The Stimulus
Ok. Ok. No, I’m not getting all political on you. I’m talking about the writing stimulus. I need a writing stimulus package. Forget the muse. I think I felt a tiny thrill of the elusive thing the other night. I was veritably HUMMING with excitement to write. My fertile brain was churning scene after scene. I did five pages. It felt so good. Call it an effect of the planting moon. Ok, I’ll take it. But I can’t wait to write with each planting moon.
So, what do you do?
I have read other books to try to imbue some inspiration. I’ve scavenged loops and boards to do pseudo-research or just, let’s be real, commiserate with fellow authors. But what really works is work.
Yeah, you heard me. Work. You have to do something. Challenge yourself. See how much you can get in 10 minutes, 20. Clean it up later. I got 150 pages last year doing dozens of those challenges. Do it with a friend. With a group.
The rest of your book is waiting. Are you?
Tags: challenge, Leigh Royals, stimulus, Writing
Even if I don’t feel inspired, I force myself to sit down to write for, say, one hour each day. No distractions, no email checking, nothing else. But it’s okay to just stare at a blank screen, as long as you do it for one hour. I swear, after ten minutes I start to write something, because I know I can’t get up before the hour is over. It works, not on all days, but it works.
I’ve always had a hard time writing solo. It’s easy with my co-author, but alone, forget it. Then I signed a deal for a three book solo series and suddenly I had a deadline. I had to write by myself and lots of it.
So I made little challenges for myself. Figured I wanted to write 1000 words a day, which is a ton for someone who before might have gotten 300 words in.
So I made a little chart in excel, with the numbers one-ten. I figured 100 words isn’t a lot, so I’d challenge myself to write 100 words and each time I did I colored in a cell. When I’d get blocked I’d say, come on 100 words isn’t much and it kept me going.