From Mindset to Process

Along the way, having people tell me how they love my stories to reading how other authors wrote, it became clear that the volume of writing needed to keep up a blog was way more than what my sheer will power could produce. Worse, I was now nearing year 3 of my writing and was feeling a bit distracted by all the stories I wanted to share.

Through sheer curiousity and burning desire to overcome the many hurdles I had (read as mindset issues… like “who am I to actually write… or why would anyone waste time reading this amateur garbage”) I decided to fall on my strong suit… my geeky side. Let me figure out the platform of blogging. Time to experiment. Later, I can figure how to convince myself that I’m worthy of being an author of anything.

I needed a safe way to experiment. I wanted to share stories that were “too sensitive” for me to share with people I knew. I needed annonymity. That way I could quiet down my introversion and need for privacy. So, I built another blog (would turn out to be a few actually). Oh, and this annymity thing… it’s the internet folks… you’re not as private as you think… I know.. Still bothers me that it’s so.

What I discovered, to recover from digressing, is that I needed to understand how stories are told. So I got a book to learn how authors write. Great book. Not yet done. Every chapter I read, I go test and try. That really is what helped me develop my process. Testing and trying. Repeat. Learn from each test. Then try something else.

My writing interest rose, my time to write started to shift about. I soon started to understand the constant flood of ideas I was constantly suppressing. I discovered I like writing. Shocker. yes, I really was not sold that I’d like this writing experiment… especially as the results were coming in… I like to write about things I always assumed I should not like to write about or share… long story

Ok, what’s the process… already!

Frankly, it’s simple. I have a dedicated space and time that I devote to writing during the week. It never changes. It’s constant. Even when I have off days or weeks, the process is there and whenever I need to get back in gear, go back to that time and space and sit. Literally. Sit. Move your fingers across the keyboard. Some days, it’s just gibberish. Nowadays I rarely need to type nonsense.

I’ve now started to layer on more advance things to this process. That is helping me generate more ideas more often and have more focus when I do write. I will discuss those momentarily.

What makes the process so critical.

I’m a dad, a husband, an employee with a long commute, and a guy with way way too many other interests he’s trying to keep up with. Without that solid block of time, I can’t do what I’m currently doing with my writing. What is it I’m doing, you ask? Last year (the fourth year of writing efforts) I wrote a total of 133 thousand words across four blogs. Yes, four. And I wrote a short story and the start of a novel. (ok, not a start, an actual novel… short novel but a novel nevertheless)

As of the middle of this current year… I’ve written over 233 thousand words. That’s including the planning of blog number five. That’s another novel. Includes the sketch of a trilogy. This does not include outlines, practice writings, edits, and content for my other activities outside the blog. This is just content that is making it to the blogs and the books.

Every single day, during my lunch break, I sit and pound the keys. I write. I rarely get any other time than that one hour break to write. Too much going on in my personal world to write often at home. I can’t wake up consistently enough to write in the mornings. I just have a total of five hours a week that I can depend on. So I have to make those hours count.

Without that dedicated time, I can’t produce anything consistently. I can’t track my progress as well either. Now, knowing I have just an hour, my software tracks how many words I produce. The more clear I am about what I will write, the faster I can get that idea down.

In the early days, I was getting close to 400 words in that hour. That to me was super awesome. Today, my writing pace is significantly faster. (*at this very point in the post, I’ve been writing for 36 minutes and the word count is 1,604). No, volume is not the best indicator of quality actually. Many times I end up ending down my content so it makes more sense. Other times, the edits adds.