I’m a runner. But I don’t always run. If I stop my regular running for more than a week or two, I have to build up to the level I was at when I stopped. It’s like starting all over again.
It’s annoying and frustrating. But if I don’t start back slowly, I risk hurting myself.
With my creative muscles, if I don’t start slowly, I risk succumbing to Resistance.
At the beginning of July, I had been consistently writing a minimum of 3 to 5 pages a day for months. Holidays happened and it was hard to shake the vacation mentality when they were done.
Next thing I knew, it was mid-August and I hadn’t done any writing. I wanted to get to work on the next draft of A Killing at the Cottage. For a few weeks, I would set a daily goal of writing 3 pages. And for those few weeks I wrote nothing. Resistance was having a field day with me.
Instead of three pages, I tried to set a goal of one page. Still nothing. A couple of weeks of nothing…
Then, I set a goal of writing a beat of dialogue. Not a page. Not half a page. A beat. It could be three lines of dialogue or fifteen lines.
Hallelujah! It worked. I could meet that target. And Resistance can suck it because I’ve started my next draft!
Instead of whining to myself about how long it will take, I will do the work and slowly build up my creative muscles to a page daily. And eventually back up to three pages daily.
How long will it take? I don’t know. I’ll just keep working on my writing until my minimum is consistently more than a beat and I’ll slowly keep moving the minimum to slightly higher targets.
My takeaway isn’t that I should avoid writing breaks. Life happens. You never know what might come around to interrupt your routine. Just remember to start slow when you start again.
© 2019 Peter Gruner