Writing Tip #3

Writing tip #3- Work on your writing all day.

 

             Now I know what you are thinking. How can we work on our writing all day? We have jobs and lives and families. Well so do I.

             Right now I am finishing up my second novel, promoting my first novel. I have two kids, a house to take care of, a 62 hour a week job and I am getting ready to go back to college here in a month so trust me I know what busy is.

             But even through all that craziness I still have time to work on my writing all day. The trick is to be in a constant state of a writer. While I am at work I am thinking about ideas for my current writing project or even future writing projects.

             I take my laptop with me to work every day and I make sure that I write at least one page during my lunch hour. There are even more ways to keep working on your writing then just what I am doing.

             I have met writer who kept pen and paper on them at all times and could be seen constantly writing notes down throughout the day.

             Now there are two main reasons that these are great practices for a writer. Number 1 being that you are getting work done. By working on your writing every day you are ensuring that your work will get done and probably in a timely manner.

             The number 2 reason is because it will make your work better and make you a better writer. If the only time you wrote was when you were sitting in a dusty office under a single lamp then most likely your writing will be missing the spark and shimmer that makes a great novel.

             For example, I was at a corn maze two years ago while I was still outlining my second novel. It was around Halloween and we were with some friends doing this corn maze together. As it turned out this corn maze was done very well and we got lost. Not kind of lost like “ha-ha were lost this is so funny.” That kind of lost went out the window at hour 1 by hour 2 we were debating just walking straight through the rows of corn to get the heck out of there.

             While we were working our way through the labyrinth of corn we came to path where water had eroded the top layer of soil around the corn stocks. So at the base of the corn you could see about an inch of the roots but the corn was still standing.

             I had seen in passing but it caught my attention and I took dozens of pictures of it. I wound up using the design of the plant in my second novel in a big way and if I would have never seen the plant or if I had not been thinking about that particular part of my book when I had seen it then who knows what would have happened in the book.