To my fellow aspiring authors out there, and to anyone else who might need some ideas to get out of a slump, I offer a few of the techniques I’ve discovered to be helpful in keeping up my momentum while writing my book.
If you’re like me, perhaps you find it easiest to work in short bursts. When faced with an exceptionally long chapter in a book, I am inclined to put the book down and do something else, no matter how interesting the plot has become. But when faced with short chapters or sections in rapid succession, I can breeze through sixty pages in a sitting without coming up for air. When faced with a monumental task like mopping all my wood floors (which I finished last week), I will procrastinate for days and days until I imagine it divided into small chunks and promise myself breaks after those chunks are clean. Often, I end up forgoing the breaks and mopping large swaths of floor at one time anyway, but the mental hurdle of the “whole” had to be overcome before I could even start.
My experience thus far in writing a book has been no different. I write two to three thousand words a day not by sitting down in the morning and writing until I’ve met a goal, but by dividing my writing into two time periods: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I learned this trick as a flute major in college, and it is serving me as well now as it did back then.
I recall the day my amazing flute teacher told me about a study that had been conducted on athletes. She told me that when this group of athletes practiced at six-hour intervals, their muscle memory stuck as if they were actually practicing around the clock. The study had the athletes practice at 6am, noon, 6pm and midnight, for just an hour or less, but the results were better than longer practices only once a day. Their muscle memory kept practicing even in their sleep, she told me.
When it came time to win the one competition I really wanted to win – Concerto Competition at BYU-Idaho – I put this routine to use, practicing two hours in the morning, two in the afternoon and an hour at night, 9am, 3pm, and 9pm, in spite of my class schedule. I have never played flute as masterfully as I played during those months, and in the end, indeed I won the competition. Now almost thirteen years later, when I get nervous or bored, I find that my fingers still reflexively tap out the technical passages from the piece I performed that spring. My muscles still remember it.
As a writer, I decided combine this schedule with another technique I picked up along the way: the ninety-minute work cycle. According to this theory, people can buckle down and grind out work for about ninety minutes before needing a break, after which time their work can suffer. What a breakthrough! Ninety minute bursts + six hour intervals = avoid burnout, keep fresh, skirt slumps, and make massive progress.
So, here’s my routine (approximately, and on a perfect day which happens maybe three times a week):
7:30am – read, research
9:30am – write
11:00am – break (clean house, shower, run errands)
2:30pm – read, research
4:00pm – write
5:30pm – make dinner
[9:30pm – blog]
On this schedule, I seldom feel like I’m forcing my writing, and yet in six weeks, I have amassed more than 71,000 words in my first draft. I promise you that seven weeks ago, I didn’t think such a thing would be possible, especially without feeling like I’m grinding through it. Instead, I’m still having fun! And I think this schedule plays a big role in my success.
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