If there was a degree-awarding institution for soothsaying, I had dropped out with no certificate at all. Or if I was compelled to continue, I had graduated a huge failure. This simply is letting you know that I don’t flatter with my words; I only give out tidbits I think will be helpful for writers. And today, I will freely be giving out some more of those tips to the groups who have now likened writing to chores as in the clothes they wash daily or the food they cook or eat daily.
You know, in any of these chores, just what you do yesterday and how you do it, is how you’re going to do it today. You aren’t learning new ways of eating neither are you learning new ways of washing (although you can still learn new ways of washing that will leave your clothes stained clean… now that’s up to you).
And you can trust, I wasn’t going to prove if writing is a chore or not, instead I will just be happy that I will be equipping your armory with sophisticated arsenals with which you can you use to confront that false belief of writing being a chore should it raise its head once again. And more importantly, to ensure you’ll be writing consistently while never for once seeing writing as a chore. So now we got a go.
#1. Don’t write the whole day. Have Schedules. I know writing is your passion. I know you love writing. But writing shouldn’t be all you’ll be doing the whole day. You can work out some game time into your daily schedule. Listening to music is cool too. You may leave out 30 minutes of your day doing only deep thinking. (and, in fact, I recommend this). Your schedule may be four solid hours of uninterrupted writing. You can achieve this by taking your PC to a place where you wouldn’t be having access to electricity. It will imply that you’ll be writing for as long as your PC battery can last you.
#2. Take it easy on yourself. It is funny a writer was asking on a forum sometimes ago that he needed a good prescription of drugs that will keep sleep away. Thank goodness, only reasonable persons were on hand on the said day otherwise, he had gotten the prescription and maybe he would have landed in the hospital. Dude was a fresh freelance writer who needed to execute a project within a time frame.
Be you a freelance writer or not, please take it easy on yourself. Keep your avarice for money out of your writing career. Simply tell your Client sincerely when you’ll be able to turnaround. Also, consider outsourcing to a very good writer you trust should need to.
I tell you the work you were doing that landed you in the hospital for weeks could become a chore afterward. What it will become then -- after your full recovery -- will be that particular writing you do repeatedly until you landed in the hospital. Now what more of a chore could that be?
And for you creative writers, you’re writing your novel, e-books, short stories, anthologies, etc., same advice I gave above is what I am giving you, too: take it easy on yourself. You may not be writing the two chapters as you have earlier planned.
#3. No deadlines, maybe Goals. Setting writing goals have been largely discussed in point 2 above. I can’t be your Oxford, Longman, or Everest on this one. But I need you to agree with me that if the deadline of an essay competition is 4th March 2016 then it is. If you submit any time later – either you are aware of it or not, or although you have the best essay – well, you are as good as a participant.
More elaborately if you set a deadline for yourself and eventually you couldn’t meet it, you may tend to want to think writing to be some sort of chore since you have been writing and still could not beat the deadline. And you know this is what we are trying to avoid.
#4. Write in the wee hours of the day. And I mean in the morning before the day comes bothering with all its cares. You might have planned out what to write the night before. By personal experience, I have discovered early morning to be the best time to flow in writing. I just know that whatever will surface during the day, good or otherwise – will only be surfacing just when you’re done writing.
#5. You may want to try other forms of writing. For me personally, on a good day, I might be caught busy with a client’s work, an essay, or on a very busy day while I lay lazily on my bed, I write some fine poems. And on a very bad, when even my lips will refuse to motion, I still respond to emails. I respond to comments on my blog. I chat up few intelligent parleys.
Either it is to you some forms of writing I do not know, but to me it is. I just discovered that all these forms of writing required thoughts, punctuations, proper grammar, spelling, proofreading, editing before I punch the send button.
#6. Become a voracious reader. I can bet you have heard/read this innumerable time so you just might be reading it again for the umpteenth time. But I suspect not quite a lot of people read books (not just writers now). Your writing career begins spiraling at that moment you became clueless as to what to write. At first, it may seem like it’s fatigue or you just might be smart to label it writer’s block. Then it continued and never seems to stop anytime soon. It is not some Clichés to say you can’t give what you don’t have. A writer has to be refilling and refueling as always. It begins with a writer being able to clearly express his thoughts – and it continued with an avid reader.
Do I have your comment? Thank you.
You know, in any of these chores, just what you do yesterday and how you do it, is how you’re going to do it today. You aren’t learning new ways of eating neither are you learning new ways of washing (although you can still learn new ways of washing that will leave your clothes stained clean… now that’s up to you).
And you can trust, I wasn’t going to prove if writing is a chore or not, instead I will just be happy that I will be equipping your armory with sophisticated arsenals with which you can you use to confront that false belief of writing being a chore should it raise its head once again. And more importantly, to ensure you’ll be writing consistently while never for once seeing writing as a chore. So now we got a go.
#1. Don’t write the whole day. Have Schedules. I know writing is your passion. I know you love writing. But writing shouldn’t be all you’ll be doing the whole day. You can work out some game time into your daily schedule. Listening to music is cool too. You may leave out 30 minutes of your day doing only deep thinking. (and, in fact, I recommend this). Your schedule may be four solid hours of uninterrupted writing. You can achieve this by taking your PC to a place where you wouldn’t be having access to electricity. It will imply that you’ll be writing for as long as your PC battery can last you.
#2. Take it easy on yourself. It is funny a writer was asking on a forum sometimes ago that he needed a good prescription of drugs that will keep sleep away. Thank goodness, only reasonable persons were on hand on the said day otherwise, he had gotten the prescription and maybe he would have landed in the hospital. Dude was a fresh freelance writer who needed to execute a project within a time frame.
Be you a freelance writer or not, please take it easy on yourself. Keep your avarice for money out of your writing career. Simply tell your Client sincerely when you’ll be able to turnaround. Also, consider outsourcing to a very good writer you trust should need to.
I tell you the work you were doing that landed you in the hospital for weeks could become a chore afterward. What it will become then -- after your full recovery -- will be that particular writing you do repeatedly until you landed in the hospital. Now what more of a chore could that be?
And for you creative writers, you’re writing your novel, e-books, short stories, anthologies, etc., same advice I gave above is what I am giving you, too: take it easy on yourself. You may not be writing the two chapters as you have earlier planned.
#3. No deadlines, maybe Goals. Setting writing goals have been largely discussed in point 2 above. I can’t be your Oxford, Longman, or Everest on this one. But I need you to agree with me that if the deadline of an essay competition is 4th March 2016 then it is. If you submit any time later – either you are aware of it or not, or although you have the best essay – well, you are as good as a participant.
More elaborately if you set a deadline for yourself and eventually you couldn’t meet it, you may tend to want to think writing to be some sort of chore since you have been writing and still could not beat the deadline. And you know this is what we are trying to avoid.
#4. Write in the wee hours of the day. And I mean in the morning before the day comes bothering with all its cares. You might have planned out what to write the night before. By personal experience, I have discovered early morning to be the best time to flow in writing. I just know that whatever will surface during the day, good or otherwise – will only be surfacing just when you’re done writing.
#5. You may want to try other forms of writing. For me personally, on a good day, I might be caught busy with a client’s work, an essay, or on a very busy day while I lay lazily on my bed, I write some fine poems. And on a very bad, when even my lips will refuse to motion, I still respond to emails. I respond to comments on my blog. I chat up few intelligent parleys.
Either it is to you some forms of writing I do not know, but to me it is. I just discovered that all these forms of writing required thoughts, punctuations, proper grammar, spelling, proofreading, editing before I punch the send button.
#6. Become a voracious reader. I can bet you have heard/read this innumerable time so you just might be reading it again for the umpteenth time. But I suspect not quite a lot of people read books (not just writers now). Your writing career begins spiraling at that moment you became clueless as to what to write. At first, it may seem like it’s fatigue or you just might be smart to label it writer’s block. Then it continued and never seems to stop anytime soon. It is not some Clichés to say you can’t give what you don’t have. A writer has to be refilling and refueling as always. It begins with a writer being able to clearly express his thoughts – and it continued with an avid reader.
Do I have your comment? Thank you.
Welldone
ReplyDeleteThank you, Sam. I do hope you find the post helpful.
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DeleteWelldone
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