/lit/ - Literature

Pic related is a cautious reminder that you don't need to write a lot in order to finish a book, as long as you do just a little bit every day. My sci-fi novel is at 60 000 words written and the minimum daily wordcount I've set for myself is 50 words. I started the book in march and will likely finish the draft this year. Slow and steady.

Just don't skip days.

Other productivity tips:
You tend to enter 'the zone' after about 10 minutes of writing. The first 10 minutes of staring at your chapter are always the hardest, if you can get past it and nothing distracts you, your 100-300 words can turn into 800 or 1000 or higher.

Distractions such as discord, phone, humans - anything that makes you think about something other than your writing - will take you out, and suddenly you'll want to go do something else instead of spending more time getting back into the mindset. Turn off discord, silence the phone, close the door.

Make writing within reach. It's the same principle as having water within reach vs soda at the store. You're more likely to drink the water. If it's late night and you're tired but haven't done your 50 words for the day, having a writing program on your phone gives you no excuse, you can just lower the brightness and write.

Writing doesn't have to be good. You'll edit it later. If a part is giving you lots of trouble, there is huge value in time saved by just bad-writing through it quickly and leaving it to edit for later.

The skill in getting writing done comes in how you deal with obstacles. If you pretend you have 'writer's block' and just let your lack of creativity or fear of failure stop you, then you're not dealing with obstacles. The way to deal with obstacles is to bludgeon through. A book has a myriad of different scenes, some will come naturally, others will be a chore. Don't let the chore-scenes stop you from reaching the smooth-scenes. You will often find on a reread that you can't tell apart which scenes gave you trouble, and which were easy. Because your writing style is consistent; your perception of the moment is not. You have to push through.

And it's okay to push through in little bits, as long as you make a tiny amount of progress. If you look at my pic related, you'll see I've done very little writing in the past three days. That's because I was at a hospital and am dealing with stitches, and also the scene feels cringy and derivative. It's a tough writing spot, but if I inch forward bit by bit, the scene will eventually be finished. Lots of novice writers would stop here, assume the 'muse' will come back and compel them to get back to the writing. What's actually gonna happen is that they'd feel awful about not getting anything done, and be miserable. You have to push through the rough parts, that's what will make you much more productive.

Just set a goal that's so puny you can do it even if you're bleeding out from a severed artery. And then get it done every day and don't feel bad if that's all you do.