October 2009
At the end of October, I spent 3 days at the Surrey International Writers Conference. The one thing I heard over and over was to write every day. Most writers agreed it wouldn’t be great writing or even something they would use in their final manuscript. The idea was to get in the habit and make the choice that writing had a daily place of importance in the writer’s life. I decided to try it.
I’m usually wiped out by dinner time and I still have two hours before the kids go to bed. I tried writing after the kids go to bed, but it’s pointless. I have no energy. So I decided to move the writing time to the beginning of the day so I could stick with this new habit I wanted.
On October 26th of 2009, just one day after the conference ended, I decided to wake up at 5 in the morning and write every day. It’s now January 2010 and I’ve only missed one morning. I usually have at least a solid hour, till 6. The kids generally sleep in till 7 – so two hours most days of time to write.
After the conference, I realized I didn’t have my story plot solid in my mind. I tried to write at 5am and plot after the kids went to bed. I wound up plotting a three books series and have made a good start into the first book. I can write an average of 1000 words an hour.
January 2009
So to put that in to some kind of perspective, talking only rough first draft (not finished words):
- 50 hours to complete Nano (50k words in a month)
- 100 hours to complete a novel in my chosen genre
January to October 2008
In 2008, I took an independent from Western (the local University) titled English 351 (link is to PDF description of course) taught by Sara Stamey. The class is ten assignments meant to take ten weeks but as an independent there is a lot more time. I allowed two weeks per assignment then asked for the optional extension of a few months. I was procrastinating. The final assignment was a twenty page story. At that time, writing a twenty page story, was overwhelming. I was scared. It wasn’t even the grade or the critique I was afraid of. I was just afraid I couldn’t write that many words. I wasn’t in the habit. My stories come to me in plot, not line by line.
Today
Now, a twenty page story (250 words/page so 5k words total), rough draft would take 5 hours. Given I knew what I wanted to write, 5 hours seems insignificant now.
Don’t think I’m saying I can produce publishable, finished words right off the bat. No, I still haven’t mastered that yet. But writing every morning has taught me I can write. I’m in the habit and I’m a believer.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by d berry, Dina Fleet Berry. Dina Fleet Berry said: Why writing everyday works – aka What do you mean you get up at 5am!?! http://bit.ly/7WDlGA #blog #siwc [...]