Somebody's book on writing, possibly Ann Lamott's, was recommending approximately this. I believe that her rule was that you require yourself, for a specific period of time, to sit in front of computer/typewriter/notebook/whatever-you-write-with, and the only thing you are allowed to do is write--no reading, no web surfing, no nothing. So if you can't write, you can just sit there blankly, but you must sit there. Her theory is that eventually writing will be better than just sitting there. Edited to add: My current rule is that I must produce a new scene every two days. If I can't make myself work on a meaningful scene, a meaningless throwaway scene is fine, as long as it's in the world and using the characters of the book.
I always intend on doing some writing each day. But by the time school ends I'm usually just tired and grumpy, especially now that exams are coming up and I'm going into Year 12 before term actually ends (thanks for the holiday homework over Christmas you sick bastards!). Funny that the time when I usually get the most stuff done is when I'm planning out a novel during class instead of doing the work. By the time I get home I really just wanna relax.
I can vouch for this. I know I keep harping on about not having written for what is approaching two weeks now, but the longer I leave it the more certain I am I won't be able to return. It's like my WiP is drifting out to sea, and is too far gone to retrieve.
Yeah that's how I'm starting to feel too. It's been awhile since I actually wrote anything and it always gets a bit hard to get back into when I do try to start something new.
Writing something new isn't the problem for me, it's the inability to return to any of my unfinished novel attempts that's the problem.
I tend to find that when I return to something that I start writing a while ago, I look at it with a fresh pair of eyes after leaving it be for awhile, and I just can't get into it because I'm not in the exact same mindset that I was when I started. I've had a story idea that's been in my head since last year, which was inspired by an episode of this police drama I saw, in which a group of really devout religious people harass a woman for some kind of sin. The whole mob mentality of it fascinated me and I got really excited to start expanding on my story concept. While I still want to write it now, I don't always have the same fascination with the idea that I used to. I guess the best thing to do is just do your best to finish something once you start, otherwise you'll come back to it and find you're not interested.
It's not a great mystery when you think about it. Not writing for a long time means you are losing the thread of the story. You grow more distant and you're less involved with the plot and the characters. After I returned to my story following a protracted period of procrastination, I had to skim through the previous parts just to figure out what was going on and then it took me even longer to decide how to proceed. It has it benefits, of course, as you're less attached to your work and you can spot the flaws in the writing more easily. The problem is, if there is a big time gap between writing two chapters, they are going to look different. And this leads to more work in adapting and rewriting the story to make the style cohesive.
I actually missed writing yesterday, not so much because I wasn't feeling it as because I had to be up at 5am this morning so I elected for an early night..... I may make it up tonight if I can be arsed ETA wrote just over a thousand words tonight
Thank you for that. That's pretty much it. Nice to hear my mind tricks for Fiction have a shot at actually working. ;-) If new words aren't coming, eventually out of boredom I start editing / polishing / tightening, so something gets done.
On those days when I'm not feeling it, I'll journal and/or blog. Journaling is great for untangling those mental knots and often provides material for blogging, and blogging is writing that still adheres to a set of standards, albeit, ones I set myself. I try to have multiple things in progress at once though. That way I can always work on something. Today I wrote a blog post, rewrote the conflict for a new short (which still isn't working), and edited an almost-complete piece. Altogether, easily fewer than 500 words, but I certainly feel as though I've accomplished something. Better yet, I can see it. If you're not already, you should give yourself credit for the things you do and fight those feelings of guilt for the things you didn't do. I suppose that falls into the "better to have written crap than written nothing at all" camp of thought, but I prefer to see it as not being so hard on yourself and not holding yourself to unreasonable expectations. I realize that "I want to write tonight" is not unreasonable, but I think beating yourself up over it when it doesn't go like you wanted is. I suppose a lot of what works comes down to finding the thing that works for you. What's different abut those times when you can and do write? It's rarely so simple as a shift of your mind into writing mode. Consider your environment, mood, day, all the things that affect you personally. Because those are going to affect writing, a discipline that you must put your emotional self into. I've found that I simply cannot write in my room. I have to be...literally anywhere else. If I move to a new spot and the words still won't come, I'll write down some heavy-handed prose as notes to myself for the next time I start up. Ultimately, I choose to not feel bad about it when I just can't write. I always try to write, but I won't force myself to stare at a miserable, empty screen or pound out words that no part of me wants to write. I just do something else. And I produce at a decent rate, so taking a day here and there is what works for me. I work with myself -- not against. Others I'm sure would balk at my method for its apparent lack of discipline, but the the method that helps me produce the best content is the correct one.
I've been trying to find it ever since you posted this, but somewhere is a writers' blog post from a few years ago that explains the difference between being a writer and doing "writerly things." The blogger says that to stay productive, one must know the difference and thus avoid doing "writerly things." Writerly things include things like (my list, not from the blog) making cozy pots of tea or hot chocolate, drinking a martini lunch at Musso & Frank, hanging out at Greenblatt's because Dorothy Parker and F Scott Fitzgerald did, smoking a pipe in a study without getting anything down on the page, etc.. Drinking in L.A. would definitely qualify as a writerly thing.
Writing is the same as anything else. Of course, people generally don't know how other things work, either... But the point is that you get good at it if you do it. Some days it's difficult to just sit down and tap out a scene, but if you force yourself to sit down and tap out a scene, it's easier next time, and the next, an the next after that. I have to make time to write. Like, I have to stop on the way home on the side of the road after work, drag out a computer, and do it before I get home, otherwise I'll get caught up doing something else. To be clear, I usually stop in the parking lot of some coffee joint and then go inside--but by that point in the day, all I really want to do is sit down in front of the TV and veg out, or maybe play World of Tanks until bedtime. Or both. But instead I sit down and I stare at the computer screen until I can come up with some words. It helps to come here and try to answer some questions or critique something (provided that I give myself a time limit and close the damn browser after one critique or whatever). It also helps to recognize that, if I can't think of how to write a given sequence, that sequence probably does not need to be written. What helps most, however, is that I write consistently, so that my mind is always subconsciously working on the next scene. If you don't write consistently, you are denying yourself the biggest advantage you could possibly have. Edit: Apparently, I am averaging 20,000 words per month, or something like 5000 per week. I have felt much more productive than that. In college, I would shoot for two thousand per day, which is about twice what I'm doing nowadays. I expect that what I produce is more polished now, and that I'm happier with it, and that's the reason I feel more productive. /shrug