Running & Writing: Learning to sprint

[tiffanyschmidt]

When I participated in high school track, I was a member of the distance crew. I could never be a sprinter because it took me too long to get warmed up. By the time I was ready to turn on the speed, the sprint was over.

In my writing life I function much the same way. I prefer to sit down for an endurance writing session - get lost in the world I’ve

Comments

[keim_comley]

I talk to the baby. Heck, he's 11 months and likes being talked to. So he sits and I tell him my scenes and work everything out in my head. Then, when he goes to sleep, if I have a couple of moments, I know where I am in my head and the writing flows.

For editing, forget about it! While editing The Fifth II had to wrestle time and get at least a couple of hours at a sitting. If I tried to sprint that one by the time my brain was warmed my time was up and I spent the rest of the day with the unfulfilled itch that is purgatory to all writers.

[kygans]

Nancy's right -- when having to steal time to write, it's great if you can have it all worked out in your head before you sit down.

You can perhaps also help yourself by setting very short realistic goals, especially if you can't work stuff out ahead of time. Such as "I will write one paragraph of this scene."

I, too, prefer to write in long chunks of time--there is a visible and deleterious difference between what I write in a chunk and what I write on the fly. But that's what editing is for. And for that, I recommend the "lock the door and call in sick" approach, because I think it's best to have chunks of time for that!