The writing habit
48Instant Writing
Some of you writers out there will be busy watching for those odd moments when you can bring out your pen and paper and jot down a few words, anywhere, anytime.
You'll be surprised at what you can produce in those few snatched moments. And the more such moments you can find during the day, the greater your word count. some of my students have written more than 1000 (Yes, ONE THOUSAND words) in those few moments that would otherwise have been wasted.
I make only one condition - don't reflect or correct - just write. I call this technique Instant Writing.
While you're beginning to develop that writing habit, think about your favourite books. Try to pinpoint why you like them. Is it the writing? The characters? The storylines?
And make sure to log on to my hub and record your experiences. Tell me about your 'spare' moments; how many words you wrote; any surprises your writing turned up. People sometimes tell me they end up writing stuff they didn't even know was floating around in their minds.
Can't wait to hear from you.
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Comments
Those trigger words are so important and so mercurial.
I love writing that emerges via the muse. This often proves to be the most creative. I once had a 2000 word story come and had a hard time keeping up with it. Entire poems have come, as well. It would be nice, if, as writers, we could do this all the time.
Free writing certainly opens the door to creativity.
That's a great creative writting technique. I had a teacher who made us write for 10 minutes none stop without editing. If we ran out of things to write, our pens couldn't stop. We had to write the ABCs or numbers, until something came up in our head to write. I found it interesting. And the more we practiced it, the less I had to write the alphabet.
Oops my comment submitted twice.
Athlyn, Whitney, thanks for your kind comments. I find when I'm really short of time, I make sure to use every few moments I can find. If I can get 4 or 5 such breaks, I end up with 1000 or more words.
My only problem is that if I do use literally pen and paper, its highly unlikely that I will be able to read it again! I find even if I print when I do get back on the laptop I automatically re-write when I am supposed to be copying!
LOL. Thanks. I have that problem, too a bit. But it does get you writing it when you get back! That's progress.
I hate to shameless push a Hub, but this is what happened when I sat down with some digital photos of polar bears and childishly wrote the words "once upon a time." About twenty minutes later, much to my surprise and without any prior planning, "Cry Knut at the Fading of the Light" was done.
Drax says:
2 years ago
for me I always try to carry pen and paper at all times since often it is one or two words that form the basis of a poem and if I do not write them down they are gone forever. Now and then it is nice to sit down and exercise the poetry muscles by picking topics nearly at random.