My friend sends me a video of a snoring door mouse.
I reply with a baby
hamster.
It cheers me up for a while.
It cheers me up for a while.
The trouble always starts when I'm not working on a new novel. I was, but I've had to pause it, to promote #PleaseRetweet. I waste a lot of time worrying that my book isn't going to sell.
(It's free to download at the moment but it still has to hit the top 100 free books...it should have by now, shouldn't it? Why hasn't it? The same thoughts go round and round in my head).
The cure to this anxiety must be to create. I don't want to think about the point of it all. I just want to bash out words until they start writing themselves.
That's why I'm going to attempt Nanowrimo, the 50,000 words in a month challenge. I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't complete it. If I write 30,000 words, I'll be pleased. I just need to get back into the rhythm.
This is my strategy:
1. Get up one hour earlier
2. Write using a timer
(45 minute stints)
3. Stay off social
media until I've completed the first 1000 words a day
I reckon this simple strategy would work for achieving a lot of goals, don't you? (Just substitute 'write' for whatever it is you want to be doing!)
I reckon this simple strategy would work for achieving a lot of goals, don't you? (Just substitute 'write' for whatever it is you want to be doing!)
2 comments:
It's so infuriating, waiting for the bloody public to notice what you've done and bloody buy it. Or download it. Or anything. But as you yourself pointed out, these things take time and build incrementally and cumulatively... and there comes a point where there's really nothing more we can do to spur it on. So I totally applaud your target of focusing on creating something new instead of fussing over what we can't affect. Trouble is, it sounds terribly regimental and I for one don't have a drill sergeant to keep me at it. Hope your inner sergeant major does the job. Cheers!
Thanks for reading and commenting Alan. I don't know how regimented I'll be in real life - but I do feel we can create good habits! When I work on the same book every day it comes easier. Writers often blog about the pain of waiting to hear back from editors / publishers - and it is a pain - but my experience has told me we shouldn't be waiting but getting on with the next thing! Hope your writing is going well - with a more relaxed inner sergeant? ;)
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