We’ve all heard the sayings: write everyday, even if it’s just three words. Set aside an hour to write everyday. Do what feels natural, even if it’s cramming everything out in three days (yikes! been there, but yikes!)… There’s a lot of them, and they sometimes seems to conflict with each other. If it just matters to put words to a page, why does it matter when we do it? If the words themselves do matter, then how do you feel productive?

I would love to say there’s a definitive answer on this one, but there really isn’t. You have to figure out your own rhythms, what makes you tick and what gives you the best response for your effort. I will break down some of these common sayings, and their equally common answers, and how I have interpreted these to help me. Some of this may work for you, some of it you may have to do the exact opposite. Do as you will.

The first myth: writing every day. There’s been some people who talk about jotting down a few sentences each days, some talk about waking up early to write first thing in the morning before the rest of the household is up and before work… I had a professor who subscribed that belief too, even had us keep a journal. In theory, I think it’s a great idea. In practice… Ugh. I don’t know about you all, but I’m a single female with two cats and a house to take care of, plus a day job and other responsibilities plus wanting to you know, have fun occasionally. Writing every single day just doesn’t happen.

That doesn’t mean I don’t work at writing every day. Here’s what I mean, take right now for an example. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, I have rehearsal from 7 to 9. That means my prime writing hours are taken up doing other things, and by the time I’m home, my brain has died and writing just isn’t going to happen, at least in a way that I won’t have to completely do over during the weekend. But you know what I do have enough brain for? Piecing together characters. Fleshing out world-building. Poking at my plots to make sure that no new sub plots have grown when I wasn’t looking. All of this goes into the work of writing, so that when the weekend comes along or I have a day off or–miracle of miracles–my brain hasn’t died after rehearsal yet, I can sit down and push out a couple of pages.

Any words are good words/progress. This one, I get where it’s coming from. Staring at a blank page is not going to help you get unstuck any faster, nor is it getting your book written. Some scenes are just emotionally difficult as a writer, whether it’s because you have something else you want to be working on or the characters are being difficult or you are just plain tired. Getting a few sentences deeper can (and should) feel like a major accomplishment, and each time you do that, you get a little bit further along, a little bit closer to getting to the finish line and the wonderful world of editing.

But where I disagree is the “any” part. This is how hokey scenes happen that somehow make it past your editor/beta reader and the rest of your audience is like, “WTF was that?!” Every time I’ve had to force a scene out, I write once more to get the pain over with and enjoy it again…and then go back and read that struggle-bug scene. What was making it so difficult? Was it because someone was acting out of character? Was it because it was a shoe-horned in subplot that really needs cut out? Is the scene just boring and needs to go away? Sometimes it’s because something REALLY IMPORTANT to the plot was happening there, but I was too vague about it and I really needed to work at fleshing it out in my head during my “working on writing” days and to figure out what it is better so I can fix the awkward scene.

Don’t edit, just write. This was the next logical one to cover, lol. I get the thought behind this one too. Going over the same three scenes to get them perfect isn’t going to help you. You need to keep progressing, keep the story moving. And to be honest, those three scenes are never going to be perfect. You have to keep pushing or else you’ll never get done, you’ll just have thirty odd unfinished drafts (no, I’m not calling out certain best friends, fanfiction doesn’t count and if it did I’d be a hypocrite)! So as bad as your sentence structures are, as many typos as you may see, just ignore them and keep going with the next scene, you can fix those later (hopefully…typos are sneaky).

I actually somewhat agree with this one, aside from what I stated just prior. Short of something being unnecessarily difficult and figuring out why, I am a big proponent of just go, go, go, write till you hit…the mid point. Once you hit the mid-point, of your plot, I advice a pause. Reread. Is your plot doing what you want it to do? THREE TIMES, I looked back at Sun’s Guard: Ten and went, “Nope. This ain’t doing it. Try again.” And each time, it got better, before I finished the book and suddenly had a huge amount of editing to do. It lets me catch big mistakes like wrong subplots or a character not getting enough “screen time” early so I can fix it sooner and then continue what I’m doing. I fix typos if I find them, but I don’t worry about structure or things like that, I’ll do a huge print out later for that.

It takes as long as it takes. This is someone wanting to take the pressure off of how long it can take to write a book, to free up pressure. And there is a point there, because if you rush, the writing isn’t as good and you’ll make more errors. But this one I really want to advice people to throw out. The publishing industry runs on deadlines. Even if you self-publish, you need to build some sort of momentum and can’t be dead silent for five years and only release a book that often. You will struggle with building an audience. So I have created a publishing schedule for Sun’s Guard and Truth in Justice. Sun’s Guard has it by the month, Truth in Justice just has a general year of when I expect to put each of those out and could obviously move around a bit. I now have internal deadlines that I need to meet. I know exactly how long it takes me to edit and to format, and how much space I need to take between edits to insure fresh eyes. This gives me a timeline that I need to adhere too, so I can build my audience at a consistent rate.

These are the most common bits of advice I’ve seen floating around. Anyone else have others you want my two cents on? Want me to collect them and do another post? Let me know!