Procrastinating Author Day

This is for all you authors (aspiring and otherwise) who can't seem to put fanny in the chair--or on the treadmill workdesk which is oh, so chic right now--and channel the writing muse. People ask me how I write five books a year. Ssptt, here's the secret.

If you want to catch lightning in your hand, do writing sprints. It will get the words on the page. The first draft will be crap anyway, so get it over with already and get to the good stuff--revisions. On this score I believe in the gospel of Ray Bradbury: "Quantity eventually equals quality."

(Hmm, looks like my subconscious is into hand metaphors this week, but I digress.)



My personal favorite writing sprint method is Dr. Wicked's Write or Die. http://writeordie.com/ If you are going to use Write or Die, don't wimp out. Go hardcore with Kamikaze mode where the software eats the words you've written if you don't keep your fingers moving. Believe me, those fingers will fly with that kind of threat hanging over your head.

If you're a princess and too nervous for Dr. Wicked, then at least set a kitchen timer and write as fast as you can in ten or fifteen or twenty minutes without stopping to correct typos or even put in punctuation. The point is to get the words on the page. You can let the internal editor out of her cage to go medieval on it later.

And if the electrified hand scares you, maybe you shouldn't be a writer. If that comment makes you mad, but you are still procrastinating, then here's a quote from Nora Roberts, the queen of just-get-'er-done. "Pull up your big girl panties and write the %^$# book."

Do you do writing sprints? If so, what method do you use? If not, why not?