Work Ethic

Posted on 04 December 2009

Right now, I don’t have much of one. The kids have worn me out tonight, and my undercover self (read, day job) has actually been rather busy. Add on some other real life things I have on the burners, it makes finding time to write, let along blog, a bit of a conundrum.  So . . . I shall blog about work ethic!

Not a long blog (as I said, I lack the topic right now), but still, a relay of comment that I heard from the good Mr. Brandon Sanderson (most recently, at least, I’ve heard it from many others too).  That is to say, writing is not all peaches and cream.  Nor is it some inspired labor of pounding away at it as The Moonlight Sonata drones on the background and you puff a clove.  No, it can be a boring chore, even when you love it.  Sometimes you just aren’t feeling like writing at all, but it is very easy to let that turn into weeks of inactivity.  So, here are some tips and tricks I have found for writing.

a) Just do it.  Make yourself sit up, stiff upper lip style, and start typing.  One word leads to two, and two to twenty, and twenty to lots more.  Once you get the jive going, it often really helps.  Momentum and all that.

b) Do something creative elsewise.  A novelist can write scripts for a TV show or vice versa.  Or perhaps try drawing, or even (gasp) do some editing!

c) Schedule it in. Actually have it on the list of chores with a time-block.  Also make sure you realistically have it set aside in a place you won’t easily run over it without remembering.

I’m sure there are more (feel free you share your tricks). But heck, my tricks all just worked with the creation of this blog (which I was at first so weary at the thought of doing tonight when I remembered I nearly did a “dead” day, for shame!).  So, write, write, write! Oh, and if I’ve said this before in some other blog, bleh.  I said it again!