Too Late — I'm Stuck at 10000 Words

Read my previous post: http://prowebwriter.com/dont-choke-at-10000-words/

And…your soul is probably screaming, "What do I do now!?!" Fear not, you are not alone. For here I sit, completely stuck at…you guessed it…10000 words. The first thing that I found while researching for this post was that I'm not alone.

A Little Backstory…

I've never written anything longer than probably 10 pages all at once. I've written loads of blog posts, tons of web articles, lots of web copy, a small collection of poems, and a story here and there. I always figured novel-writing was for everyone else and that my niche was writing things that gratified me in less time. After all, this was the reason I gave up art for writing. ADD has always afforded me the tendency to choose toward the path of least resistance. This is NOT a good thing.

I've had the ideas for no less than 5 books sitting in a folder that has traveled with me for the better part of probably 7 years. Some of these ideas included an outline or even the first few pages of a rough draft. One of them is even a completed manuscript for a children's book. Yet they sit, and I can't answer the question as to why they sit with anything but a number of useless excuses.

So When I Decided To Do Something About It…

…I made myself a goal for the month of April…yeah, nearly 2 months ago now…to complete the rough draft of my first novel by the end of the month. That would give me May to do a nice long revision and hopefully have it out for summer reading. So, the first week in April, I began writing. I overshot my goal for 10000 words in my first week by nearly 300 words. The sense of accomplishment was AWESOME…and debilitating.

I haven't opened the file since. It's a shameful thing. All the talking up I did about writing my first book has become a point of shame with friends and family. The conversations usually go a little something like this: "How's the book comin'?"

"Er, I haven't opened the file in __ weeks. I'm trying to get motivated though."

"Oh."

Finding Motivation

The only REAL piece of advice when it comes to writer's block is to write anyway. (I have an excuse for that too.) A solid piece of follow up advice is abandon ALL excuses. For the last few weeks, I've been procrastinating by thinking up ways to motivate myself. Oh! There's another one…stop procrastinating! Aside from the 3 stellar tips bolded in this paragraph, here's what I came up with:

Get some software that is actually for novel writing
Release book teasers via your marketing avenues (Facebook, MySpace, or whatever)
Create a book trailer for YouTube (similar to a movie trailer with still images)
Set up your marketing accounts (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Shelfari, Goodreads)

Of course the problem with ALL of these is that none of them include any work on your actual novel. The more time you spend doing things like this, the less time you are spending writing. These tasks are merely mean to re-motivate you and force you to open up that file! Check out this link for some actionable steps to get you back in the groove: http://www.aliventures.com/project-started-in-four-steps/