Writing is a form of mental calisthenics. You are exercising different parts of your brain depending on the kind of writing your are doing. Writing a journal is like running around the block for fun. You’re not really pushing yourself. You’re mostly just getting your blood flowing.
Writing for someone else to read, on a limited range of topics, with a target length in mind, and with a deadline is more like a carefully planned free weight routine. You have particular goals in mind and you have thought about the parameters that will help you achieve them.
Winning National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo to its friends) is a step up. The criteria is to write 50,000 words between November 1st and November 30th. What you typically have on November 30th is most of a 1st draft of a novel. Unless you are a genius of a writer, it isn’t anywhere near ready to publish, but with some work, some help, and several more drafts it may turn in to something.
Winning NaNoWriMo is like running a half marathon. It has the decided helpful attribute of giving you a specific timeframe and a goal, in short a deadline. Deadlines are important for writers. They’re important for programmers too but that’s an entirely different blog post.
And then there is the next step. Learning to set your own deadlines, to schedule your own time, to make those writing dates with yourself and keep them. This is where I am right now. I’ve started taking part of my lunch hour to write. I’ve start scheduling one night a week to go out somewhere to write for a couple of hours. I try to get some extra work in on the weekends. I am in training for NaNoWriMo which is going to tax my schedule to the max. But this year, I don’t intend to stop when December gets here. I’m going to keep up the pace. I have a full dance card and I intend to keep the words flowing.
Between now and November first I have a short story to polish up for the Huntsville Madison County Public Library short story anthology that is due to be published sometime in November. I also have a story planned for the library’s horror story contest that is due March first.
I don’t know if I’ll make much money as a writer but I do intend to give it a serious try. I think most writers are compelled to write. They would love to make money doing it. In fact, it is often the only way they know to make a living. I am lucky that it is not my only means of supporting myself, just my preferred way.
Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.