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Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Magical Momentum

The new year usually brings me a surge of productivity, but I've really been struggling this year, continuing the dry spell of late 2012.  I can't tell you how many times I've started...only to lose momentum.  A day or two, things go according to plan, but then something happens.  It might be something small -- like glomming through the first book of the Wheel of Time series instead of "savoring" as I intended!  Or it could be large, like an illness or even a death in the family. 

We went to two funerals in November.  Needless to say, NaNoWriMo didn't happen for me last year.

So what do you do?  How can you get momentum back, whether it's writing a book or tackling a project at work?  I've been trying a few different things with varying success.  I hope you might have suggestions I can try too because I'm still struggling to keep trudging along!

  • Set a timer for 15 minutes and do nothing else but work on the task.
  • Set an incredibly small daily goal.  Hey, some days even getting 250 words feels like a miracle!
  • Avoid distractions within your control.  (I'm not allowed to read book 2 of WoT until I finish my wip.)
  • Give yourself rewards for meeting the smallest goal.
  • Try to exercise or stretch even if only a few minutes in between brief stints.
Do you have any other ideas to help get those creative juices flowing?

1 comment:

  1. Shawna ReppertJanuary 31, 2013 at 1:45 AM

    Setting up a specific time of day works. It gets your mind geared toward 'writing happens now.'

    If you write last thing before you sleep, it gets your sleeping mind to work on the project, which makes it easier to be productive at the keyboard.

    If I make a whole pot of tea before I start, I have no excuse to get up and make tea.

    When I had my car accident, I was only off writing for about a day-and-a-half. I discovered that I would rather be in the fiction world I was creating than in the real world where the bad things happened to *me*, not to the fictional character.

    --Shawna Reppert
    www.ShawnaReppert.com
    The Stolen Luck comes out in May from Carina Press.

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