So a couple of years ago I was reading a book about about being a better writer (I’ll hunt it down and let you know what it is later) and one of the chapters was about forcing yourself to write. Now I have been pretty good since about October with writing consistantly even if my ADD keeps me from writing on only one project at a time and so I bounce around all over the place and though I am currently behind on my word count for April I’m hoping that I can make up some of that ground in the last half of the month. Anyhow, the point of this bit of rambling is that one of the exercises in the book was to work on your story 100 words at a time. Just sit down and write 100 words. Whether it takes you five minutes or two hours, just get 100 words down on paper (or on the screen I suppose). I tried doing this for a while and felt good about doing it, but the challenge, like the rest of my writing, fell to the wayside as work and school dominated my life. I was re-reading the beginnings of the story I had already done for the challenge and I thought it might be fun to re-visit the story, if for no other reason to force myself to write on the days where I get busy and fail to produce more. So here I go again…back on the 100 word challenge wagon. I am going to post my 100 word tidbits on here, starting with the orginal posts, so in about a month and a half you’ll be reading the newer parts of the exercise.
Do you do little challenges like this to motivate yourself or do you have any other little tricks you’d like to share?
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Kay Camden
I don’t have any tricks to get myself to write, mainly because I can’t stop it when it happens, and it’s happening all the time. I can’t get away from it.
Any tricks I would have are tricks that hold me until I find the time to sit down and type (which is harder and harder to find each day). The main thing I do is fill my phone with little notes and bits and pieces that I have to work into the manuscript later.
What I need are tricks to turn it off! Got any of those? 🙂
Eric Swett
God no! If I ever turned it off I would be horribly lonely. I mean seriously, what would I do without the voices in my head?
Kay Camden
True, true… but don’t you miss being able to
1. have a conversation with a real person without the voices interrupting
2. enjoy a movie without thinking that the leading man looks like your MC
3. actually concentrate at work
Eric Swett
Yes, No, No 🙂
Kay Camden
Haha
Sonia G Medeiros
I’ve set a 15 minute minimum for myself. I usually write for longer than that. It really helps. Kind of like exercise, Iguess…once you’re on the machine (even if you promised yourself you’d only have to do 5 minutes), you tend to stay awhile.
You can do the challenge! We’re all pulling for you!
Eric Swett
Thank you Sonia! I appreciate that!
I’ve tried to do the 15 minute thing but it never quite works out for me because that 15 minutes I set aside always seems to get absorbed into something else…so I set a general word goal of 500 words a day…that way it can get broken up a bit and I look at the average for the month since some days I just can not get to the computer.
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