“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” –Annie Dillard, The
Writing Life
Writers are notorious procrastinators. We’ll find any number of useful, important, and
not-so-important tasks to perform before we allow (or force) ourselves to sit down and write. If, however, what stops you from getting your words on the page is not your
internal struggle with your creative endeavors, but practical issues like not being able to be two places at once, working a full-time job, or having humans and/or animals dependent on you for survival, here are some practical tips for getting more words on the page on a given day.
page is to accept that you may never get large chunks of time to sink into your project.
Instead, be willing to take ten minutes while your tea is steeping, five minutes in the
dentist’s waiting room, half an hour between meetings. A hundred words on the page in
a day is better than zero.
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Ignore your inner editor. Nora Roberts famously said, “I can fix a bad page. I can’t fix
a blank page.” There will be time for editing later. The words you write now don’t have to
be perfect, just written.
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Be flexible with your writing tools. Try jotting sentences on your phone or writing by
hand in a notebook when you find yourself away from your normal writing set-up.
Make it a game. Regular writing sprints of fifteen to thirty minutes can train you to write
faster. Set a timer and see how much you can write in a short amount of time. Keep
track of your totals and try to beat your best number.
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Don’t research. Research, like editing, is best done in a separate session from drafting.
When you come across a spot in your manuscript that requires research—even
something as simple as a place or character name—put in a placeholder, keep writing,
and come back to it later. This works for scenes you don’t feel up to writing yet, such as
a complicated action scene. Put in a placeholder and move on.
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Don’t think. Think about your project when you aren’t sitting in front of your computer,
hands poised over the keyboard. Ruminate on the story and characters when you are
driving, doing chores, or exercising. When you sit down to write you’ll already have the
next bit worked out in your head and you only have to translate it to the page.
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Don’t break the chain. No one is going to be able to write every single day without a
day off but see how many days you can write in a row before you have to start over.
Every day you put words on the page gets you closer to your writing goals.
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Give yourself a deadline. Even an artificial deadline can create a sense of urgency
and motivate us to get to work. When you make your deadline—celebrate! Then get
back to your project.
Hopefully one or more of these suggestions resonates with you and helps you get more
words on the page today, and every day.