Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Commitment To New Words

Writing definitely takes commitment and what every writer needs to remember is putting words on the screen or on paper is what it's all about. A good friend, Jane Toombs, once told me that to be a writer means getting the words down. I quite agree with her. If you wait for the muse to speak this entity can be silent for days, weeks and even months. I started to look at the way I write. I do drafts so often the words I write are re-written but taking my friend's advice I first commited myself to 1 new page a day. Taking a page as 250 words meant 365 pages a year. That equaled a book.

But some of the words were re-written words and writers have other chores to perform such as revisions, edits when the book has sold. Even with doing these chores writing 1 new page a day shouldn't be hard. It's a matter of pacing the day. My way is to get that page our of the way first thing except I've increased the new word count to 2 pages of new words a day.

Jane also did what she called write ahead. If you know there's a day or two when you won't be able to write that single page because of vacation or some other commitment. Write those pages ahead and be able to relax.

For me this goal of 2 new pages a day is easy when I'm doing a rough draft because then the words flow with fair ease but a lot of them will be tossed aside or changed completely. The real thing is commitment and writing every day whether you feel like it or not. Maybe that single page will be all you write and maybe you'll produce more. Setting a goal low makes you feel wonderful when you surpass the goal. So set your goal low and you'll find reaching it can spur you to do just another page and another until the book is done and ready for all those chores of re-writing, revising and editing.