I’ve been watching Lauren Oliver’s ‘Ask Lauren’ vids. I think she’s a brilliant author, and I love the insight into her writing life. You know she wrote the majority of her first book on her blackberry, while commuting? Now there’s serious dedication.
Oliver writes 1000 words a day, roughly 360 days a year. At first, I thought wow that’s tons! But actually, since April I’ve written 180000, so I’m not far off the mark.
The key is she writes every day. I know I’ve bleated on about this before, but it is so important to write every day. Writing is a skill that must be practised. I write lots during a first draft, but then so much of my time is spent editing and plotting and researching, when I write very little.
Even when editing or planning, you still need to write every day. I aim for 500 words. Could be anything…
List of Things
Waffle. Pick up the pen and go. Write write write and don’t think about what’s coming out. ”The sausage met the sheep and they had a merry time.” That sort of thing (or perhaps closer to the right side of sanity).
Random scenes from your next project, especially if you’re in planning mode. Go for it, don’t think about story or quality, just pick a scene in your head, or one of your shiny embryonic characters, and take them for a spin. It’s a nice balance between plotting and pantsing.
Describe stuff. Where are you? What do you see? Try to write it down.
Floaty purple trumpets… Long dangly green things.
Eavesdrop. This is the fun one! In a coffee shop? Listen in to your neighbour. Make up a backstory, try to imitate their speech pattern or accent in words, describe their appearance, the relationship, the dynamics.
Blog. Even if you don’t have a blog, pretend you do. Pick a topic – any topic – and write about it. Could be something in the news, something in history, something in your life… anything.
Short stories, poems, mini-sagas, songs… The key is not to worry about quality. The whole point is practise. Imagine you want to be a concert pianist, but you only play the piano at weekends. During the week you listen to great music, you imagine yourself playing, you compose amazing pieces in your head… but you don’t actually play. Writing is the same. If you want to be good, you need to do it every day, in addition to all the other gumph a writer has to deal with (plotting, planning, making up backstory, researching, character building, editing, reading, critiquing, twittering, coffee-drinking… and so on and so on).
Grab a scabby notebook, a biro, and spend X minutes a day writing fresh words. Do this in addition to your main project. We get tied down by our WIP, and it’s helpful to step away. Make the time – practice makes perfect.
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