Yikes. I’ve been lollygagging. I haven’t worked on my ms for a week, and it’s turning feral on me. (Tell me if you know which writer said if she doesn’t visit her manuscript daily, it lurks in her office and morphs into such a fearsome beast she is afraid to open the door.) I don’t have little kids or a fulltime job, so I have no excuse. And have you found that the longer you stay away from your writing, the less you want to go back to it? But Kristen is languishing out in the Black Hills of South Dakota with Frieda, a 90-year-old crank. If I don’t get in there and move the story alone, K will never figure out whether she’s going to go back to her high-pressure job in Newport Beach CA, or give it all up for WHAT MATTERS and make a 180 back into Curt’s arms.
After I brush my teeth and shower I’ll go into THE ROOM and set the timer for 30 minutes. I know from past experience that I won’t even notice the bell ringing a half hour later. It’s a simple, maybe even stupid, strategy but it motivates me. Something about having a deadline.
But here’s another motivation: my friend Sepi Richardson (Her Honor, the Mayor of Brisbane, California) has promised she’ll have a book signing for me when the sucker is published. Holy crap, I need to get to work!!! Let me know how YOU motivate yourself, and I’ll post it as a guest post on this blog. Thanks!
A writer friend of mine ,Mita,whom I met through National Association of Memoir Writers talks about” the achievement temple’ which she defines as visualizing the reader holding your book , reading the front and back covers and leafing through the pages with enthusiasm.
Now I call that positive visualization! That definitely serves as a motivator to keep believing in my story and to keep writing as there are readers out there craving my story!
Now to get down to the mundane realities of getting in that writing zone and focusing on the task at hand, I would have to say that I need to stay away from the internet,blogs,facebook,email because they all do serve as distractors. I keep my computer in the upstairs office..probably setting a timer to get all the surfing out of my system would help so I may begin with that
I work fulltime in a busy profession so my time is pretty limited to begin with but I may be worse if I had more time on my hands. Finding the right balance seems to be the challenge here.
Back off and rest, that’s the ticket! I’ll tell myself that’s what I’ve been doing. I DID actually just get back from a 4-day weekend in San Francisco with three gal pals I hadn’t seen in 25 years. So many pix to post on FB, so little time….
I think there comes a time in the writing process where we need to back off and rest so the creative juices can percolate.
I tend to start off great-guns, all enthusiastic to get the story down; then I reach the “dreaded middle,” where I have to force myself to keep going (the “carrot” of a treat after a tough writing session seems to help!); then I rush headlong to the finish line, where I get to type “The End.”
Maybe that’s the blessing of living (at least part of the year) in a horrid climate — when the snow’s knee-deep and the wind’s howling outside, it’s fairly easy to keep on track!
I too am a full time writer. With no young kids around, no job, a supportive husband, and a room of my own there is no excuse not to write…write…write. I do. Really, I do. But the computer has the tendency to call me out of my writing woodwork. So, I remove myself from the house and bring my writing with me to a coffee shop. With no computer, fridge, mirrors, etc., I’m a captive audience.
Enjoyed your write.
Yep, that would do it. I am addicted to the Internet…