Why do I have a picture of me digging a hole in my backyard (it's for the fish pond, you DEXTER fans, it's for the fish pond)? Well, sometimes when I'm writing I feel like I'm stuck in a rut that's inside a deep hole. Or that I'm treading water without waterwings. I've found that all the other "demands" of being a writer (clever Facebook updates, amazingly insightful tweets, googling my own name) do tend to distract from my main goal of writing. So I wanted to change that. Or...to redirect my distraction.
Recently, I was re-reading Stephen King's On Writing and he mentioned that he works every day except for Christmas and his birthday. What a lazy bum! Just think about how much more he'd get done if he worked those extra days. His goal is to write 2000 words a day (thankfully, he didn't say whether or not they had to be clever, perfect words). 2000 words! I can do that easily. Just as soon as I get around to it. I have to put the finishing touches on a tweet. Oh, and check my Amazon rankings and...oh, wait...there I go again.
It suddenly occurred to me that I could do half the work of Stephen King in the same amount of time. So I set up a little goal for myself and made up my own rules. I must write 1000 words of new work every day. Yes, new is the important part. No matter what rewriting is needed, no matter whether I have a reading at a school, a deadline or a dentist appointment, the very first thing I must do is write 1000 new words. No tweets. No checking the hockey score on my virtual hockey team (Authored Destruction). Those words must be written. All of my rewriting, redrafting, pretending to plot, are all on hold until the new words are done. The reason I want to write new words is that I do believe those brand new, sparkly words and sentences that come flowing out of your mind in that first draft are as close to the subconscious as we get as writers. And I think it's important to be in touch with your subconscious first thing in the morning (right after waking). There is a caveat to the rule. I can stockpile words. So if I'm going on a holiday, I will actually take a holiday, as long as I've written my quota for the time that I'm away. But I'm gonna work on my birthday and Christmas (take that Mr. King).
Heck, I made a splendid chart to keep track of it all. And to motivate myself. As you can see I'm ten days into my schedule and I've written 11,000 new words. I'm 1000 words ahead! And I even took last Sunday off.
I have found that the buzz I get from creating that new storyline carries on to my rewriting that I do 2nd thing in the morning. It's like jumpstarting my mind. It crackles. It sparks. Then the creative engine roars into verbtacular life.
So if you see me tweeting early in the morning you have full writes...err...rights to say, "What's up, Dude? Didja get your 1000 new words done yet?" And, I encourage you to do 1000 new a day words, too. Just think about how much brighter the world will be...
At the end of the year I hope to have 365, 000 new words to play with, to bat around, juggle and rewrite and turn into something other people might want to read. Until then I'll keep on plugging (or treadmilldesking) away...
Art