How Often Should You Write?
THOUGHTS ON WRITING, 1st Installment
By Scott Lax, January 1, 2017
Those of you who have liked this page � thank you. But I haven't really done my part in keeping up with posting content. That will change this year.
One of the things I'll be doing is to offer short bits of advice to writers and aspiring writers. (Or those interested in writing.) While I'll sometimes post a quotation from one of the greats, much of it will be from me, for better or for worse, for you to take or leave. I'm not one who believes that what works for one writer will necessarily work for anyone else.
So with that caveat, here's my advice for the first day of the year: If you really want to write creatively, be it poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, political commentary, a play, a screenplay or whatever � I think it's quite important to write something every day. My suggestion is to give yourself a minimum and a maximum amount of time. If you go over the maximum, I don't suppose that would be a problem for you. (Though it could be for others, so be mindful.)
It's attaining the minimum writing time that can pose the biggest challenge. So maybe try this: give yourself a minimum that you can achieve, be it five minutes, 15 minutes, or half an hour. The two most important aspects of this are, I think, that first, don't beat yourself up if you don't make that minimum, but rather go at it again the next day or as soon as you can and don't look back.
The second thing is to not compare yourself to others. You don't need to write Hemingway's 600 words a day. You don't need to write a given famous author's three hours a day or any other amount of time or word count. You simply need to put words on paper or computer at your pace. Unless you're on a paid deadline � and that's an entirely different thing, one where 12-hour days can be stacked one on top of another � you are responsible only to yourself.
By Scott Lax, January 1, 2017
Those of you who have liked this page � thank you. But I haven't really done my part in keeping up with posting content. That will change this year.
One of the things I'll be doing is to offer short bits of advice to writers and aspiring writers. (Or those interested in writing.) While I'll sometimes post a quotation from one of the greats, much of it will be from me, for better or for worse, for you to take or leave. I'm not one who believes that what works for one writer will necessarily work for anyone else.
So with that caveat, here's my advice for the first day of the year: If you really want to write creatively, be it poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, political commentary, a play, a screenplay or whatever � I think it's quite important to write something every day. My suggestion is to give yourself a minimum and a maximum amount of time. If you go over the maximum, I don't suppose that would be a problem for you. (Though it could be for others, so be mindful.)
It's attaining the minimum writing time that can pose the biggest challenge. So maybe try this: give yourself a minimum that you can achieve, be it five minutes, 15 minutes, or half an hour. The two most important aspects of this are, I think, that first, don't beat yourself up if you don't make that minimum, but rather go at it again the next day or as soon as you can and don't look back.
The second thing is to not compare yourself to others. You don't need to write Hemingway's 600 words a day. You don't need to write a given famous author's three hours a day or any other amount of time or word count. You simply need to put words on paper or computer at your pace. Unless you're on a paid deadline � and that's an entirely different thing, one where 12-hour days can be stacked one on top of another � you are responsible only to yourself.
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