How to Notch Up Your Writer Discipline

Writers Life, ,

How to Notch Up Your Writer Discipline. For starters, write regularly. Let the rich experience of creativity sink deep into your psyche until you feel out of balance without it. I used to say, “One page or one hour a day minimum.” Now I say, “Often enough to feel the need to return the next day.”

Discipline Your Work Environment. Carve out a corner of your own. Virginia Woolf talked about “a room of your own.” Crowded circumstances can preclude that. A space that encourages a writing mood will suffice. Make that space as private and comfortable as you need it to be. Keep your writing paraphernalia nearby. Notebooks, files, pens, computer, a lamp shade covered in story ideas.

Acquire Quality Writing Equipment. Do so by disciplining your spending on other things if that is necessary. Most important, do so by believing this absolutely crucial truth. You deserve what you need to succeed.

Discipline Your Commitments. Cut out every non-writing activity that you can. Ask yourself, “Is there somebody else who can do this? Does it have to be me?” Say no to new requests for your time and energy. Ease the inevitable disappointed reaction with a smile and this gentle suggestion. “Ask me again next year.”

The Exception is When You are Paying It Forward. Invest in your career by investing yourself in your writing community as often as you can manage. Find a balance that benefits both you and others. Do not hide your generosity. Serve in the spotlight, but do not brag. Graciously accept thanks and acknowledgement of your efforts.

Discipline Your Family and Friends. Post your work hours. The refrigerator door is a good place to do that. Insist on no interruptions at those times. Tell your people how important your writing is to you. Make them hear you. Eventually, they will get it. Do not back down.

Discipline Your Telephone. List your daily work hours on your voicemail message. Say that you do not take calls during your work hours and mean it. Keep a smile in your voice, but do not apologize. Mention the hours when you do receive calls. Eventually, they will get it. Do not back down.

Discipline Your Online Activity. Identify your personal online time-burners. Activities that are minimally productive to your career. If you cannot resist, do not indulge during your best brain time. Never indulge during your writing work hours. Use your online activity to build your career, your public platform, your visibility. Limit online playtime to your dim brain hours.

Escape-Write through Stress. Life is full of stressful situations. They can stop your writing progress in its tracks. Use that stress to enhance your writing instead. Powerful storytelling is intense, so is stress. Incorporate how you are feeling into a dramatic scene from your current work. Your body, breath, immediate environment. Feel it all. Adapt it all.

The Purpose of Discipline is to Carry You Deep into Your Story and Keep You There. John Gardner called this place “the dream of the book.” Discipline helps you inhabit that dream and write from deep inside your imagination. Because deep inside is where your best stories live. Discipline helps you get there. How to Notch Up Your Writer Discipline.

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Alice Orr. Teacher. Storyteller. Blogs for writers at www.aliceorrbooks.com. Former literary agent. Author of 16 novels, 3 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Novel That Sells. Amazon says, “This book has it all.” Updated version coming soon. Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

Alice’s latest novel – A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE.A Time of Fear & Loving

Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end. The best one yet!”

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How to Step Up Your Journey on the Writing Road

Motivation, ,

How to Step Up Your Journey on the Writing Road. I last posted here about  a technique for boosting your writer’s Imagination. The fourth entry in my Attitude Adjustment series. Confession time. I did not boost. I did not adjust. I walked away.

I needed rest. Maybe you have felt the same. I am done with resting now and ready to get back to work. Please, feel free to join me. Return to a rediscovered writer’s journey. Or repave the road you never left. Here’s How to Step Up Your Journey on the Writing Road.

Life changes when you start your day writing. Wake up. Wash your face. Brew a cuppa. Begin to write. Fall into the world of your story where doubts disintegrate and make believe reigns. A world more truly real to a writer than day-to-day and down-to-earth could ever be.

Plus – something else equally enthralling. After each first-moment-of-the morning writing session, an aura of its captivation magic remains. Your mind feels less fettered. Your worries press less heavily. Even your To Do lists have lost a huge measure of their tyranny.

Need a kickstart? Try this prompt. “I would like to introduce you to my favorite self.” Or. “Meet my favorite character.” Choose the one that attracts you most powerfully. Do not ponder. Put your pen to the paper, or place your fingers on the keyboard. And just write.

Let your imagination fly free. Open your senses wide and turn up their volume. See every detail at maximum vividness. Listen to each glorious sound. Taste your words on your tongue. Smell every scent, pleasant or unpleasant. Feel it all, both outside yourself and within.

Write it down. Fragments of thought. Impressions. Dialog snatches if you hear them. The sensations. The silliness. If you catch the spark of a writing idea, record it, but only briefly. Then abandon yourself once more to your flight into this wide open moment, whatever it may be.How to Put Your Writer Psyche on Your Side - www.aliceorrbooks.com

Think of this day every day as a jewel on the thread of your life. Know that this day, this moment, is a precious step on the extraordinary journey of your writing experience. Place your jewel artfully. Admire its beauty. Take each step with every fiber of you at high alert and maximum awareness. Recognize the wonder.

If a discouraging thought appears, let it pass. Everything you need for your journey is right here, right now, wherever you are. Each step along your road will take you toward the place you need to go. You are on your personal path to your personal writing triumph whatever it may be.

Never relinquish your Power of Enthusiasm. Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us that enthusiasm is the energy you need to fuel yourself in life. You are energized. You understand How to Step Up Your Journey on the Writing Road. There will be no stopping us now.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

Alice’s latest novel A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE.

A Time of Fear & Loving

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.” “The best one yet!”

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http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
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How to Boost Your Writer’s Imagination  

Writing Tips, ,

How to Boost Your Writer’s Imagination. Usually, I am all about discipline all of the time. Today I shall noodle a different tune. A tune I make up as I go along. Today I am all about lack of discipline all the time. Today is Distraction Day.

On Distraction Day, my imagination roams. Won’t you roam with me? Our object, if there is one, will be to see what happens, and perhaps be surprised. Our theme will be Less is More. Less careful attention. Less deliberate pursuit. Less clamor after control. Let us let go.

Instead of pushing yourself to do your very best today. Allow yourself to do whatever you end up doing, wherever you happen to be, however you happen to feel. We are not chasing achievement. We are, as the mystics say, simply being here now.

Start with your immediate environment. Where exactly are you? What is going on there? What will go on there when you let your imagination loose and follow the fantasy of whatever scenario may appear. When you allow the nature of the place to topple into the tale that unfolds.

Undiscipline your commitments. Put off your promises. The promises you have made to others. The promises you made to yourself, about what you would do in the several hours ahead. Watch it all slip-slide straight off your plate. Undo your To Do list, just for today.

Populate your presence with whomever happens to show up. Don’t turn off your phone. Don’t silence the notifications signal on your social media. If somebody knocks, answer the door. Invite everyone in by opening up to happenstance.

Stop thinking of distractions as a bad thing.  Distractions can lead us off our intended paths. Into adventure. Into unexpected venues. Around a corner we have never before turned. This is Distraction Day. A time to be carried away on whims of chance.

What are your personal time burners? The activities you ordinarily regard with guilt as a waste, especially of your declared intentions. Activities you think of as minimally productive to your career. What is the most difficult of these to resist? Desist from resisting. Indulge instead.

Welcome your own weirdness. David Lynch, frequent traveler of this territory, says, “It’s like fishing. I never know what I’m going to catch.” Take yourself on a fishing expedition. Accept anything that lands on your hook, the stranger the better. Astonish yourself if you can.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of rules to impose upon our anarchic experience of How to Boost Your Writer’s Imagination.

Open your senses wide and turn up their volume. See. Each detail around you at maximum vividness. Listen. To sounds bursting like a revelation. Taste. Any morsel that touches your tongue. Smell. Scents pleasant and unpleasant alike. Feel. Everything, both tactile and internal.

Write it all down. Notes. Fragments of thought. Impressions. Dialog snatches. Only enough to make sure you can summon back the scene, the sensations, the silliness later on. If you spot the spark of a writing idea, record it briefly. Then abandon yourself to distraction once more.

Most important, have fun. Fly free. Resolve to fly into fun again soon. Make Distraction Days a regular event in your schedule. Your unleashed writer’s imagination will reward you richly for doing so.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

Alice’s latest novel A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE.

A Time of Fear & Loving

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.” “The best one yet!”

All 0f Alice’s books are available HERE.

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http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
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