How To Write (Every Day)
What I learned from writing every day of 2014
Writing every day is really, really hard. Trust me, I know.
While I’ve never done NaNoWriMo, last year I wrote a short story every day of the year, completing what is now known as A Story Each Day. It ended up being about 2 hours of writing every day, often much more.
With NaNoWriMo starting today, I’m opening up everything I’ve learned about writing and making it available to you.
Throughout this month (and further), I’ll be sending out notes about how to become a better writer. I hope that you’ll follow along and let me know what you think.
To start off, here are 3 steps that I followed to help me write every single day:
1) Come to the page believing that no one will ever read what you are about to write. Don’t censor, don’t edit, don’t hold anything back. It’s just you and the page.
Often, before I began writing my daily short story, I would try to dump my thoughts out onto a page. I wasn’t focused on writing a story — I just typed. I eventually had so many of these scrap documents that I made a folder on my computer called “Pre-writing Cleanse”
I’ve never shared any of these Pre-writing Cleanses with anyone, until now. The reason I’m sharing this now is because I want to show how it’s important to write everything: The insane thoughts, the frightening realizations, the stuff that makes no sense to anyone (yourself included).
Below is the Pre-writing Cleanse from June 8th, 2014:
Write write write write wirt write write write write write write wirite write writ e weiri twr write write write writte writ we wetrawe
Once upon a time, there was a guy who was unhappy. Or wait, not really unhappy, but he wasn’ sure if he could ever actually enjoy the experience — he never let go. Letting go is enjoying? Is that what that means? In order to enjoy something, you have to let go?
Can you enjoy something and still hold onto it?
In order to enjoy something, really enjoy it, you have to let go. Man sees beauty and puts it in a jar on display. God sees beauty and lets it go.
What does it mean to let something go? What if letting go is really the only way to enjoy something.
That’s a lot of gibberish, right? Yes, it is. In case you’re interested, I wrote this gibberish right before I wrote this story. Sometimes these ramblings ended up playing a part in the story that I wrote. Sometimes they didn’t, but they helped my fingers get into rhythm of putting my thoughts on paper (or screen).
You need a way to clear the ideas that are on the top of your mind. If you’re concerned about how it’s going to look, how it’s going to sound, what people are going to think, then you censor ideas before they even get a chance to land on a page. You kill them before they exist.
When it comes to ideas, you have to let them all land on paper before you decide which ones to pursue. Once they’re on paper, then you edit. Not before.
2) You can write about anything.
Remember, no one is seeing this writing (You can figure out if you want to show it later. Write it first). There are no rules, there are no expectations. You can write about whatever you want.
This amount of freedom is inhibiting for some writers. Don’t let it be. If it is, I’ve found these steps to be remarkably helpful:
First, think back to the time during today (or previous day) when you were the most angry. Why were you angry? Who were you angry at? Write about that. Give that anger to one of your characters.
Didn’t work? No problem. Think about the weirdest thing you heard or learned today. Where did you learn it from? Why did you find it so weird? Give that reaction to one of your characters.
Stories are conflict. Without conflict, there’s nothing to write about. So find a conflict, and you’ll have something to write about.
That didn’t work either? Go for a run. Take a shower.
Still nothing? That’s alright. Move on to step 3:
3) Don’t go to sleep until you’ve written something.
It’s pretty simple.
In Conclusion
The best stories are the ones that are authentic. So don’t try to write for anyone. Don’t write with expectations. Write because you have something on your mind.
I hope you’ll subscribe and share your work with me as I share what I’ve learned over the course of writing 365 short stories.
