“Spending five hours on a Saturday writing isn’t nearly as valuable as writing thirty minutes every day of the week.”Hmm. Personally, I'm not sure I buy that. 30 minutes doesn't give me enough time to get my head in the game. I'd much prefer an hour a day for five days. Two hours, even better, but how realistic is that?
Not.
And therein lies the dilemma of every writer. Not only how to find the time to write, but how to flip on the switch of your muse for those snatched moments of time when you can write.
Whenever I sit down to pound away on my Great American Novel, it helps to spit out a sentence or two of scene details. Who's in it. What they're doing. Why they're doing it. The emotion of the scene. The purpose of the scene. Yeah, that about covers it.
And then I kick into dialogue mode. Dialogue is the easiest thing to write when you're short on time. All you have to do is listen to the voices in your head and type down what they're saying. What? You don't hear any voices? Then move on to Plan B...write 1 paragraph of setting. Just one. It's manageable and not very intimidating. In fact, you'll be surprised how often capturing a blurb of setting leads into one more paragraph, and then one more.
Ideally, we'd all like to have 5 glorious hours of uninterrupted writerly hours, but those word feasts are few and far between. Live in Realsville and aim for smaller chunks if you want to be successful.
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3 comments:
Personally, I couldn't write for 5 hours straight, at least not on a manuscript. I can spend a whole Saturday getting blog spots ready for the next month, but for me, more than about 3 hours of uninterrupted time with my story wears me out.
Creating a story is the hardest part for me. Now editing ... I could probably spend 5 or 6 hours straight there. :)
We writers are a strange bunch and each different. lol
My first year, when I was totally gung ho and writing during lunch, and any other time I had, including talking memos while I drove, I wrote scenes. I had a ton of scenes, which I then had to piece together. Some of those scenes were almost entirely dialogue! That manuscript is still the one I love most, even though I haven't been able to do much with it. I'm now moving on to using a thoughtful, plotting approach to the next story. I'm excited to see how it will work for me.
I'm with you, Michelle, my muse doesn't suck me into the story until I've been working on it for at least an hour. :-P I love the unexpected, blissful hours of uninterrupted writing time, but yeah, discipline in the smaller blocks, that helps you grow. :-)
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