Energize your writing life with these three tips from other writers

Sometimes the trick to having a great writing day is just getting started. Here are three tips from other writers that inspired me and may help you too.

Write scenes out of order. Sometimes I know the end of a story before I know the beginning. So I go ahead and write the last scene. Or sometimes I have a key scene in mind that is asking to be written. I write it, and it gives me momentum to find the rest of my story.

This drives one of my writing friends crazy because she absolutely must write her novels starting from the beginning. I say, do what works. You’ll find advantages and disadvantages to every approach. But if you’re stuck about how to approach your next piece of writing, think about writing scenes in the order they come to you. Read about how Roz Morris started doing this in her post, Writing your scenes out of order on her Nail Your Novel blog.

I was inspired by Tracy Hahn-Burkett’s post, “When We’re Forced To Work Outside Our Own Writing Boxes on the blog Writers Unboxed.

Look at each scene as a short story. Breaking down a book writing project into small chunks is one way to make it more manageable.

Make appointments with my characters. It’s one thing to say I’ll write from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., but if I say I’m meeting with “Greta” or “Jasmine,” I feel a little more accountability. It creates a bit more urgency to my schedule. If I look at writing as my “job” then it feels more formal to have a meeting with my characters. Another benefit is that friends and family who know that I “work at home,” are more respectful of my time when I say I have a meeting to go to.

Structure and routine and schedules are good, so I really related with Tracy when she wrote, “When life events forced me to stop writing for a while…. I found I really missed this structure and it was the first thing I brought back when I returned to the keyboard.”
Read Tracy’s complete post, “When We’re Forced To Work Outside Our Own Writing Boxes,” as well as many other inspiring posts at Writer Unboxed.