I ended up reading "The Value of 10 Minutes" by Gregory Semenza, and I’m glad I stumbled across this article, because I definitely related to some of the things Semenza talked about. It’s my last semester before I graduate, and even though I didn’t think my class schedule would be too bad, I’ve been pretty much buried in homework since January. Because I’m a PW major (and because of this class, I guess), a lot of that homework is writing—which would be nice, except that I’m also trying to complete a novel outside of class and seek representation for it, and class projects are stealing a lot of time from that personal project.
At the end of February, I set a rule that I write something on that novel every day, even if it’s just a couple of sentences. That’s helped me chip away at it quite a bit—and sometimes, even if it’s late and all I want is to go to bed, just the act of getting a few sentences down pushes the snowball down the hill, and it’s easy to write quite a bit more than I expected. So I do like that the system is helping me get down more than I would otherwise, even if it’s a little lacking in the “consistency” department. That said, I loved Semenza’s approach of getting up early and trying to get two pages written first thing in the morning. I’m sometimes a slow writer, especially when I’m first getting into a scene, so I definitely wouldn’t have time to commit to two pages every morning—but I like the idea of starting the day out by getting some words under my belt, before everything else gets in the way. I’ve also recently read that author James Scott Bell does the same thing—he calls it the “nifty 350”—before the day starts up and his willpower is given away to other things on his to-do list.
Also, I’ve totally been guilty to dismiss extra ten-minute chunks of time between classes as inadequate to get anything substantial done, and “surrendering” to “distractions” like email or Twitter, like Semenza admits to. This semester, when I’ll take any spare time I can get, it hasn’t been as much of an issue—but I love the 3 points Semenza makes in his case for writing every day:
It makes writing less daunting, demystifying the process.
It makes you want to write more—a snack-sized appetizer, sort of, instead of a full meal that leaves you too full to even think about more food.
And finally, it keeps you in the flow of things: not only on “the specific sentence or paragraph you’ll be starting in on the next time you write,” but also on brainstorming new ideas or problem-solving current stumbling blocks as you run errands or go about your day.
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That all makes a lot of sense. Sometimes I too feel the struggle for writing and posting. If i think about it I usually want to push it off until later. I procrastinate. Until I actually sit down and begin working on whatever task I need to complete, and at that point I lose myself in the task, and it seems to flow from me endlessly until the jobs done. I guess that is the funny thing about some people. We hate to do things, but when we finally start, it is the easiest thing possible.
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