Lately I’ve had many, many days when the two small people didn’t nap at the same time, leaving me no workable chunk of time during the day. I’m able to keep up with all the writing-related business with one eye on a child and regular interruptions, but the focus I need to write new pages? Um. I need at least a little time when I’m free to concentrate. The best time I can count on regularly, then, is the time after they go to bed.
This is hard because I’m not at my most productive at night, I’m tired at the end of the day, and the last thing I want to do is sit down and produce the concentrated energy required for new pages. But it is my best opportunity, so I’m in the process of training myself to use it. (The popular “try and get up before your family” idea assumes that the mere act of mom getting up will not get everybody else up. I’ve tried it, and the minute I stand up everybody’s awake with me. Doesn’t work.)
I’ve trained myself to work in small segments of time, I’ve trained myself to consistently write a page in 10 minutes without having to reread the entire manuscript up to that point, and I’m confident that I can train myself to do this, too. But just like those things took practise and a little time to get used to before I could do it steadily and consistently and easily, I’m prepared for this change to take a little time to get used to, too. I figure it’ll take me a week before it starts to feel at all comfortable.
While I’m doing this, I’m using the same method I used to train myself to write fast and to write in small segments of time. That method is to write whatever is on the top of my head, not fiction. Once I have the mechanics firmly established (writing freely and easily at night after children go to bed) it’s very easy to change WHAT I write. I expect it may take a week before I start writing actual fiction manuscript pages in this time block, but once I get myself trained to produce at that time, I bet I’m going to wonder why I didn’t do it sooner.
If you’re training yourself in preparation for NaNoWriMo, you might test out this technique. Instead of trying to write fiction, first train yourself to do the mechanics of writing fast, freely and easily, writing whatever comes into your head until you get the mechanics down. Then when you’ve got the words flowing fast and easily, start in on your novel.
Recent Comments