Protips
Cory Doctorow has some writing advice (via patrissimo). Most of it is good, and the first point about having a "short, regular work schedule" echoes this earlier post, though I push the logic a little further than he does and am not so hung up on regularity. But I wanted to pluck out the two that, for my money, were the most important because they struck me as the most counter-intuitive.
Leave yourself a rough edge -- When you hit your daily word-goal, stop. Stop even if you're in the middle of a sentence. Especially if you're in the middle of a sentence. That way, when you sit down at the keyboard the next day, your first five or ten words are already ordained, so that you get a little push before you begin your work. Knitters leave a bit of yarn sticking out of the day's knitting so they know where to pick up the next day - they call it the "hint." Potters leave a rough edge on the wet clay before they wrap it in plastic for the night - it's hard to build on a smooth edge.
Don't research -- Researching isn't writing and vice-versa. When you come to a factual matter that you could google in a matter of seconds, don't. Don't give in and look up the length of the Brooklyn Bridge, the population of Rhode Island, or the distance to the Sun. That way lies distraction - an endless click-trance that will turn your 20 minutes of composing into a half-day's idyll through the web. Instead, do what journalists do: type "TK" where your fact should go, as in "The Brooklyn bridge, all TK feet of it, sailed into the air like a kite." "TK" appears in very few English words (the one I get tripped up on is "Atkins") so a quick search through your document for "TK" will tell you whether you have any fact-checking to do afterwards. And your editor and copyeditor will recognize it if you miss it and bring it to your attention.
The latter point, while in retrospect dead obvious, is worth its weight in gold to me. The first I have a harder time swallowing, partly because I don't believe in word-goals but more because up to now I've thrived on inertia. But the core point is sound: the compulsion to achieve closure is normally very adaptive but can be an impairment in any project that can't be completed in a single morning. Strategically-placed loose ends provide something for your brain to chew on in the intervals between active creation and an obvious place to begin again when you come back to it -- making it all the more likely that you will.
Leave yourself a rough edge -- When you hit your daily word-goal, stop. Stop even if you're in the middle of a sentence. Especially if you're in the middle of a sentence. That way, when you sit down at the keyboard the next day, your first five or ten words are already ordained, so that you get a little push before you begin your work. Knitters leave a bit of yarn sticking out of the day's knitting so they know where to pick up the next day - they call it the "hint." Potters leave a rough edge on the wet clay before they wrap it in plastic for the night - it's hard to build on a smooth edge.
Don't research -- Researching isn't writing and vice-versa. When you come to a factual matter that you could google in a matter of seconds, don't. Don't give in and look up the length of the Brooklyn Bridge, the population of Rhode Island, or the distance to the Sun. That way lies distraction - an endless click-trance that will turn your 20 minutes of composing into a half-day's idyll through the web. Instead, do what journalists do: type "TK" where your fact should go, as in "The Brooklyn bridge, all TK feet of it, sailed into the air like a kite." "TK" appears in very few English words (the one I get tripped up on is "Atkins") so a quick search through your document for "TK" will tell you whether you have any fact-checking to do afterwards. And your editor and copyeditor will recognize it if you miss it and bring it to your attention.
The latter point, while in retrospect dead obvious, is worth its weight in gold to me. The first I have a harder time swallowing, partly because I don't believe in word-goals but more because up to now I've thrived on inertia. But the core point is sound: the compulsion to achieve closure is normally very adaptive but can be an impairment in any project that can't be completed in a single morning. Strategically-placed loose ends provide something for your brain to chew on in the intervals between active creation and an obvious place to begin again when you come back to it -- making it all the more likely that you will.