Having time doesn't necessarily improve productivity. Sometimes the juices flow better when you're stealing a half hour before bed after a busy day when you'd really rather go to sleep.
Unless you find it inspiring and motivating as I did. Here is a really first rate article about climaxes and endings by Alexandra Sokoloff.
The most productive period of my writing life directly followed a teacher telling me he would try to get my novel in front of his agent. The least productive time was after that fell through, and a handful of agents had declined to read my novel, or even part of it.
Hope made all the difference.
It’s hard to be hopeful. There are aspects of your writing life you can’t control: whether agents will like you, or even want to find out if they’d like you - likewise editors. But it’s a lot easier to keep writing if you feel like you’ve got a chance. Conversely if you’re not optimistic about the chances of getting your work read, continuing to work on it can be nearly impossible.
You can harness hope (insert Obama reference here) by looking for opportunities for good things to happen. I hate to be so self-referential in here but another example from my experience: There’s an annual contest, the St. Martins/Minotaur Best First Crime Novel contest that I entered this year. In the weeks leading up to entering I was able to produce more because I had something to hope for.
So one way to stay hopeful is to start a regimen of contest entries, conference attendance and agent queries. Whatever it takes to keep the possibility of success on the table while you write.
Now get to it. I am.
... a couple people have added this blog to their neighborhoods even though there hasn't been a new entry in over a year, Welcome, masochists. About that year without an update thing - my apologies don't seem like enough but they're all I can give. Well I suppose I could send five dollars to every subscriber to this page, but you're going to have to live with just the apologies.
So here's where I am on my own writing. I finished my first novel and started writing a sequel. I wrote about 100 pages of the sequel done and got badly stuck. I'm hoping to figure out what happens next so I can get back on track with that but in the meanwhile I've started working on a short story featuring one of my supporting characters. I'd love to tell you I remained focused and productive the whole time, but in fact there was a long empty stretch when I first got stuck. I kept trying to push though the problem but everything I wrote felt wrong. There were a couple months there (okay, three!) when I didn't write anything. Finally I decided working on something else for a while was the thing to do.
So welcome new readers. No promises but I'll try to make it worth your while.
... here on getting the words flowing by writing letters.
... here on getting the words flowing by writing letters.
Top 20 Great Tools to Keep Your Life Organized and the especially good Top 20 Ways Motivation Hacks, which is one of the best overviews of motivation techniques I've found online. Every one of them is a solid suggestion that will help you stay on track.
The One Minute How-To podcast offers a One Minute lesson on How to Finish What You Started Writing.
