Just set clock. God I wish I could type better than this. I am so annoyed that I don’t give myself time to do what I should be doing regarding this novel. I just keep putting off the evil hour and although I really do know these characters, and where I want them to go I cannot seem to get time to take them there. I hope this changes soon but it’s really up to me
It seems that the freewriting exercise has brought your key issue to the fore - that of not having enough time. If it’s any comfort, writing a novel, in almost all cases, is about the slow accumulation of words over a long period of time. You do need to think carefully about a timetable. Its always hard to know what to cut out – its easy to say ‘stop watching TV’ but for people who work, TV and a glass of something is an essential part of winding down, whereas writing is just more work – I do understand! (or at least I’m trying to imagine!) How about weekends? Is there any free space there? Try writing a timetable in which you identify a block of time every day – or if not every day, then as many days in the week as you can. If your time is fractured during the week, another solution might be to decide on a daily or weekly word-count. In this way you work not so much with blocks of time but with blocks of words. You work an hour here, a half-hour there – whenever you can find the time – until you have the requisite number. If you reach the weekend and you still haven’t managed to achieve your weekly word-count, you know it will be a busy literary weekend. In reality, most writers will employ some combination of the two methods. They will sit down at a particular time of the day and stay there until the word-count has clocked up. On some days this will take forever, and on other days it will all be done in one go.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this Gary. I think the idea of a weekly word count might work for me. It would turn it into a challenge - and I love a challenge!
ReplyDeleteThis has been a most useful exercise and your response and suggestions have allowed me to work out how I am going to achieve what I desperately want. That is, a finished piece/novel. It sounds odd when I say it out loud............ I am actually writing a 'novel' - Yippee!