In the past four or five days, this is all the writing I’ve done:
Tuesday: 75 words
Wednesday: 73 words
Today: 315 words
These numbers might not look that impressive. But each of those numbers represents a small victory for me. None of those were days I wanted to write. I felt uninspired, unsure, and a little annoyed. Will this book ever end? Will it ever be publishable? Why am I even doing this? Where is this plot going?
After writing another 75 words today, I was ready to close my laptop and call it quits for the day. But I didn’t. I decided to write one more sentence. And then that spawned the idea for another sentence. Three paragraphs later, I feel like I’ve finally written myself around the little wall of writer’s block that’s been in my way all week. I got through the hard scene, and now I’m onto the exciting one. Now I have a new idea to work with when I write tomorrow.
The longer I’m a writer, the more I’m learning that I need to push myself to work on my novel every day that I can. And the more I do that, the easier it is to write.
So don’t stress if you can’t write 1,000 words every day. Make yourself goals and try to stick to them. For the next week, my goal is to write something on my novel every day. It doesn’t have to be a ton, but I’m going to try to write consistently every day, even if it’s just a little.
This is so true and encouraging. Every little bit does count! I have been telling myself the same thing. I tend to get bogged down by the big picture, but we don’t have to carry the weight of finishing the novel right now. We will get there.
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Thank you for your wonderful comment! You’re right, we will get there.
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Writing when you don’t want to write is TOUGH, even “just” a few words. But you’re right: every word is a victory because it is one more word than you had yesterday. So my hat is off to you, Beth. You write that novel!
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Thank you so much!
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