DON'T write every day

Hi

I've been thinking about this a lot and thought I'd make a post about it. DON'T write every day.

Why not??!?!?!?! I hear you scream in despair. EVERYONE tells you to do it! Every writer tells us to write every day!

Yeah... but not me.

When I say I've been thinking about it a lot, I mean obsessively, compulsively. I've studied this stuff. I know my stuff. I've tried to write every day. I did. I swear. Every day, and in the beginning, it was fine, I got work done, it was fun. I wrote 5-10k a day and after a week or so I'd maybe take a day off... then continue writing 5-7k a day. That's most of the day. 9 AM to 11 PM. I did nothing but write and the occasional ten minutes of surfing funny pics online.

I did this for about a year.

Every day. Monday-Sunday with the occasional day off. (Good times, no day job, "studying" at university without going to lectures).

I then... was finished with 3 books and wrote the next... started editing the first... went to the next...

Skip forward.

I moved. I had all the time in the world still, but I couldn't focus on ANYTHING. Never mind for 12 hours like I used to.

Time passed (as it does).

I tried to at least write so and so many words a day. It worked somewhat.

BUT:

and here's the whole reason for this post.

It didn't work ALWAYS.

I get tired. I get demotivated. I realized that some stories just don't want to be written - or at least not by me. I try to force myself... at least 1k a day... at least 500 words a day. Can I do 100 words and say it's an achievement? But it's not. I can do 1.5k in 30 mins fairly easily. Yes, this sounds a lot like boasting, but once I'm into something, the writing flies, and time doesn't.

But it's no good. It's no good to force yourself.

So... why do you tell us this now? Why the sudden wisdom?

You've read last week's post? Yah. That's why. Trying to force myself to write every day (instead of when it was REALLY pressing and I had the STRONG URGE to write) made me burn out. It's done this quite a few times by now and I'm starting to see a pattern there.

So.

Don't write every day.

I know I won't. It makes me crazy. I'm fine taking a few weeks break's between projects... and at other times I'd rather write compulsively the whole day/a whole week/month than force myself to write during those 'down-times'. It's useless. All it does is make me hate ever having chosen to sit down/get up at 5 AM. And that's not an environment to write in.

If you don't want to write, don't. Take a break.

The writing, if it's meant for you, if it's your story to tell, and if you're truly a writer, will come to you. When it is ready. Not when you're trying to force it.

It helped me to realize this (although no doubt in a few week's time I'll be crying and whining about how much I suck again). I hope this helps anyone else too!

PS: don't think this is an easy process to decide. I've been bombarded with write every day for years... and I feel guilty if I don't. But for me, this just doesn't work. I can't force the writing, at least not if I want to be good, if I want it to be coherent. And to be honest, I have way too many ideas in my mind to edit a piece 20 times if it doesn't come out at least decent right away. No single idea is THAT important. And if you only have one idea? Then it's ok that you quit after you're done with it. I can guarantee another idea will show up at you door and knock you over. In time. It might not be tomorrow, or next week, and perhaps not even this year.

But in time, another idea will find you, and you'll catch fire, like you did with that first idea. That's when you write. When you NEED to write, or otherwise, you might die.

Cheers!

I suck at... everything

Hi

I'm not very active here any more (figured it's pointless and I don't like it much anyway) and I'm sorry this will be a bit depressing. See, that's me. A month ago everything was going, if not smoothly, at least well. I finished a book at about 50k words (this is my ninth so far), and, because I don't edit right away but let it simmer, I hopped to the next project. The characters made sense, they did things, for a while. Then the whole project just crashed and burned... like the short stories I have up on KDP. I'm ok with this. It didn't work out, cool. It has some 40k words, but those can be sacrificed. It's an exercise, it didn't work out, plus, I can make a wholly different story out of a part of it. It's not a big deal.

Except it is.

My short story sales are... (dejected sound from low to high). I can't seem to edit the first book I ever wrote properly, and that's a series of 5... which I get back to to agonize over every year or so. I'll "fix it" but get stuck... quit that again, and start something new. This is all fine, all right, but dude, it is so painful. I wrack my mind, heart, soul, and every once in a while, there will be a solution, but it's not right. It felt so pure, writing it and editing it, and anything I do now, because in the five years since I wrote it I've grown up, realized how bad it was, feels so dirty.

But let's get back to the point of this rant, if we can find one.

I feel like I suck and my whole life is pointless. That day job I talked about? Worst job ever. My life? Worst life ever. My writing? ... I think you get it.

Conclusion? I know this'll be over soon and then my life will be fine again. But to everyone who feels the same, this might be relevant. Whatever you're feeling now, what's happened, it won't stay. Life will move on, it'll fix itself. You'll move on with it. And perhaps, you'll even find a plug for this hole in your writing.

Have a good day