throwing out the garbage I wrote the night before and starting fresh. But, there's the magic. You can improve on bad writing, but there has to be something *there* before you can work on making it something good.
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| My writing record (I use Jamie Raintree's spreadsheet) |
So, here I am nine years later, and writing every day is a given, up there with brushing my teeth. It's brain hygiene :-) So far in 2021, I've written 283,796 words (not counting the ones I'm writing right now). That includes work on two novels, several short stories, book reviews, blog posts, and other hard-to-categorize things. Remind me, when I'm feeling like I didn't do that much this year, will you?
