Getting The Word Out | Writing Tips to Keep You Writing

I don't know many writers who are able to sit down and produce quality work every single day. If I had to guess, I would say that about 20% of the time I sit in front of my computer produces the best work.

If you are anything like me, you have many days that you don't get a word down on paper. You may sit down in front of your computer, but the words just don't come. You know where you want to go, but you can't get the words to flow.

Other days you avoid your computer. You suddenly find other things that need attention. Wash the car... mow the lawn... clean the toilet.... anything is better than sitting at the computer staring at a blank screen.

And then there are those days that the ideas are flowing. Your fingers fly across the keyboard adding pages and pages to your work… until the phone or the doorbell rings. Friends and family can't understand that this is your job. This is how you make money. Even if you aren’t making a lot of money right now, your goal is to be able to support yourself with writing. And, to achieve that goal, you actually have to write.

Becoming a successful author takes more than aspiration and dedication. It takes self-discipline. Lots and lots of self-discipline.

Here are my tips for producing quality work every single day:

1. Assess yourself. Most people have a time of day when they are most creative. For some it is late in the evening when the rest of the world has settled in for the night. Others find that early morning stirs their imaginative juices. Some get very creative after a morning jog. Find your best time and stick to it. No one says you have to write every single day. Be honest with yourself. If you think you can only do it two or three times per week, make that commitment and stick to it. If you can only spare a half hour a day, then commit to a half hour – and stick to it.

For me, I do my best work from 4am to about 9am. So that is my work time. The rest of the house is sleeping. I can be 100% sure that the phone or doorbell won’t ring. And, on those days when I am tempted to surf the web instead of work, even facebook is boring that early in the morning.

Since I did an assessment, I also know that those hours are not my best hours for editing. I set aside two days a week (usually Monday and Thursday) to spend a couple hours in the afternoon for editing what I have worked on in the last few days.

2. Make your writing spot a place you want to be. Remove the distractions (clutter, stacks of bills, school work). Make it your happy place. If this is the same spot you use to pay bills or do homework, get a pretty box and put those things inside the box. You don’t want to look at them. Get fussy with your writing space. You want to feel good sitting there. I have my favorite blanket on my chair. My little stuffed dog sits on my desk watching the computer screen. A family picture is the first thing I see when my eyes leave the screen and I lean back in my chair to picture my next scene.

3. Tell your family and friends what you are doing. For me that was a very hard step. I was afraid that they would laugh at me or that they would start hounding me about when I was going to sell my book. For this reason, I didn’t even tell my husband until I had actually published my first book.

I was very happy that he encouraged me to keep it up. That first book doesn’t sell very many copies (only a few per month). But my second book sells a respectable number of copies each day and enables me to proudly say that I am an author.

4. I know that most ‘writing tips’ tell authors to set a word count quota. My advice is to only set a word count quota if it helps you.

When I first started writing, I set a quota of 2,000 words a day. Some days I met that quota. Some days I surpassed it. And some days I never came near it.

On the days that I didn’t come near it, I would beat myself up. I would tell myself that a real writer would have gotten the job done. I would be so busy convincing myself that I’d never be a writer that I would find excuses not to write the next day (or sometimes the next few days).

If a word count quota will help you, then use it. But, if you are like me and having a quota that you don’t reach makes you feel bad, then throw that out the window and just write until you run out of words.

5. Trust yourself. That can be hard to do when you are sitting there typing away and everything you type feels wrong. Instead of selecting and deleting text over and over, let it flow. Keep typing even if you know it’s not exactly what you want to say.

When this happens to me, I place my cursor at the start of my day’s work and type XXX. Then I keep working. I try not to second guess the scene. I just get it written.

Another day (sometimes during my editing mode) I do a search for XXX. I find that scene that I wasn’t happy with and rewrite it. Once it feels right, I remove the XXX.

By always using the same letters when I write, I can always easily find spots in my work that need attention. Before I submit any work, I do a final search for XXX to make sure I’ve fixed all the parts that I wanted to fix.

These tips help me every day. The bottom line is to keep writing. The more you write, the better chance you have to succeed. So, why are you still reading? Open that file and get writing! Good luck!