My mentor says
there’s only one way to write:
one word at a time.
She’s right.
There’s only one way to finish
a project though,
and that’s to keep putting
one word at a time onto the page
until the page is full
and to keep doing that
day after day.
If you want to finish a
100,000 word novel
You can do it
in a year writing
just 274 words day,
that’s not even 2000 words a week.
It’s about daily diligence.
You eat a banquet
one bite at a time.
Develop a habit,
commit a little each day.
30 minutes will do it
so long as you keep doing it,
writing one word
at a time.
.
.
.
(113 words)
(Or you can join NaNoWriMo next November 1st, write 1668 words every day, and have the 100,000 words done by the new year. That’s a whole lot more stress, though!) 🙂
PS.
Writers Digest is on my wavelength today. Here’s an article on Writing Routines. #1 is ‘Write 500 words a day.’ How’s that for a coincidence? http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/7-writing-routines-that-work
Shawn L. Bird 
Great advice. Thank you. Perhaps you are my mentor.
Perhaps! Lots of mentors out there. Take from each and embrace your destiny. You know that Buddhist proverb: “When the student is ready, the master appears.”
Yep. Many small steps will take you around the world.
And just a few steps will do, if you’re at the North pole. 😉
Hi Shawn–I’m impressed by two things: your commitment and the fact that you have poetry going single spaced. How do you do that? 🙂
Re- commitment. Thanks.
Re- single space. Hmm. On my page it looks double spaced. I just type them onto the “new post” frame with a paragraph at the end of each line, and that’s what I get. WordPress does strange things. Sometimes a line get’s its own font or size, and I did nothing, and on my working page it looks like everything else. Makes for interesting emphasis sometimes! I’ve given up worrying about WordPress formatting issues. 😉
Oh, interesting. I don’t look at my own stuff except on rare occasions, but it always looks double spaced. I will do the same–stop worrying. Thanks!
touché! this made my day
My pleasure.
A question of persistence!
It actually takes more time to edit and prepare than it does to write. Or one can get the professionals to muck it up completely for you.
lol
Respectfully disagree. Sometimes we write in phrases that are incomplete as single words (example: beck and call); sometimes we’ll quote other people or ourselves and copy/paste whole sentences at a time; sometimes we’ll calligraph, and write one alphanumeric at a time. I don’t think of writing as a word assembly. I think of it as an ideastream textualized. Know what you want to say and use X amount of Text/Image to get there…
There is the image of the writer as artiste, crafting as the spirit moves, and there is the working writer, who puts bum on chair every day and just gets it done. I know a lot of published authors, then tend to be in the latter category. The ones who come to conferences year after year with the same manuscript but never seem to finish it, tend to be in the former category. I suppose it all depends on the writer’s goal.
Absolutely true that you must work, and work hard, with or without inspiration, to succeed creatively. Robert Heinlein’s first rule of writing was “You must WRITE,” but that wasn’t enough; his second rule was, “You must FINISH what you wrote.” We’re not really disagreeing on anything but technical details.
lol Who said we were disagreeing? 🙂
Definitely true and something I am planning to do!
Good luck with it!
🙂 I began a novel with the NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago and didn’t finish on time, BUT it is a work STILL in progress. I’m actually done with the rough draft but I keep thinking of ways to better it. One day I will finish it. It was a great exercise. Good Luck!
I have 4 drafts finished and sitting. 2 are 80k novels, 2 are novellas. It’s good to come back to them with fresh eyes so you can clarify all the crucial components: character motivation, plot turns, pacing, etc. I am not sure an author ever feels a work is completely finished, but sooner or later you just have to let them go! 🙂
Four of them! That’s great! Mine is about 62k, and it is true, everytime I spend time away from it, I look at it with fresh eyes when I return to it. I thought for sure I was ready for a final edit, but recently had an “epiphany” and have some new ideas to weave into the plot line. 🙂 Maybe this summer. Good luck letting them go…into a published work that is!
When the time is right it’ll happen. I have a request for the one I’m currently working on, so it got bumped in priority.
Wonderful! sounds like a great incentive to get this one to the finish line. And you are a teacher too. so, this means either you are up at 4:00 or up late at night to reach your quota! I know this :)) I teach high school English too, and I know how little personal time we have for ourselves. So, keep it up, keep inspiring, that creative edge is a necessity to saneness! Again, good luck with that.
Well, in the summer I do all my writing midnight to 4 a.m. During the school year, not so much. I have really firm self-care boundaries, and I don’t take work home. I stay at school until 5 pm. to do marking and prep, and then I leave. If I have a stack of essays that need to be dealt with, I’ll stay ’til 6, but try never, never, never to take any student work out of my class room. I also plan the marking in the creation of the assignments, working through skills in small quickly assessed steps. I am not a marking pile martyr. 🙂
You sound pretty organized 🙂 I am usually one of the last teachers to leave, but I do bring work home sometimes. I rarely do it. 🙂 Why I bother bringing it home…I don’t know! 12-4 is an unusual time to write, but I can see how it would be a perfect time. Probably the quietest time of all. Self-care boundaries, a must! Good luck in all you do. I enjoy your writing.
Thanks Karen. That ‘not doing’ was why I stopped bringing work home (that and losing a class set of essays in my first year!) If you bring it home, it hovers over your head stealing joy from every other thing because you ‘should be marking.’ The bag is just a torment. If the marking is at school, you’re free to enjoy your time at home with family, and can recharge for the next day. I think it makes me more efficient, too. 🙂 I generally empty all the hand in baskets before leaving for the day. It’s empowering! Try it, you’ll like it!
Yikes! I know exactly what you mean–the hovering over your head. I feel so free when I leave everything behind 🙂 I WILL try to make an effort to stay longer and leave for home empty-handed. 🙂 In this case, it’s a good thing!! And, we need all the empowering we can get 🙂 Lately, the work load for teachers at my school has been over-whelming. Reports. Common Formative Assessments, Student Learning Objectives, Core Professionalism, Danielson observation reports…the list goes on. How we are expected to do everything within the timeframe of classroom time is beyond me. One step at a time, really. The most I can do to keep sane these days is to go walking once a day, and write a poem once a day, even if my eyes are closing and half of it is written in short waking spurts :)))) It revives my soul.
Yikes.
I am so glad I don’t have to worry about such things!
I am actually sitting here working on a paper for my master’s class on an issue around assessment. I’m looking at standardized testing. We have provincial exams and Foundational assessments, but we don’t do anything particular about them, aside from a practice exam to help kids to know what to expect. That’s about it for most high school class rooms. Otherwise it’s just about our daily observations, notes, marking, etc.
That’s great! I work in a low in-come area. The poorest district in the state. We were in the Race To The Top federal education program, and so we are under high scrutiny. Data, data, data….!! I love my students and the school, but we are under a lot of stress trying to improve our students’ scores. I am a 9th and 10th grade teacher and have had the testing grade for a few years now. Many of our students come to us from low-income, migrant families and some are performing at an elementary reading level in 9th and 10th. I just got a new student before spring break who doesn’t know all the letters in the English alphabet…It is tough. But, I love my job.
The SLO…Student Learning Objective is all about assessment. We choose a standard we want to focus on, and we plan our weekly assessment and rubrics. We have to show strategies, differentiation, weekly formative assessment and after about 8 weeks we have to show the improved Summative assessment. The goal is reach a 90% proficiency within those eight weeks. 🙂 I did mine on a Common Core writing standard.
So wonderful that you are working on a masters! I’ve been thinking about doing the same thing! All power to you 🙂
Sounds to me that you’re doing all the work for a Masters! Holy cow. To whom do you have to show these ‘strategies/differentiation, weekly formative assessments’? When do you have opportunity to have relationships with the kids? How do you address the poverty? Are there food programs? Safe activities for after school? Are opportunities there for parents to be learning in the school, so they can be literate too? Is there one on one learning resource support? There is so much to be done before literacy can be addressed! Most of what you’re mentioning would be done around here with a special needs learning specialist and team, not the regular class room teacher.
Lots of really good questions 🙂 All relevant, some of which are being addressed. I’ll send you an e-mail later!
Good advice
nice.. one word at a time..that’s right!!! a bit by bit will be big 😀
Indeed.
Hi Shawn enjoyed the poem a lot, though suspect that you might have left an “a” on the 16th line between 274 words day. Your poetry always has such a wonderful flow, and just pulls one on from one word to the next with such ease. Love it. My usual problem with novels, is not being able to write the thousands of words, but to stop, as ideas and extras come to me fast than i can get them onto paper, so the novel just grows out of all proportion. So am rewriting my present novel for the umpteenth time! Thanks for liking my poems. Charles. Best wishes
Sometimes a frame can help with that. Have you read “Save the Cat” by Black Snyder?
Thanks for the catch on the missing work. Will adjust!
Simple and profound. I love this!
Thanks
I like the poem. I wish I can write nice poems too. I enjoy writing and there’s so much to learn about writing. Last year I joint the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program and I made it. It was hard work. And I hope that by joining NaPoWriMo I’ll be able to write better poems 🙂
Practice is the only way to improve at anything.
Keep writing, and keep reading great poets. Learn from what you read. Try what they do. Write, write, write.
Thanks for the advice. I’ll try to work harder.
Harder is not necessary, just consistently. You don’t want to lose your joy in the words.
That is an amazing thought. I like it. Hope you’re doing well.
Very well, thanks!