Sunday, March 17, 2013

Momentum

Always finish what your start.

My old pappy told me that a long time ago. It's important in pretty nearly everything, but really important in writing. Take the blog - I got lazy, sloughed off, and look at how long it's been.

Much better to try to say a little something on a regular schedule, maybe not every day, but once a week or so. I'll try to remember that.

When you're working on a book, it's equally important. For me the critical moment comes about forty to fifty percent of the way through a manuscript. If I keep things moving up to that point, no matter how difficult it is, then momentum becomes my friend and helps me the rest of the way through.

I'm working on the fourth Jim Dallas/Sam Lyons book now. Took a brief vacation this past week. Carried the laptop along and even on vacation wrote my minimum of a thousand words a day on the book.

Angling for that momentum, you see. Some of my friends made fun of me for not taking full advantage of the vacation, but so what? I came back with about five thousand words more than I would have had otherwise, and I feel just as rested.

Once I wrote an entire novelette, fifty thousand words, in seven days. I was on vacation, you see, on one of Florida's premiere beaches on St. George Island. We did all the vacation stuff we wanted and still had hours left over. So I lugged the laptop up onto the second-floor veranda of the beach house, propped my heels up on the rail, and worked away, three hours or so a day, sometimes longer.

I get up early, so when I was awake before the rest of the bunch I did the same thing. Day after day. By the end of the vacation, I had a complete draft.

Didn't feel like work. Mark Twain said, "Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

To me those fifty thousand words were play.

1 comment:

  1. Well, welcome back. Jeezlaweezz, that's way too long to be way. Missed you.

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