5 Tactics to Keep You Writing Your Novel

Oh, what a day, what a week, what a year. That is how quickly time can pass you by if you do not get on with writing your novel. So, how do you keep at it?

1. Write every day you possibly can, not just when you feel like it. Thankfully, the more you write, the more you feel like it.

   
   

2. Write as much as you want to. For me, it's just one hour in the morning, but that one hour a day equals a page—so in 100 days, I have 100 pages.

   
   

3. Tea, coffee, Pepsi Max—whatever your caffeine-laden choice might be: exploit it.

   
   

4. Cease imbibing alcohol altogether. And yes, those are a couple of showy words (I’ll cover thesaurus use in another post), but I wanted to get your attention. Alcohol obliterates your short-term memory, and you need the mental power to remember what you wrote yesterday.

   
   

5. Here is the controversy. I edit as I go along. Some say to just push out the first draft and edit it later, but I prefer to smooth things along as I go. It also reminds me that I can do it when I look back and reread the edited parts. Really, I’m tricking myself, as these edited parts are still open to cutting if a scene changes—but somehow, the ruse works. Try it.