What is the best motivational technique to keep going back and writing? I might need more structure, as in having a goal e.g. writing 2000 words a day? Any suggestions appreciated! :)
What is the best motivational technique to keep going back and writing? I might need more structure, as in having a goal e.g. writing 2000 words a day? Any suggestions appreciated! :)
It is very individual, but I have some possibly helpful things: 1)If you have a truly trusted friend, you can email him or her with "You wouldn't believe what my couple of characters did today!". What you do is, you tell your email correspondent that you are sharing with him/her about something longer that you've written, but which isn't ready to show yet, and you start describing it, incidentally with your narrator's voice, because you are so clever, and you put some bits of main dialogue or you tell about the dialogue, and voila, what you told your friend is verbatim what you wrote, and later on you add more, or edit. It is surprising how you somehow know what you wrote in this peculiar way. I wrote a great many exciting scenes in my novel-sized story by doing this, writing to a priest friend I used to have, and thinking to sock him, or something. Priests keep secrets, so all worked out. 2)Watch films which are close in nature to your prose fiction work. Somehow when you keep doing that, the ideas come, and then you have something to write. 3)You absolutely need a mode of mind in which you become hotly obsessed with your story and your characters and what they would do next. Only when you are personally that obsessed with your own story, only then will the characters seem to come to life and beckon you to write more so they can live, in a sense. When they want to live, and when "it becomes bigger than Jesus", as the Beatles said, then you will no longer have a what-to-write problem, but how to stop the ideas from interfering with your daily mundane functioning. Did I miss a numeration? I find it very difficult to scroll in this three-line writing space. 3)Do what James Baldacci recommends, which is to write after 12 midnight, or at 3 AM, when you get up for whatever. Actually, Sadhguru recommends that when you get up in the wee hours, such as at 3 AM,m do not go back to sleep immediately, but devote some time to your "discipline". I had some more, but I can't keep typing in this horrible narrow view of a typing space. Later, alligators. :)
Do not create "agressive" deadlines (for example: 2000 words a day). This isn't necessary as your not a published author. Be patient. Wait for inspiration.
Many of my friends have signed up to NaNoWriMo and found that helped kick-start them.
I've found it's easiest to get everything down on the paper and promise yourself you can edit later. Otherwise I find myself editing before I write, and very little hits the page!