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| by wwarby flickr.com |
I love to write, and I have no idea why I resist working on my WIPs. I want to write and sell more books, so I do need to make progress. But sometimes it is almost painful to get started--however, then my fellow Lit Ladies taught me the following method on Thursday night--write as much as you can on your current manuscript without stopping for just fifteen minutes. At the end of fifteen minutes, we each shared how many words we had managed to write. It was amazing--one member who was writing a dialogue heavy-scene wrote 1007 words. I managed to write about 750. Then we did it again, and I wrote about another 750. So in a half an hour, I wrote more words on my WIP than I had in the past month, while I was busy marketing Finding My Place and doing my freelance work.
Another one of my critique group members said, "This really works for me." We both have kids, so we decided that on Sunday--when my husband works and hers is out of town--we are going to "interval write" (as her husband calls it) while the other one watches the children. Then we'll switch. This was her idea, and I think it's a brilliant one.
I'm not officially doing NaNoWriMo--in the sense that I'm not trying to write an entire novel of 50,000 words. I had started a novel over the summer, and I couldn't get back into the swing of things. So, when my group decided to do NaNoWriMo, I decided that my goal would be to finish the middle-grade novel I am currently working on, and I think I will be doing it in November with interval writing!
Have you ever tried setting a timer or writing as much as you can in short bursts of time?
Margo Dill teaches WRITING FOR CHILDREN (on sale $75 this fall) in the WOW! classroom, starting 11/14. For more information, check the WOW! classroom: http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/WOWclasses.html
