She hasn't come out and said it. She's said she's had some trouble getting started. This has been going on for months, however, and the submissions are due before Halloween.
The deadline is nigh! I texted. It's nigher than that! It's nigh nighty-nigh! Today only!
I may not be a big success in the writing biz, but I could be a good sponsor. Not in the financial sense; more in the 12-Step program sense. Except instead of leading someone through the Steps to bring him to a better life, I'd be a professional noodge, using every trick I know to get words on the page.
In that sense, I'm like a walking issue of Writer's Digest. I'm sure I could give you Six Ways to Approach an Outline or Twelve Ways to Break Writer's Block or Eight Ways to Meet (or Beat) Your Deadline. Oh, I'm jammed full of good advice about writing -- but not necessarily writing well. I leave that up to you, the readers, to decide. When it comes to the mechanics of writing, the getting going and getting finished, I can help.
I really hope my friend gets those words flowing, whether it's through my help or not. She's among the smartest people I know, and has a lot to offer as a writer. But if she can't get those words out of her head and onto the page, no one will be able to read them.
I have done a fair amount of mostly technically-oriented writing over the years and find that there are times when it takes me all day to produce two or three paragraphs, and times when I can crank out eight or ten pages of quality stuff in a day.
ReplyDeleteThe latter comes with what some people call "flow" state ... but I figured out fairly early that waiting around for "flow" to show up is a waste of time, and if it isn't there, the next best thing to do is just start chiseling away with the hopes of getting two or three paragraphs done by the end of the day.
It also helps to have the discipline to dedicate the time needed every day and stick to it. More than once I have thought about joining NaNoWriMo (nanowrimo.org) ... which comes up in a few weeks ... but failed to work up the discipline to get started much less stick to it. Of course it would involve my *free* time and I am loathe to have to give up important things such as watching bad driver videos on YouTube or solving cryptic crosswords. Sorry to go on so but I am in "flow" state today.