Comments on: Can’t Get Your Novel Moving? Try “Lower Standards”

By: Nick Faber

Nick Faber — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:17:31 +0000

The insane deadline of NaNoWriMo drove me to write for a couple hours a day. I’ve been having trouble duplicating that sort of will power since then, but as long as I write for a half an hour a day, I know I will at least be building my ideas out, and that at some point I will finish whatever I’m working on. And heck, sometimes that half hour turns into two.

Also, after reading Doctorow’s article, I’m thinking about disabling my wifi while writing. The Internet is very distracting.

Example: This comment.

By: patrick

patrick — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:21:10 +0000

Agreed. First thing in the morning is a good trick too. I find there’s very little to distract me before 8am, making that power hour even more effective.

By: Bill Henderson

Bill Henderson — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:27:30 +0000

It’s surprising how much you can get done in an hour. Screenwriter John Milius (Apocalypse Now, Big Wednesday, Conan the Barbarian, etc.) said in an interview that he works 1 hour a day. The secret is focus, confidence, skill, and regularity.

There’s a guy who sells his 5 minue method for novel writing on line. My first thought was, “it’s a scam,” but it’s amazing what you CAN do it 5 minutes, with intense concentration. There are 12 5-minute periods in an hour. Even if you only write in half of them, that’s six. Six will add up to quite a bit of work in that hour.

By: Stormy

Stormy — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:51:33 +0000

I agree completely! When I did NaNoWriMo this past year, everyone thought I was crazy for writing 50,000 words in a month but when it came down to it and I was really focusing, it only took me an hour, maybe two, of work to complete the daily word count goal. I just took it 1,667 words at a time.