In How To Write Every Day (and why you should), Ali at Daily Writing Tips acknowledges that it’s not easy to write every day, but offers suggestions relevant to daily writing of fiction, journal entries and blog posts.
Some day, I want to finish one (or all) of the three stories I’ve been slogging through for years. The problem I have is my pacing: I invariably write furiously for three or four nights until family and work intervenes, and then I give up for several months until I again find the time to collect my thoughts, look at my outlines, and try to pick up where I left off.
That start-and-stop pace is one reason I started this blog; I promised myself that I’d get in the habit of writing something (anything) every day. This seemed a daunting task when I started, but with time I realized that it’s not so hard, particularly if I can accept that not everything I write will be meaningful, insightful, useful, or even coherent to anyone but me.
In addition to the commitment to write every day, setting a word count goal helps. I’m nowhere near the 1000 words per day suggested by Stephen King. If I didn’t have a full time job and a young daughter, I might get that many! I’m content with 100, pleased with 150, thrilled with 250, and ecstatic with anything over 300 words.
I think I’m in the habit of daily writing now. I just need to decide on new word count goals for both journalling and fiction writing.
You know, I’m not much a fan of Stephen King, but I took another bit of advice from him. I don’t remember the exact words but the gist is to set a specific time of day to write and the muse will learn to show up. I don’t have a specific time everyday, but I have picked Sunday mornings devoted to two hours of writing focused on novel work. At first, boy was it hard. I wrote some serious garbage, but I think it is starting to work. At this point, I’ve split it up to one hour editing and one hour writing fresh. In that time I only reach about 1500 words of new stuff.
I do tend to write something every day, but I don’t do word counts on them. It’s random. I’m afraid I’ll start neglecting the work that pays the bills if I set word count goals for myself daily.
To my advantage, of course, is I don’t have a child needing my care and attention. Should that change, I may have to change my hours of writing to nighttime. Hmm…I wonder how that will work out. Think the muse will get ticked off?