Good morning world! ‘Tis I, Olive. Welcome back to book writing advice~ but before I start, I do have an announcement to make. Due to school starting and life suddenly taking a turn for the hectic. I will be limiting my posts to once every two weeks. (And I will try to adhere to that!) Also, from here on, I will not be posting Book Writing Advice on Crochet Buddies anymore. I will be moving it over to “Homeschool Adventures”. I’m not sure how long it will be before I can start posting on Homeschool Adventures, so apologies in advance if my previously consistent post goes silent to an extended period of time, and for the prolonged silence that has already befallen the posts.
On the note of school, this post is inspired by the start of a new year and the tragic end to the winter break. It is a rather jarring transition from doing nothing (or doing things when you want) to doing everything all at once. In the mist of the chaos, it gets hard to squeeze in your book writing, simply because you don’t have the time. However, if you don’t get some writing done, it may take you years to finish your book if you just go by when you have “free” time. In comes the writing schedule.
In book writing, nothing is more important than actually writing your book, but despite what you might think when you start, the actual writing process of your book is one of the hardest parts of creating it. Therefore, even in the days where you’re crammed with school work, a job, and or other time-consuming tasks, you need a way to squeeze in your book writing. I will show you ways you can keep to a writing schedule, or rather, set a writing schedule. (I can show you how to make one, but I can’t make you keep to it 😉 )
Set a word limit:
It is hard to just sit down and write, and while you might try to start writing, you may find yourself stuck two words in with a severe lack of motivation to keep going. The problem is, it doesn’t matter if you have the motivation or not, or you don’t exactly know what your going to write. The important thing is to just, write. (I know, it’s painful, but trust me, you gotta push through.) Setting a word limit allows you to have a goal. You can make it 500 words, or you can make it 20, depending on what works best for you. If you are the type to go until the word limit and then stop, then a longer, more productive word limit might be better. On the other hand, oftentimes the hardest part about writing is getting started. So, having a word limit of 20, 50, or 100 words might allow you to get your feet under you enough to do writing far above that limit. And if worse comes to worse, you will at least have *something* written.
Set aside time just for writing:
This is hugely important because if you just wing it, deciding to write whenever you have free time, you are never, ever going to get your book done. Of course, you don’t want your book writing to completely take over school, chores, errands, or anything else that doesn’t have the option to wait. It is important to remember that while your book requires time to itself to get done, there are other things that may have to bump it off its allotted slot in the schedule once in awhile. That being said, if book writing gets bumped too many times, you may want to consider changing the time you set writing at. Also, try to set aside book writing for when you do your best work. Often, the two times people do best at is either late at night or first thing in the morning (I personally do best in the morning, before I have expended energy doing other things). Something else you can do is decide how long your window of writing is going to be. For my own purposes, I need 50 minutes to an hour to write two pages (or one page back and front), and usually, two pages is all I can manage in a day anyway. You’ll need to decide how long you spend sticking to your desk. Though, if you have a goal such as a word or page limit, you can schedule your time as more of a maximum time you can spend instead of length of time you have to spend writing.
Get someone to hold you accountable:
After you’ve decided how much and how long you want to write for, it’s time to make it happen. Some people are really driven, and good at keeping themselves accountable; however, if you are like me, if there isn’t someone who at least knows I should be writing right about now, I don’t bring myself to go write. So, find someone – a friend, parent, grandparent, whoever you like – who can remind you about writing, and hold you to your schedule. Also, (and this is optional) once you’re done, show your work to the person you’ve chosen at the end of your time to show them you’ve finished the task, and maybe even get some general critiques (it is a rough draft after all). Yvonne is that person for me. I usually try to write daily, in the mornings, for about an hour. We often try to do something “productive” at the same time, so that we keep each other accountable to what we’re doing and not doing by ourselves. 😛 Then afterwards, I hand over what I wrote to her, so I can have some peace of mind as to how good/terrible it is.
Plan ahead:
The common thread to all of these points is designing and keeping to a plan. You have to pick the day(s) and times you want to spend just writing, and who – if anyone – you want to keep you accountable in your writing ventures. Once you have these down, you can do what all writers must do: write. Write like your life depends on it; turn off the bold squiggly lines that say you’ve made a spelling error; go somewhere quite or where you are most inspired; turn off your internet so you don’t go down crazy research rabbit holes… but regardless of what you decide to do, you have to write. That is the only way you’re going to finish. And it’s going to suck. Some days you’ll have no inspiration, others you’ll hate every single word you write, and still others will just have you going “meh” to the whole thing. But what is important is that you keep going, keep to the schedule. It’ll be hard to keep in the beginning, but it’ll be so worth it in the end.
And that is my writing advice post for now, folks! Thank you for reading, and I hope some of the methods I’ve presented of getting some productive writing done will prove to be of help to you!
Until next time!
Olive
