Ah, Nanowrimo, I’ve never actually taken part in it before
but I do appreciate the principle. It’s about forcing yourself to sit down and
write something (even if 50,000 words is a bit excessive in my opinion), and
sometimes you do need to force yourself.
Writing will hardly ever be your top priority, however much
you love it. There will always be something to get in the way, be it friends,
family, a full-time job or whatever tantrum the universe has decided to throw
at you this week. You’ll just have to stand there and watch as your beloved
book slips further and further down that list of things you have to do this
week until it disappears completely.
Even if you do find the time to write, you can suddenly find
that you’re just not in the mood. You’ve had a busy day, you feel completely
drained and you just want to crash in front of either the TV or the Internet.
If you do try to write your brain seizes up, the words won’t come and those
that do manage to leak out are utter fertiliser (bargain budget fertiliser at
that). It can be easy to give up and just say you’ll do it tomorrow, a tomorrow
that never comes.
But you’re a writer, you’re doing this because you love the
craft, because you have a story to tell, because you just get a kick out of
hanging around with your characters. No one ever said it was going to be easy,
and if they did you are within your rights to hit them for lying to you.
Sometimes you just have to lock yourself in a room, tie your
hands to a keyboard (or pen if you prefer old school) and just write something.
It could be a 100 words or 50,000, it doesn’t matter. You have to write, and
keep writing. When you can’t find the words, you fight through it until they do
come. It doesn’t matter if they’re terrible, you can always go back and edit
them later, that’s fine, though I guarantee you that if you keep going
eventually the words will start to flow much easier and you’ll be back to usual
operating standards.
If you let yourself forget about your writing don’t be
surprised if that brilliant idea you had ends up as a dusty light bulb
somewhere within the shelf space of your mind. Just set aside a small amount of
time each day, an hour or so should do it, and write what you can. Get yourself
into a routine and stick to it. It will be a struggle at times, but we’re
writers because we want to be, and it’s often the things we struggle with that
are the most rewarding afterwards. (Also this is now nearly 500 words for my
word count today, ka-ching!)
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