As with all endeavors worth anything, sometimes mustering up that motivation to even BEGIN writing is an absolute nightmare. Who's with me?
I mean, we all get great ideas. We all have those characters in our head that talk to us, outlining cool scenes and great plot points. We see rad pictures and think to ourselves: "That'd make an awesome setting!"
But then we get home and there are blogs to check and twitters to twit and man, I should probably take some time and figure out this google plus thing and whoa! check out all these gifs and funny videos and hey is that a thoughtful infograph on tumblr? I should take a closer look...
I mean...ahem...we can get distracted.
Recently, I read an article on life hack that I just HAVE to share with you guys:
JERRY SEINFELD'S PRODUCTIVITY SECRET
That's right, I said Jerry Seinfeld. How does he stick to writing? What keeps his butt in the chair to come up with new material? (Or, at least, back when he was writing new material? zing!) It's a desk calender with little Xs on it. I know! A calendar! Every day he reaches a writing goal, he gets an X. And, he says,wWhen you start that chain, it's painful to see it broken. So the solution? Just keep writing.
I've started this three weeks ago and I'm really happen to say that my chain has broken only once (I was traveling all day with a sick kid). But I intend to keep going! Good things may not always come out, but at least I'm writing something.
So what about you guys? What gets you in the chair to write and what keeps you there? Especially when you DON'T have a hard and fast deadline from a publisher because of your high seven figure book deal? I'd love to hear your methods!
(Imagine a really great picture here of Jerry Seinfeld holding a calender and saying something crazy funny...imagine it until I figure out why I can't post this picture...)
3 comments:
Obsession puts my butt in the chair. I get to the point where I can't stop thinking about my story, and I'm excited to see where it goes, and then I just write and write and write.
The problem with that method is that I can't STOP writing. It sounds good, I know, but it's not. My house is never very clean when I'm writing!
Writing takes less motivation than revising does for some strange reason... I couldn't begin to guess why. As far as revising goes, the weight of it sitting on my shoulders gets me into the chair. As soon as I open my word processor and ACTUALLY WORK, the load lightens. The lighter load feels SO GOOD, I want to do it again.
And yet here I am. File open, but reading blogs. Man my shoulders hurt.
I still struggle with this, but that high I get from having a good day of writing keeps me coming back for more :).
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