BIAW North and South

By the time I reach the fourth or fifth day of a BIAW, the energy and the power that comes from the muse can go one of two ways...

North, bringing lots of new ideas, excitement and words...

or South, like the well had totally dried up. There ain't no more words.

If you're heading north right now-woo hoo! You go! Drive those words to your goal destination. And further if you can.

Falling behind? The words just are not there for you? Try this. Just write nonsense Write something like 'I am the best, most prolific writer in the world.' Write it over and over and over. Eventually, your brain will kick in and your story should begin to flow again. Yep, this is positive affirmation time. Avoid any negative statements, even in your rambling. Writing, 'I can't write today.' is only reinforcing your not writing! So that's what your brain, characters, computer, even your soul comes to believe.

Belief is a huge, essential componant to being a successful author.

And in meeting your BIAW goal!

Today's photos are compliments of John Shaver.

BIAW-WADD

Distractions. We've all got 'em. Unless we write in a vacuum, there's going to be something, someone, some idea that's going to distract us from our BIAW (or any writing) goal.

From something as simple as--for me right now the washer just quit so it's time to be distracted by laundry--to discovering you've wasted an hour on the internet when you went in to just check on this one little fact--or you need to read all the blogs/twitters/facebook wall/yada yada yada. (Why are you reading this blog now? Shouldn't you be writing? )

Distractions happen. It's how we deal with them that's important. Both now during a book in a week, and later when we step back into our 'normal' writing mode.

I will be the first to admit I'm fairly well addicted to email and the internet. Although I don't tweet often, I can get so caught up in reading others' posts--well, where does the time go. I have to make a conscious effort to stay away! I try to use checking email as a reward for a certain period of writing or some other task. When you can, group your distractions into a bunch and deal with them all at once rather than one at a time. Put a 'do not disturb' sign on your door--and a mental one on your writing mind.

Understand that distractions happen. And all do have some level of importance...although it's easy to assign a higher degree of importance to something when we want to be distracted. Such as looking at pictures of Indian motorcycles. Or... need I say more about him?

WADD? I know many of you share this condition with me. Writers' Attention Deficiency Dis--oooh, shiney!

Or, as Dug the dog (in Pixar's UP) puts it--Squirrel! (Did you know Dug has his own Facebook fan page? How's that for a distraction?)

BIAW--Writing Without Editing

Writing without editing?

Yep, that can be a tough one sometimes. Just rememeber that your next step will be editing, so it's not like you'll never get the chance.

Some tricks...

*Imagine locking your internal editor in a closet. Whop her up side the head with a two by four and stuff her mouth with a thick gag. Whatever it takes to shut her up.

*turn your font color to white. It'll look like you're not doing anything, but you'll have words when you change the color back. Now, I've never tried this--and with my tendency to have my fingers on the wrong keys...well, not so sure how that would work. There are those who swear by this technique.

*rearrange your screen so you can only see a few lines of what your working on. (use the double-headed arrow thingie to increase the size of the task tray on the bottom of your screen (if you're in windows). I have an alpha smart word processor I use sometimes--it shows only four lines of type at a time. Makes it difficult to go back and 'fix'.

*If you get stuck on something--a word, something you need to research, anything like that--make some notation like ### or **** or (word) and go on. Something else to work on--LATER.

*Be strong! Set your mind to writing fast, knowing next week you can edit!

Book Growth Chart

For the past several years, Heartlandians have reported their freshly written--or heavily edited--pages for the bookshelf. This year, the goals guru had a different idea.

A GROWTH CHART!

Take a look at this year's chart. Pages have been collected since January 1, 2009.

Each colored bar equals 400 manuscript pages--enough to equal a 100,000 word book! Count 'em. Go on, count 'em.

Heartlandians have reported enough new and heavily edited pages to equal 15 books. And that's only those who report pages. And that's only through June!

Imagine what the rest of the year will bring! Will the goals guru have to add on to the growth chart? That would be... Brilliant!

Click on the picture to make it bigger and take a look at the book covers lining the sides of the chart. These books have been released this year--all works of HWG authors. Mighty fine work, ladies!