Or maybe it's a thing unto itself? 'Cause, like inspiration, ambition isn't necessarily a choice. It can get in the way of other things, like a compulsion you have to feed to get any peace of mind whereas discipline is about making yourself do stuff you don't necessarily feel like doing. Then again, unlike inspiration, ambition has its dark side and can even cause problems if you don't control it, so... inspiration, discipline, and ambition?
I'll have to agree. If you only have inspiration and discipline, in terms of publishing you're still dead in the water. You might have the best writing routine in the world and the muses might be singing 24/7, but I'm assuming its an entirely different thing to go searching for publishers, ignoring those rejection letters, writing queries. That's 100% ambition. You might be able to write consistently with just inspiration and discipline...but without ambition it might be little more than a grand act of masturbation.
You've probably heard of a number of writers whose first book is a big hit, and then their second book gets a lukewarm reception, and then their third book is utter trash and they never get published again. That's because their first book was a labor of love they might have spent years perfecting, but then they got signed to a three-book contract and had to produce two more books under pressure in six months. The quality of their writing deteriorated with the second book, and plummeted from exhaustion in the third. So, after a promising beginning, their career is over. Production pressure is the enemy of creativity and writing quality. Don't let the shibboleths of writing fool you. Those shibboleths are promoted by writers who found a way to deal with production pressure so that it didn't exhaust them and turn their writing into crap, and we simply never hear from the people who failed at that because there's no market for their advice. They have no advice to give. It's fine to talk about motivation and ambition, but those have to come from the inside. If you want a career as a writer, the first thing you have to do is find out whether you CAN produce quality work under production pressure. Some writers can, and some can't. For your friend, who wants to produce only one book and then quit, the best approach is probably to write only when she feels motivated and not write when she doesn't. That way her work will be the best it can be, and, if she happens to lose interest in it for a period of time, she can do other things without anyone suffering any harm. One thing your friend might want to consider, however, is how an agent or publisher would view a writer who wants to produce only one book and then quit. My guess is that such a book would be a very difficult sell, especially to agents, because of the absence of an ongoing revenue stream. Both agents and publishers need to boil the pot on an ongoing basis in order to stay in business. If a writer plans only ever to write one book, they're unlikely to be interested.
You can also force yourself to write everyday and edit, edit, edit. Though, that may not be any faster than waiting for inspiration.
I have only just begun to take my writing more seriously so I am still finding my pattern. Though I am always advised to write, even just for ten minutes daily, if the spark isn't there, I cannot produce a word to save my life. My story is always there in the back of my mind. I am constantly mentally writing but perhaps this is a form of procrastination...To answer your final question, no. I do not force myself to write daily for the sake of it, if I have no emotion to write from. Maybe this is not the best way to write, but it is my way.
Umm, you say that like it's a bad thing... Seriously though, some of us must be writing because we can't not write. I can't be alone in this. While it would be nice to get multi-book deals with six-figure advances falling from the sky, I can't imagine it would change anything for me. I don't write for fame, ego or money. In fact, Richard Bach summed up my feelings on writing pretty well...lemmee see if I can find it: "I do not enjoy writing at all. If I can turn my back on an idea, out there in the dark, if I can avoid opening the door to it, I won't even reach for a pencil. But once in a while there's a great dynamite-burst of flying glass and brick and splinters though the front wall and somebody stalks over the rubble, seizes me by the throat and gently says, "I will not let you go until you set me, in words, on paper." Yep, that sums it up for me. Probably how I knocked out this 104K novel in twenty-nine days...threats from that somebody who had me by the throat.
One day my wife suggested that we have "sex like in films". I was really excited but it turned out that we watch different kind of films
While I'm not a 'goal' oriented writer, in that I don't set myself a goal of words every day, I do set an alarm to get up very early. I'm retired now, but when I was working this was a huge help. I write better at that time of day, when nobody else is around to distract me. The trick was to go to bed early enough to allow the full 8 hours of sleep.
I especially like this bit. Especially the bit about writing quickly and finishing a first draft. Arseing around 'perfecting' an opening chapter while leaving the rest of the story unwritten is the worst trap I can think of.
I arse around perfecting stuff before I move on. The rest of the story will come in good time. I mean, there's a lot of arsing to do, and somebody has to do it, right? Especially with my stuff.
I write every day, I treat it as a job. I work from home so I have the luxury of making my own timetable, and even though I am pretty busy with non-writing work and commitments, I get usually two solid hours in the morning and up to two in the afternoon or evening. Some days I'll write the whole time, and feel feverish all evening, too exhausted to keep writing but unable to relax because all I want to do is keep writing. Other times, I'll procrastinate via editing.
Oh, fair enough. You do actually finish your work! Unfortunately many get trapped by the 'must be perfect' syndrome before moving on—and they never do move on. Of course nothing is ever 'perfect' so you can do this schtick till you die. Unread and unpublished. At some point (sooner rather than later, in my opinion) you have to move on and get it finished, even if it's not 'perfect' as a first draft. I guess that's what I was getting at.
I set a goal. An easy to reach goal that will permit me time to research. I work full time, and a small part time job, have three kids (two special needs) and will be going to school next week again. To say I have a lot of time...well...let's don't. I can't see my living room floor for the mess right now. In any case, my goal is small. 500 words a day. I don't always reach that goal, but it does average out to about that because many times when I do sit down to write I blurt out 1500-2500 words in a smash session on the keyboard. Once a scene jogs my head I go. I wait until the kids are in bed, then pull out the lap top, turn Pandora on to "Goodnight My Angel, lullaby" station (don't judge me) and go. The softer music keeps me focused but the lyrics keep me from nodding off to sleep. If I have a violent scene on my mind to write, I may go or something a little more angsty in the music dept, but I have to be careful it is not a station that makes me want to sing along or my ADHD gets out of control. I also have an accountability partner who checks in and asks how things are going. I have yet to finish anything, but I have created concepts for 4 books since April (o.k. one has been on my mind for years, I just never really started it and what I did was horrible and I've since trashed and restarted). I have also managed tens of thousands of words when you combine the various projects. My dream project that I started and trashed, is actually starting to take form. Diana Gabaldon says it best, when she told us at a lecture hosted in Philadelphia, something to the effect of, "I don't want to hear anyone say they'd love to write, but do not have the time. I did it working 2 jobs with three small children at home. If you want to do it you will make the time. Set a goal, and do it." (not quoted for accuracy, but essence as I cannot find the exact quote on line, but it spoke to me enough to move me to action) And so, I've set a goal. And I'm pleased with the results so far.
This has been my biggest hurdle in my writing fiction in English. It's a deep seated insecurity that isn't at all apparent when I wrote in my mother tongue. The sad part was, I started writing in my native language in order to remind myself of it, I almost lost the fluency in it after a decade and a half overseas. Still, there was little insecurity past the first couple of short stories. Now, ok, it's a much bigger work and all, but I find that I'm obsessing over getting it right so much more then I did before. Also, even though I have very few grammar and syntax errors in general, I'm probably comparable to a native speaker, I get a nervous breakdown at a thought of not having my husband there to read it first and point out the errors. In some ways, I'm still that little kid who couldn't even understand lectures for the first couple of years of Uni, I had to go home and learn everything from books because I just couldn't follow fast speech. It's a memory that never completely fades. On the other hand, I wrote loads of papers, theses, speeches, essays, lectures, in English, I'm perfectly fluent in non-fiction. I'm a hot writing mess, come to think of it But I'm too hard on myself, I have about 40 K pretty decent words of my new novel, so I am managing to move forward, and not all is lost.
I'm totally in awe of the people on this forum who can write in a second language. I can understand the worry that you might be making mistakes as well. However, I still say write the whole thing before obsessing over anything beyond a quick edit and maybe getting a couple of people checking for glaring mistakes. You can always fix grammatical mistakes later. Grammatical mistakes don't affect your story flow, your character development, your pacing, your overall theme. These things are what will make or break your story. Yes, it's important to get your grammar right, but that's actually easily fixed after you've got all the other elements in place. However, if you stop, start, stop, start, stop, start—forevermore—just worrying about grammar, you won't have a story flow. You won't have a story at all.
Thank you @jannert It's one of those sink or swim things, I had no choice but had to adapt and it was a steep learning curve, but it left me with a split personality brain, in a sense, having to process everything in two languages. Much less so now though. It's not so much the grammar, I may mix up tenses a couple of times here or there, I drop the 'the' and 'a' sometimes (much less since I've been intensely writing) but I'm worried that I sound like a foreigner, on paper. It's a strange thing, but I've been complimented by a few people on how my writing evokes new and different ways of saying things. Not grammatically incorrect at all but unusual, and they really liked it. People tend to really get into whatever I write, so I can't blame anything external for how I feel. But that sort of feedback, as well-meaning as it was, reinforced a hangup I already have, about not being able to lose my accent. I was old enough when I emigrated that my accent never left me, I now sound a mixture of American, Australian and Irish, in Holland they are convinced I'm Dutch, in Germany they think I'm German. In France... well, they think I'm Polish which is better for my coffee and pastries then them thinking I was English It's only people from my (ex)country that immediately suss me out, because we all sound a bit similar. So I am forever worried that this leaks into my writing, and I suppose even if it does, I should embrace it because there's f*&% all I can do about it. But not belonging, in a way, since my country fell apart and I've been a world traveller, grates on me and I'm a bit fed up of being 'different' and 'unusual'. My zany ideas don't help the case either, I'm afraid. Can't be helped, I suppose. I'm off to write up a Beltane festivities in a 15th century English village, kicking of a romance in the process. Wish me luck!
I would embrace your 'difference.' Certainly nothing you have written here on the forum betrays any real problem. In fact, I assumed you were a native English speaker, before you told us otherwise, some time ago. I am in awe.
Thank you my dear I really appreciate it (the hugging smiley disappeared, so consider yourself hugged )
I have written two short stories in 4 days so you might say that I'm rolling. Usually I write couple one hundred words a day. That is not much but it is something.
Writing is a hobby, just love it or hate it. I don’t like people who say that they don’t feel like doing something in a specific time. That thing could be writing, reading, running, or whatever hobby it is. I see that writing everyday is related to your love of writing. I mean the real love, not just you like it. when you love something you will do it with all the obstacles that you can think of. You will put a period of time into practicing your writing even if you are really busy. It doesn’t matter when this period of time will take place during your day. Writing will be your little baby that you will have to take care of. Just love writing, just love it =)
I'm not sure if I'm a slow writer, but my stories seems to take me a while. I usually get an hour or two before work each day and will write between 500 and 2000 words there, then at the weekend I've been doing around 4000 words. I've been doing this most of the year since I really decided that I wanted to write something, though I've not always been writing about the same thing (I began a wordpress account to write other things so that I didn't stagnate). I always like to progress with what I'm writing and not get too caught up rewriting areas, but I did rar up 11 of my chapters and sent them out to a few people. While the edits weren't severe, I did end up rewriting quite a bit and produced a larger piece of work, but I also felt a little bit done in that I was going over stuff again and again when I really wanted to carry on, so now I just keep going every day (bar the lazy days when I can't get up early enough), and if I don't have time at home then I send myself emails with ideas and progression etc. While the basic story is the same, a lot has changed with characters and so forth in the last 6 months.
