The Discipline of Writing: A guest post by Shawndra Russell

Photo by Mutasim Billah Pritam via FlickrThere are few things more wonderful than finding a writing buddy while hobnobbing around the interwebs. One thing that's possibly, maybe, perhaps just a teeny bit more wonderful is when that writing buddy guest-posts on your site.

Shawndra Russell and I first met on Twitter and found we had a lot in common. I also found out that I was in incredible awe of her (and quite a bit jealous) for interviewing one of my favorite musicians, Abigail Washburn (you can read Shawndra's interview for SavannahNow.com here).

Shawndra has launched a Kickstarter to publish her first novel, Couple Friends. She's well on her way to reaching her goal, and if she's able to double her pledges, she can also publish her second novel, which is also finished. 

Today, Shawndra shares with us how she kicks butt at setting and meeting word-count goals, and how, with a little bit of writerly self-acceptance and a dose of discipline, you can, too. 

If you'd like to guest post here on Fresh Thoughts, scrawl an e-mail and fly it over to write2denice AT gmail DOT com. 

And now...

The Discipline of Writing and the Power of Adding Mega Production Days to Your Writing Schedule 

by Shawndra Russell

I won’t be the first to say it, and I won’t be the last: writer’s block isn’t a real thing. Before you get up in arms, hear me out. Writer’s block is just a mental block because we have done something wrong in our preparation. Perhaps you don’t have an outline, you haven’t brainstormed the scene enough, or you haven’t had a new, inspiring experience or an epic conversation recently. 

But the usual culprit? Being too critical. 

As a former English teacher, I watched as my students painstakingly tried to write “perfect” first drafts. They thought that it would be easier in the long run if they just wrote one draft. As a result, most of them hated to write because the experience was just so darn miserable. 

That’s the beauty of being a writer. No one has to see draft one, two, ten. We can screw up and then make it “pretty” later. That’s why the words "edit," "draft," and "revision" exist. Do you think any book worth reading was ever really a first draft that was never looked at again? And before you throw “stream of consciousness” or “Kerouac” around, read this: 

On the Road: The Original Scroll

Yes, Kerouac wrote his first draft in a crazy burst of creative energy in three weeks. But that’s not the novel that we see today. But we can ALL write in this matter—bursts of word counts that blow by any word count you have accomplished before because you allow yourself to make mistakes in your first draft. You don’t reread everything you’ve written—heck, you don’t reread ANYTHING you’ve written. You trust your outline, and you write, section by section, scene by scene.

Can your outline change? Sure. But what you’ve already written stays, and you don’t worry your pretty little head about fixing mistakes, plot confusion, or adding character depth until draft #2. Draft #1 is the skeleton, the time that you let your mind wander and play and just go where it wants to go, scene by scene. You set a daily word count you stick to that’s at least 2,000 words—I like 3,000 per day when I am in book-writing mode—because this will keep the story fresh in your head so you DON’T have to go back and reread and then start criticizing yourself (you know you will).

When you have your biggest production day to date, you will not feel spent or exhausted; you will feel like a bona fide superhero and totally energized. You will secretly mock people who say they have writer’s block or just don’t have time to write or whatever other excuses people like to say. You will feel ready to do it all over again tomorrow because you know you can.

Even better? You will want to see just how many words you can write in a day. 

My highest word count in a single day to date is 12,031 words. Now, I will admit that after a mega production day like that, I AM spent. I do not write the next day (well, not much). My back aches, my butt hurts, and I feel like crawling into bed and not coming out for two days except for ice cream and wine. But then, I come out of my coma ready to schedule my next massive word count day. 

Think about it: instead of toiling over your first draft for months, years, decades, you can get that story out of your head and release yourself from its tormenting power. You can stop daydreaming about it or having nightmares featuring characters suffocating in your brain. And you can have a finished first draft.

I wrote my first novel last year for NaNoWriMo, and I set my daily word count at 3,000 words per day. Since I am a freelance writer and social media strategist/manager, I decided to do my book writing in the mornings and my “day job” from about lunchtime until 7 or 8pm. I know not everyone can have this schedule, but as the cliché goes, we all have the same number of hours in the day.  

I wrote my first draft of Couple Friends in 17 days, but it only clocked in at 51,022 words—not enough for a women’s fiction title. So, I went back and added a second narrator, which was essential to the story anyway as it is now a husband and wife narrating team who takes turns telling the story from their first person POVs. I added a little over 20,000 words in about seven days (changing some of the original 50,000 words into Tyler’s perspective instead of Kieran’s), so the entire first draft only took 24 days—take that, November 30 NaNoWriMo deadline!

This gave me a respectable 71,317 words, and after five edits, it’s finally ready for the world. But I got to the final draft not by being perfect the first time around, but instead allowing myself to truly enjoy the process of making a messy first draft by not filtering my thoughts or succumbing to grammatical twitches.

And then I did it again with my second novel, Keepsakes. Except this time, I added in three mega production days of 10,010 and 10,211 and the 12, 031, so I was able to finish my first draft in 16 days. 

Take a cue from Kerouac. Stream of consciousness rocks for fiction.

You can pre-order Shawndra’s novel, Couple Friends, through Kickstarter, follow her on Twitter at @ShawndraRussell, and read her published work at www.shawndra-russell.com.  

Shawndra Russell is a social media strategist and content creator for hire. She has published more than 200 articles in magazines, newspapers, and websites, and is the sole manager of social media for five clients. She has finished two novels; the first, Couple Friends, will be published in the summer of 2012. She is not only a travel writer, but also writes a regular music column and specializes in writing about craft beers. She loves all things writing and research related and shares the best of what she finds, learns, and writes on her blog, Shawndra Russell's Courting Creativity.