New writing regime

(Aaarrgh! This is my second attempt to write this post. Save it, Claire, save it!)

I've been reading Stephen King 'On Writing', which I mentioned in a previous post. It's a good read - part memoir, part writing manual.

One piece of advice that stuck with me was on productivity. I have a tendency to fiddle about on the internet, write my blog, make a few notes and tinker about with a bit of prose and then call that a morning's work. It really isn't.

King has a regime under which he writes 2000 words a day. No excuses. No get-out. He talks about the discipline of showing up for work each day and getting the words down on paper. It's a training. He advises beginner writers to have a similar rule - 1000 words six days a week. (Only one day off otherwise you lose the flow)

Here's what he says about the job of writing -

'In an early interview..a radio talk-show host asked me how I wrote. My reply - 'One word at a time' - seemingly left him without a reply. I think he was trying to decide whether or not I was joking. I wasn't. In the end, it's always that simple. Whether it's a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy...the work is always accomplished one word at a time.'

So here I am. New regime. No excuses!