A while ago I talked about my 3 Rules for Writing in a Time of Distraction, which I continue to employ to great effect.

Now, as I drive toward ever-encroaching deadlines during busy days filled with day jobbery, family life, and a magnitude of other distractions, the little time I have to write must be focused and not wasted. Few things are more frustrating than finally sitting down to write and not–and not because of distraction, but because you’re not ready or in the right headspace.

I ran into that wall of frustration numerous times until I figured out how to blow through it. I rarely slam against that wall now, especially when I follow my 3 simple tricks for powering through a first draft.

I’ll share them with you in hopes that they lend even a fraction of the benefits they’ve given me:

• Review and revise last 5-10 pages of draft. Simple yet effective for catapulting yourself into the headspace you need for new words. Every time I sit down to write, I go back 5-10 pages and read and revise to the point of where I’d stopped in my previous session.  Not only does it get you in the right frame of mind, including the current POVs voice, but it lends to a tighter first draft on the sentence level as you’re constantly revising and tweaking your work as you go. It also gets you ready to start dropping words the second you hit whitespace, because you now:

• End your writing session mid-sentence. This sounds like an odd thing to do, but when it comes time start writing I find it much easier to pick up where I left off if I stopped mid-sentence. If you stop at the end of a section or chapter or paragraph, a lot of the time your flow of consciousness will have been severed if you come back to that point and try to pick it up again. If you stop mid-sentence, I find it much easier to launch back into that stream, especially if you’ve already reviewed and revised the previous 5-10 pages of draft. Try it,  you may like it.

• Stew, think, plot, obsess. When I’m not actively writing, I’m thinking about writing. It sounds obvious, and it is, but it’s the quality of thinking that counts. I especially find monotonous actions work well in mentally transporting me back into my work-in-progress. Things like washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, driving to and from the day jobbe, and of course–one of my all-time favorites–taking a long, hot shower. Like a pro golfer envisions his next shot, or a football QB thinks about executing the next play before it happens, I plot out the next chapter, the next section, character interactions, worldbuilding, whatever I’m about to tackle in my next writing session. That way, when I’ve reviewed and revised the last 5-10 pages, and I’ve ended my writing session mid-sentence, when I hit that whitespace my writing engine is firing on all cylinders–and BOOM, down go the words.

Some of these may seem obvious, others may not. They may work for you, they may not.

But these 3 simple tricks help me power through first drafts. Maybe they’ll help you too.

In an effort to make add more “writing-related” posts to this blog, I need your help.

There are a lot of things I will be able to discuss once I sell a book or two, but until that happens, I can’t really go into the detailed mechanics behind process in regards to WIPs or books on submission or any other facet for that matter. And although I have a great post coming on query writing, it won’t be posted until something else happens first.

I can, however, talk about things at a high-level–but I’m kind of stuck on what to actually discuss.

And that’s where you come in.

Is there anything you’re interested in me talking about? From process to idea-harvesting to storming through a first draft?

If there is, then let me know. Drop me a comment or email and I’ll work it into an upcoming blog post.

And if I don’t get any comments, well then, I guess I’ll just be quiet. (Ha!)

It seems that discussion around distraction and writing is coming up more and more lately.

Three good posts about it are:

Cory Doctorow’s Locus Magazine article: Writing in the Age of Distraction
and Jeff VanderMeer’s White Noise, Solitude, and Writing and the follow-up Channels and White Noise/Dark Noise Revisited

Both discuss the ease in which we can find ourselves distracted and how that can hamper writing progress and the creative engine. This is something I’ve been battling for some time and have found my own ways around it, which I’ve been able to somewhat hone. And it’s not easy. With a full-time day job,  3 young kids at home, a wonderful wife who enjoys my attention (yes, it is shockingly amazing) and a bustling calendar, it’s no wonder why I’ve struggled with finding “writing time”, and when I do, not being distracted by the myriad ways one can find to deter the process.

And I’ve fallen off the wagon at times myself. It’s hard. For me it’s routine, routine, routine… wash, rinese, repeat. And if that routine gets out of whack, it can be tough to get back in the motions, just like going to the gym or going for that daily walk. But once in the routine, I find I can continue to surprise myself at just what I can get accomplished.

I’ve been a bit lax over the past two months or so. With a freshly completed novel, I figured I didn’t have work hard to maintain the routine, that I could take some “time off”, which quickly turned into a bit of a vacation from the routine, which then turned into a more serious hiatus — and hence, a trip off the wagon. But as of this morning, I’m back on. I am back to following my own anti-distraction guidelines and they rewarded me with the start of a brand new novel.

And sure, what works for me may not work for you, but these simple things  can be twisted and melded into something that can work for you. The key is you have to want them to work, or they won’t. They’ll be broken and so will your routine.

So this is it. Quite simply:

• Ass In Chair. Yup, that’s it, and that is always Number One on my list of things I must do. Without sitting down nothing is going to get done. I know, it sounds silly and obvious, but it’s amazing how many people don’t do that and wonder where the time has gone, or why they haven’t finished that book they started a decade ago. The words will not happen if you don’t sit down so you can put them down.
• Set a regular writing time. This may not work for some, but for me, with a household of craziness, I need to do this. And I need to do it before the house becomes the aforementioned craziness. I do this at 5AM. Yup, 5AM when the house is silent and visions of pancakes and waterfalls of syrup are dancing in my kids heads. I sit down to write at 5am because that is the only time I can guarantee that I will have a good couple of hours to write. There are no white noise distractions, no shouting, and no Dora the Explorer playing in the background. I set my coffeemaker to start brewing before I walk down the stairs (which takes planning the night before, so I’m already in the early morning mindset), and I have a light snack ready, such as a bran bar, to give me some quick sustenance. I pour myself a glorious cup of coffee and then I am off to the word generation races.
• Turn off the internet. This one took me some time to learn, and I still fight with it at times. It’s hard to hit the shut-off switch. It is so very easy to be drawn in. Oh, just a quick check of email, oh just a quick check to see some news, oh I wonder what my friends are doing? No. NO. Don’t do it. If you feel compelled to look something up while writing, put in a highlight in your manuscript and move on. This is the part that is hard for me. I like to have my details, and I like to have them now. I don’t like going back. But I’m learning to do just that, as one quick query to check what type of Victorian homes used whitewash can send you into a downward spiral of neverending clickety-clicks. So just don’t do it. Come back to the detail later. How do I avoid it? I disable my internet connection. It works wonders. And guess what? All those emails, all those news items, and all  your friends will be right there waiting for you when you get back.

And that’s it. 3 simple rules that I try to follow. Anything beyond the above is gold. Any extra words, any extra time I can get is all bonus word count.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish — and ignore — when you set your mind to it, and you set yourself to routine.