Tag: stories

Writer Life Lesson #3: Write Every Day

Imagine your writing, whether it be a work in progress, or an essay,or a bunch of short stories, or even all of the above. Now think about your day, the errands you run, or what hours you work, or the time you spend doing things you really want to do. Is writing anywhere in that day, or is it just something you do when the urge hits you? It should be something scheduled, or at least planned.

Writing Life Lesson #3: Write Every Day

We, as writers, are lucky. Our hobby, or our job as a writer is not expensive. It isn’t as expensive as say, gambling or skydriving. If worse came to worse, we could all write on 50 cent notebooks and dollar store pens. The most expensive thing that writing requires is our time.

Writing anything takes time. Sure, the idea may come in a flash, but the actual writing takes time. Each word carefully crafted from our minds to the pen or pencil or keyboard, each sentence and paragraph strung together with time and energy.

Some days, it’s hard for us to write, the ideas just don’t come to us or we are distracted by something else more pressing. Those are the days we need to write most. Writing is a muscle, it requires working out every once in a while. Any athlete will tell you that to make something stronger, to hone a skill, it must be practiced and performed. No one wakes up and is the best writer in the world, just like no athlete or physicist wakes up and is the best in their field.

When we as writers take time to write every day, whether it’s a to-do list, or a chapter, or even just an idea or two in detail, we work those writing muscles and make ourselves better writers. We practice that skill and we get better at putting words on the page and making sure those words are the right words we want to say to get our point across. Our stories, or our blog posts or whatever we write grows into something we ourselves could never have imagined we would make. We impress even ourselves, and that is magical.

So how do we get ourselves to write every day, especially if it’s a struggle? Make every word count. Actively think about the words you are writing or what they mean to you, or will mean to someone else. Start small, 5 or 10 minutes a day, and then slowly increase it to 15 or 20 minutes. Write wherever you can find time, or write in long chunks, it doesn’t matter, as long as you keep writing.

It will get easier as it goes on, so why not start today?

These are my daily word counts for February. This is the longest writing streak I've had in a while.

What does your writing schedule look like? Do you write every day?

Handwriting and Typing

There are several ways to get our words and ideas out into the universe. If you are a singer, that’s through music; an artist, it’s through paint or marble; a politician, your words and actions. If you are a writer, however, it’s through one of two mediums: handwriting or typing.

There are several reasons to do one, or the other, or even both. Though with the addition of wireless technology and the internet almost anywhere, handwriting and even cursive, are beginning to become obsolete.

I was lucky. I experienced most my childhood before the big influx of technology, and most of my early writing days were with a pen or pencil and blue lined binder paper. It wasn’t until my teen years that I even had a personal computer. I can still think back to when I did some of my school assignments that required typing at my kitchen table on an electric typewriter from the early 80s. If I hadn’t had that personal computer, I would probably still be using that ancient monster.

I am still lucky. I have loads of technology, and several ways to stay connected, several ways to get my words on the page whether through a keyboard on a touchscreen or writing each individual word on a blue lined page. I am lucky to have that choice, to choose how I want to write it and how much work I want to put into it. I’d like to think I’m not alone in that choice.

There are several choices out there, whether you handwrite in notebooks, or if you choose technology to get your words on a page. This isn’t going to be a post where I give you my best choices for writing utensils or programs, it’s not going to be a post where I try and persuade you that one is better than the other.

This is just a way to say that both are valid options.

I actually handwrite and type, depending on the project. If it is a project that requires multiple drafts, I usually handwrite the first draft, and then type subsequent drafts. I find that this helps because with handwriting there are less distractions. Usually when I type, I get distracted by the idea of checking my email, or my facebook, or my blog, but handwriting it’s a bit harder to get distracted.

When I work on second drafts or rewrites, then I type. It’s easier to read the words and determine what I was trying to say if it’s a relatively clean page, free of notes or doodles. It also keeps the page cleaner, rather than trying to look through the scribbles and determine my meaning.

It shocks me that people my age, and people even older, wonder why I handwrite a lot of the time. I understand that everyone has their smartphones and iPads and technology right at their fingertips, but at the moment, I don’t. I can’t always connect to the internet to write down my every thought, or feeling, so I handwrite it. I actually prefer it that way. That means I can go write outside without trying to see a screen in the bright sunlight, or I can go where there is no internet or service and still write.

I’m not saying that everyone should go back to handwriting, or that everyone should use technology. What I am saying is: Change it up. Don’t get caught up in one way or another. Disconnect from the mass of technology that is the internet and try writing a few words with a pen, or put down the pen and start typing a page or two. Change it up, especially if you’re stuck, because you never know what can happen.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how you do it, just as long as you keep writing.

Notebooks like the ones I use to handwrite

How do you write your words?