Three big ideas were huge for me when working on the Social Ref for almost 2 years:
1) What’s Your BIG Day (It’s probably not ‘everyday’):
When you are writing a book, when should you write? Well duh you are an author, you should write every day! Wake up early and just write and write until its done ?
I wrote most of the book in small 45 minute to 1 hour long chunks early in the morning (even on vacation). If you can write all day long everyday thats amazing, but I have 3 businesses to help with, and a family.
So the question is: whats your big day? For me thursday was “Library Day” and I literally scheduled it on my calendar and worked out of the public library. I knew I would get 4 to 5 hours on that day, no matter what else happened.
What’s your big day – Do you have it on your calendar? Can you name it and nickname it? Can you make sure you never miss it? Can’t have meetings on Thursday … that’s Library Day!
Its the only way I was able to finish a book while still doing everything else.
2) Yup – Getting Stuck Sucks
I don’t know if I ever encountered writers block, but lots of moments I felt stuck and felt like no matter what I wrote, it was total crap.
One big idea always helped unstuck the situation – a bit easier for me because I was writing non-fiction:
Whenever I was truly stuck on a section or idea, I would setup a live classroom session and try and teach the idea to someone else, or to the video camera.
I would even put together a rough power point – Now I am going to teach you phase 3 – Sometimes it was great, sometimes it stunk, and sometimes whole new ideas would just fall from the sky because I was standing up and teaching live and out loud, instead of stuck in a laptop and lost inside my head.
Then when I went back to write the section everything felt different, and I even had the “lesson” on recording to recap.
Maybe this could work for fiction too? Teach me why I should care about this character? Teach me why I should care about this plot twist, or belive this bank robbery, or care about this secret relative? Who knows…
3) Listen to the Same Thing … Over and Over again:
Ok if you havent picked up on it, I am a bit weird. But much like every book I read seems to talk about meditation, steve jobs, and taking cold showers; the idea of listening to a song on repeat seemed to show up over and over again with writers I love and respect when they talk about their working habits. Not listening to a particular kind of music, but literally the same song over and over again on repeat.
This seems nuts, except one small idea makes it work easier: On YouTube many people will take songs they love and loop them to create one big hour long track.
So you can imagine my happiness when I found Brian Eno’s “Thursday Afternoon” cut into an hour long track with visuals:
This became my writing soundtrack. I must have listened to this thing over 500+ times – When this song was on, it meant it was time to get to work, not goof off or search the internet. It was time to write.
When the book was taking too long, and I was tackling version 12 and hating everything, I realized that I stopped listening to my “writing soundtrack.” I put it on, and then got back to work. It always helped get things back on track, and get me back to work,
Take a great song you love, and make it your writing soundtrack. See if someone has looped it into a larger track, and make that your jump start to get to work and get in your writing zone.
Hope these 3 ideas are simple starts that can help you wherever you are right now.
SDM
#SocialRefHabits
Simpletition - Shawn D. Madden 