Writing Frequency

It is another brilliant spring day here in Nebraska.  The grass is growing, the birds are chirping, if I had a tree it would be budding (see old blogs.)  But as a dutiful writer I am indoors at my computer.  That’s really the point of today’s blog.  You need to write regularly.  The more often you write, the better quality the product will be you produce.  With some people need to write every day.  Others can go every other day.  Still other people only need to write a couple times a week.  The point is finding the happy spot for you and staying within it.  If you’re an every other day person and you make it every other week, you have to spend time first figuring out where you left off and then trying to recall which way you want to take the story.  What’s worse, you may have written to the end of your thought earlier.  This is a big no-no.  In the words of Ernest Hemmingway, “When you stop writing for the day always do so when you still have something to write.  That way the next day you have a place to start.”  It works.  Otherwise, if you write to the end of a thought, you have to come up with a whole new starting point in your story and that’s never fun.  You don’t have to write a lot when you do take to the keyboard.  It could be as little as a couple of paragraphs if that’s all you have time for or that’s all you feel like writing this day.  The point is you wrote something to keep those creating juices flowing.  It is hard to walk away from a project and then return with the same ideas you had before.  Creative ideas are the most fleeting which is why they need to be written down quickly.  So identify the type of writer you are and set a schedule to write.  You’ll find your work will be better in the end.