Cramping your style

Good morning everyone,

I come before you today with a humble heart. This week has been interesting to say the least. My main focus today is to share with you all a pitfall to avoid if you're a writer. 

I will come right out with it: if you don't exercise you get weak and lose muscle tone. When I say exercise, I'm not referring to physical activity, although, the same principle applies, our brains can be looked at as a muscle and you exercise it by thinking. As a writer, you should try to write something every day; even if just a few lines. Preferably  a couple of pages a day. By writing every day, you keep your skills honed and you're staying engaged in your story. 

Trust me on this... I have a day job and I love to write; I want to become a full time writier. Don't fall into the same pit fall as I have. My problem is only writing on the weekends. I tend to forget where I was at in the story and have to go back and re-read what I wrote last week. Lots of wasted time. 

I don't know about you all, but this cramps my style. It takes me longer to produce a chapter. Sure, there are times were an author must research certain facts when you come to a point. However, if I can find the time to write "something" every day, I find that I can engage much faster and find my groove so I can produce a couple thousand words a session. 

Still think it really doesn't matter? Let me break it down by the numbers. Lets say you want to publish an average size book of 80,000 words and you write 3,000 words a weekend, you will complete your book if you stay on that track in about 26 weeks. Now if you add to that 500 words a day for 5 days, you're adding 2500 words during the week, making your completed work in just 14 weeks. That's saving you 12 weeks, or three months - That makes a significant difference. 

Of course it will be different for everyone, but the basic math will always tell you when you can expect a finished product and every author will have their own word count they are shooting for.

Set yourself a goal of a page a day. Then increase that as you feel more comfortable. Eventually, you will look forward to that special time you set aside every day to write. And believe it or not, you will find that your writing skills will improve over time. It won't take as long to find your groove and the stories will flow down to the page like the water of a falls to the river below. 

Start setting some goals... make them obtainable and then gradually challenge yourself and you will soon find that the goals get easier to make. 

From the author's chair
Brian K. Larson
The Dyslexic Author