Many have the notion that writing is this airy fairy, artsy fartsy pursuit. Creativity can only come if you’re feeling inspired. You need that spark that unleashes your imagination. You need that idea to pop up and grab you. You need your muse to lift you to that lofty realm of creative consciousness. You need your coffee.
Baloney. Well, maybe you need your coffee. But you can’t wait for that warm, fuzzy writing feeling to overwhelm you. Sometimes it doesn’t happen—for a long time.
Just write. Write now.
Set goals
Maybe you don’t know what to write about it, but you can decide now who you want to write for: children’s magazines, a hobby magazine, a contest, or a traditional book publisher.
From there, whittle it down: an article on how to pick a family pet, a children’s nonfiction picture book on worm farming, a murder mystery, a memoir …
Take a gander at the library and bookstore shelves. Jot down ideas.
Go to book or magazine publishers’ websites. Find their writers guidelines and see what they want.
It’s up to you to decide how much time you can or need to devote to your writing. But devote, you must—even if it is one evening a week, or two hours on Sunday, or 20 minutes a day. Schedule the time in your calendar.
Fill your calendar with deadlines: The third week of next month, I will have my children’s story finished and ready to submit. Three months from today, I will have the first three chapters of my novel written.
Make a chore chart, if you need to: start outline on YA novel, edit nature article, rewrite ending of short fiction story. Check off each goal and add to the chart.
Also, make a chart to keep track of submissions to magazines, publishers, and agents. Include date of submission, response (if ever) date, published or no, payment info.
Go out to write
Get up, get dressed, and drive or walk yourself to your writing job—at a coffee shop, the library, at a picnic table in the park.
While writing in your jammies is a definite perk, sometimes it’s easy to get distracted at home. When you’re grappling with the first seeds of a story, it’s too tempting to find other ways to be “more productive.” There’s always something to do around the house, after all
This was my problem. I had only the vaguest idea for a story, and I couldn’t move forward. So, I found a local coffee shop filled with people tapping away on their laptops. It worked. I couldn’t just sit there and stare into space—I had to do something. I started writing on the topic and didn’t stop until I had a story.
Plan to meet often and promise to keep chatting to a minimum. Set the timer on your phone to sit and write and nothing else.
Classes, workshops, seminars, retreats—they all have something in common: They force you to write.
When I needed to exercise, but wasn’t making time to do it, I signed up for a class. Paying for the time motivated me to attend. Who wants to waste money?
Be accountable
Once or twice a month, pages are due—online or in person. My writers group gives me plenty to write about each month—or should I say rewrite?
Besides the critique group, I meet with a writing partner once a month. We share what we’ve written, what we’ve submitted, talk about writing goals, and give a few words of encouragement.
Sometimes writing seems easy—the idea’s there, the words are flowing, the page on the screen is filling up. But sometimes, it’s not. Write anyway. Write anything.
Pick someone at that coffee shop. Write a description. Imagine a personality, a life. Write. It doesn’t matter if it’s good. It doesn’t matter if you’ll ever use it. It will get you writing. And maybe that’s the simple goal you need right now.
Mary Raebel 