Inspired by a post by Jack Cheng highlighted recently on the 99 percent blog, I’ve decided to try a new approach to writing in 2010. Instead of subjecting my psyche to continuous hours of creative torture, I’m going to try writing for 30 minutes every day to become a better writer.
Cheng suggests such an approach works because “when trying to develop a new skill, the important thing isn’t how much you do; it’s how often you do it.”
My writing has a long way to go, and whilst I know in part that having to write for hours on end will become necessary at some point during my novel escapade, for now momentum is more important to me.
You see, I work well with deadlines. When I have a strict deadline I can pull the long hours. The problem is, now that university is behind me all my deadlines seem a lot blurrier than they used to. It’s not hard to ask for an extension when the part of my brain assigned to goal setting is also home to the impulse to sit on the couch and watch TV. The hard line… Read more
If you are anything like me then every writing day begins with a similar realisation: writing is hard work.
Inevitably, as one often does when faced with a difficult task, you’ll turn to other concerns, veiling your obvious procrastination with an earnest attempt to seek out what’s missing from your writing process. Some pearl of wisdom that would help solve your inability to ‘just write’ and uncover the secret formula to a writing process that doesn’t feel like bamboo torture.
As chance would have it, along with being a writer, I am also a digital marketer so I’m quite partial to whiling away the hours searching for online tools to help repair most every aspect of my life. In particular, I have spent a lot of time researching what the best online writing tools for writers are out there on the digiweb. Because procrastination aside, writing a novel is a large construction task, and there’s nothing wrong with sharpening your tools before you begin is there?
Rather than dump them all on you here, I thought I would start this theme off with tip number 1: how to effectively use Google’s great (and free) online tools to enhance and organise… Read more
How does one begin writing a novel?
That is the question I am currently faced with. Put all the notions of finishing a novel aside, and focus on that question. How do you begin to write something that may very well take up years of your life? How do you decide that this idea is the “many years of hard work” idea as opposed to the “write a few paragraphs then ‘select all’ + ‘delete’ before anyone reads it”.
I am faced with a gulf of uncertainty and doubt as I begin to face trying to write a novel.
Where do you start? I hoped that a bold and unique premise might come to me in a dream, or whilst sipping my morning coffee, and this premise would be so strong and so tantalizing that spending years developing it would be a pleasure. That each line would lead onto the next and I would begin to “discover” my novel in much the same way that a child discovers the edible joys of non-toxic play dough.
Sadly this has yet to be the case. Instead I am doing what I always do, starting on an idea, giving up after about 2000… Read more
Well it’s been two years in the making, but late Thursday I handed in my finished thesis – a day before deadline!
As said in my previous post, it leaves me with mixed feelings; I feel the creative piece isn’t as strong as it could be. But nevertheless, it constitutes the product of a create challenge that I set myself; I really wanted to take my writing into new places and expand my creative skills, and I think I have achieved that through the thesis process.
Even if the finished result falls shy of my initial expectations, the honours journey was what I needed to get me back into writing. I have written more this year than any year of my life, and whilst at times it felt like an absolute chore (and the product an absolute mess) I think you have to grind the stone a little sometimes before you sharpen the axe.
Full credit go to my amazing supervisors David Whish-Wilson and Christina Lee – without their enthusiasm, knowledge and motivation I would have never got to the end. I have learnt a great deal about myself and writing through working with them.
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