Blowout Your Writing:

Here are more notes on a great panel at Life the Universe and Everything SF/F symposium. The topic is on blowout your writing.

– How high is the priority of your writing of things in your life?
– You need to ask yourself what gets in the way of your writing.
– You need to discipline your divergence that can pull you away from writing.
– Some will create checklists for each chapter.
– Set specific goals that you can monitor and set specific goals, you’re more likely to succeed in your goals. Some will set a goal of certain allotment of time to write. Word count, or maybe write a chapter a night or in a week or perhaps a short story.
– Take advantage of being consistent. If you write a page a day you can have a 365 page book in a year.
– Some writers have to have a new chapter for their monthly writing group.
– Set a deadline you can hit.
– Another idea is to have certain numbers of days of the week they have to write or maybe for the weekend.
– When you reached a specific goal, consistently, you might increase it.
– Writing word count on the calendar can show your successes.
– Listen to your body. Find a comfortable place to work. Make sure you are fed and hydrated. Have a specific time and place to write. Write specific goals down and maybe even write extra words to create a buffer in case you have less time later in the week or month. Extra words can act as a buffer.
– If you work hours interfere with your best writing time that may be selected time during the weekend.
– You may have to give up something to devote more time to your goal of writing, if it is important to you.
– The people limited on writing and yet they have a good idea of what the story is going to go. They may write scenes of dialogue and then when they have more time, they can embellish those scenes with actions, and descriptions. Dialogue can be quick and easy to write.
– Have two different tools for writing wherever you are. You can use which ever tool is most convenient for you.
– When you start meeting the goals consider increasing your goals to make yourself stretch and accomplish even more. Some will turn on writing excuses to get them in the mood for writing
– Another idea for downtime is to research.
– Ideas by Melva: one idea is that you’d want to schedule time of play as reward to a writing goal. That might be given when achieve certain goals or just provide some downtime from writing. Some authors will actually take advantage of standing in a line or do a menial task or take a walk for brainstorming.