Learn to Write in Spite of Distractions and Be Consistent Doing It!

Hey folks!

Today is the last day of NaNoWriMo! Did you get your NaNo on this year? (Wow, that was cheesy.)

I’m coming down the home stretch with three thousand words, which I plan to type up as soon as I get done with this post.

For this week’s writing advice, I thought I would talk about actually writing.

Yes, all of the wonderful resources are great to read and take information from, but sometimes we get so distracted by them that we don’t actually write.

I’ll be talking about several methods, and you can take what works best for you and apply it to your own life.

God made us all different, and what works for one writer won’t necessarily work for another.

Here’s just a few ideas of how you can do it.

A few methods of writing include

-Scheduling a time that, each day, you sit down and write (like choosing a time 9:00, 10:00, etc. that you want to write)

-Setting a certain amount of time each day that you want to write (This differs from the first one, because you set a certain amount of time: half hour, hour, etc. to write)

-Writing until you hit a certain word count

-Writing until you get to a certain point in your story

-Writing until you write a certain amount of pages

and there are many more.

But the thing they all have in common is, you have to sit down and physically write.

Sometimes that can be the hardest thing.

Here are a few methods that you can try-

A Reward Method -you can reward yourself by going on the internet, taking a break, etc. after hitting a certain amount of pages, as long as, if you aren’t finished, you can overcome to the temptation not to go back to writing.

A Withholding Method -perhaps, like me, you’re addicted to Pinterest or some other social network site that keeps you away from writing. Perhaps you could limit yourself to only going on it for a certain amount of time or maybe even not at all until you get a certain amount of writing done -or completely done.

But don’t push yourself too hard that you no longer want to write.

If you need to boost your creativity, I suggest-

-Writing something completely different. Maybe start a fanfiction to take your mind off the story that you’re writing and lets loose some creativity.

-Pick a random writing prompt and go for it! It doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to amount to anything, but if you’re writing, it’s serving its purpose. (If you need some writing prompts, check out my writing board on Pinterest!)

-Taking a break! I got so stressed out about my story not going anywhere that I didn’t write for a week. Coming back to it again was great at the end of the week, because, as you’ve probably experienced, us writers can’t take not writing for very long.

-Getting outside, changing your surroundings, spending time with people, reading someone else’s work, watching a show or movie, can all also help jog your creativity.

Probably not all of these will work for one person -maybe none of them will. It’s all about finding what works best for you and going for it!

I’ll end with a quote ‘the worst thing you’ve written is better than the best thing you haven’t written.’

Keep on writing!

-Kathryn Margaret

(Photo Courtesy of punsayaporn on Freedigitalphotos.net)