I've been feeling lousy lately (sick and sciatic nerve problem) and down on time and have decided to try something different.
First, I started trying Written? Kitten! I'll be the first to admit it's too simple to work well for me. I write better when italicizing, bolding, and centering are easy as CTRL + shortcut. But it's a handy tool when I want to just start pushing. Better than Notepad at least.
Second, today I read this article by Rachel Aaron. It's genius and I recognize my own best processes in there. By analyzing and studying her own work, she boosted her average daily word count from 2000 words per day to 10,000 words, using knowledge, time, and enthusiasm. (I could use that kind of boost.)
I went through one six-month period in my life where I wrote almost 50,000 words of fanfiction in about 2-3 hours a day, 2-3 days a week. Needless to say, I haven't been there in a long time. But what was I doing differently?
- I was passionate about what I was writing. I loved the stories and the characters and always wanted to find out what happened next. I could wring out 1200 - 2300 words in an hour on my lunch break just off of the inspiration of reading my previous chapters. (This got harder once it took too long to read the previous chapters.)
- I knew enough but not too much. If I pre-write the whole story, I will stop writing the story. I don't know why, but that's the way it is. If I prewrite the chapter, we're good to go.
- I constantly wrote down snippets of what I wanted to include in the next chapter or even later.
- I read works that inspired me for my own fic.
- I never felt limited. I just wrote whatever inspired me at the moment and knew I'd eventually get back to that other fic on the burner. (This gets harder once the burners exceed 20, but it's hard to keep wanting to write if I shut down too many of my ideas either.)
- I had to work hard to earn praise (I didn't have fans yet who liked even the work I didn't), so when I did earn it, it mattered.
- I almost always wrote in Microsoft Word or occasionally directly on the Document Manager. I have since analyzed my own writing enough to discover I write best and fastest and most in Word—for whatever reason.
Is there anything that helps you write and stay motivated? Please share any tips, links, ideas, or experiences. And happy writing!
