Monday, April 14, 2014

Doing the Work

Having trouble sitting down and writing?

Here's a little trick.

Make yourself accountable to someone.

Last week, I had three separate writing sessions with a few of my friends. We made plans to meet online at 8 p.m. and write for an hour. Just knowing that I had to show up and write because people were counting on me to be there made all the difference in the world.

In other words, I used one of my strongest traits - responsibility - to my advantage. If I would have begged off the writing date, I would have felt guilty and also felt like I let down my friends. Since I had no desire to feel lousy, I showed up.

And I did the work.

Underwood Typewriter ©2011 Robert Moran


Sometimes, it really is that easy.

Will this work all the time? Probably not. But at this stage in the game, when my writing muse demands lots of chocolate and naps and time spent doing a whole lot of nothing, I've got to crack the whip. This strategy is just the thing I need to get those words down.

How do you "do the work" when your muse is being lazy?




4 comments:

  1. That is a really good way to force oneself to buckle down!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a good idea!
    What keeps me going, when I really don't feel like it, is having a friend nagging me: "Where's the next chapter, I want to read it!"
    It usually works.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That's a great way to do it, too. Plus, it's encouraging to know that your story is a page-turner. :)

    ReplyDelete

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