What’s your take on ‘Write every day’?
In 2011, I plan to get a lot more writerly-type writing done. To that end, I’ve decided to have a go at something which, up until now, I’ve never tried before, and I’m not talking about Hirsute Harry’s Patented Hair Replacement Tonic.
This year, I’m going to write every day. In the past, I’ve always felt that, while I can see how others find it helpful, I’d learned to trust my muse to yell in my ear when she had something worth setting down on paper, and though that might mean I sometimes went weeks (or even months) without writing any new fiction, I preferred that approach to just churning out words for the sake of it.
“Why the change of heart, Jon?” I hear you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. Aside from blogging, I did a whole lot of writing last year, but don’t have a new novel to show for it.
I did a ton of revision work on Fur-Face before it was released last June. I spent loads of time reading critique notes (then re-reading and re-writing) Waking up Jack Thunder, which I still haven’t got agent ready. I wrote a few drabbles, tried my hand at a couple of short stories (didn’t finish those), polished up the outline and wrote a tentative first chapter of Barnum’s Revenge. I wrote pages and pages of character notes and plot ideas for Dead Doris, and generally did all manner of writing, without actually achieving much in the way of new fiction.
I’ve started small. Since January 1st, I’ve set myself a minimum of 50 new words a day on Dead Doris. If I write more, great, but the counter resets to zero every morning, so whether I wrote 50 words the previous day, or 5,000, I still have to come up with some more. I’ll still work on research notes, outlines, even other fiction, but none of it counts towards my daily obligation.
My goal is to finish the first draft of Dead Doris by the end of March, after which I’ll turn my attention to the sequel to Fur-Face, Barnum’s Revenge, and maybe even have a bash at a my Stonehenge/time travel novel, A Circle of Stones.
So far, I’m ten for ten and over two thousand words into Dead Doris. I need to pick up the pace a bit if I want to get things done, but so far as ‘Write every day’ is concerned, color me converted.
How about you?
What’s your take on ‘Write every day’?
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