The Unemployed Writer

I’ve been throwing in extra steps now for a good seven steps and you’re probably wondering if writing is ever actually just writing. But, your patience and perseverance have finally paid off. You’ve arrived at step 8. The big eight…the magic eight….ball. I’m still working on my jargon.

As for the place at which you’ve arrived, you are now ready to start writing a novel or short story or whatever work you decided you want to spend so much of your agonizing time on. And the best part is that you’re ready to do it. Now, I’m not someone to give you actual writing advice. I just offer tips on the steps you better be taking to make sure you’re ready to be here at step 8.

Everyone has their own methods - those weird rituals that translate into a better written project than if they didn’t drink a half gallon of clam juice first (true story….don’t ask). I won’t judge those methods because for some people they work, and for others they don’t. Personally, I can only write supremely well on a tight deadline, usually late at night when my eyes are doing that sticky thing and stuff starts to blur. I’m a stress writer. Some of you might be the opposite, where you must write during the middle of the day, right after lunch when you’re feeling satiated and happy. But I need the looming threat of failure to pump me through the gauntlet.

It’s all in the approach. Here are a few tips though.

Have everything you need with you. If you know you’re going to need food and drink, bring it to your desk with you. It’ll keep you from making excuses to go to the kitchen every 20 minutes. The odds are you aren’t really hungry, you’re just looking for an excuse to move around.

Do you like music when writing? Most people do, but some don’t. Give it a shot. If you find yourself thinking more about the lyrics than your own words, try some classical. If that doesn’t work, go for the absolute seclusion method. Door closed, no music, no tv, dog in a crate somewhere.

Set reasonable goals. Tell yourself to write a 1000 words a day. Even if you end up deleting 2000, at least you wrote your 1000. That’s about an hour of writing a day (faster if you’re into it) and translates to some real progress on a steady basis. If you wait too long, you’ll find it’s hard to remember what exactly you were writing about.

Don’t ask for feedback from your friends and family until you’ve got something substantial done. If you ask every chapter or two, they’ll make the comments that are there to make and you’ll be spoiling to edit and rewrite parts before you even finish the whole thing.

Which brings me to the last point. Don’t edit it until it’s done. Write an entire draft before you actually start to edit your work. If you edit while writing, you’ll eventually become one of those three chapter writers that just write out three chapters of a book and start editing and rewriting them over and over before moving to chapter 4. On the plus side you’ll have three really good chapters…