Education A Twelve Point Program To Write 200,000 Words In A Year

Have you talked, planned or thought about writing a book? Is it one of those items on your lifetime "to do" list that you feel a bit guilty about. You've never given up the belief that you will write a book SOMEDAY, but day after day, month after month, year after year, you never start. You have frustration about the fact that you aren't taking action on one of your lifetime goals. You're a very goal oriented person so you're not sure why this goal is different for you. Here are a few ideas about what's going on and what you could do differently. 1. When it comes right down to it, "writing a book" is a concept that can feel quite overwhelming. It's a huge commitment of time and effort. So it's easy and even logical to put it off. Who has those countless hours available in an already busy life - so the result is the same, you never get started. 2. Did you know that you could write 200,00 words in a year if you only write 550 words a day? It takes approximately an hour to write 550 words. You could produce 100,000 words in a year if you only spent 30 minutes turning out 275 words a day. Anyone could put aside 15 minutes a day to turn out 138 words a day for a total of 50 thousand words a year. You can see then that it's possible to turn out a book with a small but daily time investment. What counts is daily effort and regular, consistent progress. 3. Make the commitment to write daily. Decide on a starting day and start on that day. The only way to get started is to start. Start with the commitment to spend 15 minutes writing. You can always increase the time later. It's more important to start and to start with a commitment that is manageable enough that you will stick to it daily. At the beginning, forming the habit is what is really important. Don't overcommit at the beginning, because that is an automatic guaranteed way to fail. You won't be able to sustain it, and that's a setup to feeling bad about yourself. Start small. You can always increase later. 4. Put together a "Writing Binder" where you keep all your writing. It helps to have a section where you write, a section where you keep your ideas for writing topics, and another section for bits and pieces of unfinished writing. You might also have a "tracking sheet" where you keep a running list of everything you have written. Some fun possibilities for your tracking sheet could be the date, number of consecutive days you've written, total number of words you've written (adding to it every day), and title of what you've written. Be sure that you keep track on your writing topics list indicating which topics you have already written about. You may not believe it now, but after you've been doing this for a few months, you'll lose track of what's been written and what has not been written. It is disconcerting to discover you've written that topic twice. 5. The hardest part of daily writing is figuring out what to write. Make yourself a notebook, binder, or computer file where you jot down all the topics and and writing ideas that come up as you go through your day. This is your most critical activity. If you are doing this correctly you will easily generate scores and hundreds of writing topics. Your most important commitment after writing daily is to "capture" all the ideas that come to you. Put a pad of paper near your bed, another near your computer, and another where you sit to watch TV. You may end up with bits of paper all over the house, but do what it takes. This will make the decision to know what to write every day so much easier. When it is writing time, all you have to do is pull out your writing ideas collection and start with what intrigues you most. 6. Just write without editing. Your objective is to let the ideas, thoughts and words flow onto the paper. Do not stop yourself and try to figure out a word. If you can't think of it, put an underline and put a note to yourself in parentheses afterwards. When you go back to edit, you'll find that the right word instantly pops out. Don't labor or try to make it perfect. All you are doing is writing. Editing comes later. 7. At first you may find it helpful to use a clock to time yourself. Use this as a form of discipline to start with. Time yourself exactly, write, write, write during the time on the clock. Stop at the end of the time, and be OK with whatever you have written. It's also OK if the words start flowing and you want to keep on writing. Keep on. Yippee! You've hit a groove. The objective is to begin a long range commitment and create a writing habit and the consistent follow through that will produce a book. 8. Don't worry about having finished perfect copy. Simply let the words flow onto the page. Do no under any circumstance judge, criticize, or get slowed down by perfectionism. Become a master of "brain dumping" all your knowledge about a topic onto the page. The objective is to get it onto paper rather than simply ideas banging around in your head. You have that book in you and a burning desire. Turn it into reality--in a few minutes or an hour a day! submit article