Rediscovering the Joy of Reading and Writing · 6:48pm Aug 4th, 2019

For the last 8 months (I can’t believe how fast this year has gone!) I have barely been reading or writing. A constant tied of other commitments, work, studying and other such distractions has occupied my time. In the moments where I do get a chance to breath and start reading or writing, I often fail to do so. Instead it’s far easier to watch meaningless YouTube or play games. It’s not work, it’s relaxation.

A week ago today I woke up with a desire to change that.

In the last week I have read over 500 pages in books and over 15k words in FimFiction stories. I have also written over 11k words, which is more then my total for the entirety of the last 8 months combined.

This has been hard. But boy has it been fun.

Some of you may be asking, “how did you do it?” Well, it took me 4 steps.

1 - Set specific times for reading and writing

6am-7:30am is my writing time (crazy, I know!) and 8:30pm-10:00pm is my reading time. At 10 I go to sleep and after 8 hours I wake up at 6. I can read and write outside of these times, but this time is fixed, and I must read and write within these time constraints. It takes discipline to do this, but it’s not impossible. The more you do it the more of a habit it becomes like brushing your teeth before bed.

2 - Used the pomodoro technique

What is it? In short, it’s setting a timer for a time you’re comfortable with and then doing nothing but one task into it buzzes. Once it buzzes you immediately stop and take a 5-minute break. How long do you set the timer for? At first it was 5 minutes. Then I went up to 10. Now I’m on 20 minutes, which is about as much as I can handle in one sitting. The break is forced, even if I’m in the middle of the flow. It gives me a chance to step back and relax. Talk to friends on Discord, play with my dogs, have a small walk. When I come back, I feel ready to go. I also find that I’ve had time to think over what I had just written and fresh ideas have been born. This is good, it helps what I write next be better. It will help what I wrote be better, but not now. Jot those ideas down and put them to the side because of step 3….

3 - Don’t ever go back in your writing

Sounds crazy, right? I thought so too at first but it has really helped me. When I write there’s always the temptation to go back, re-read what I’ve done, fix typos and spelling mistakes (there are so many of them!), make things better by reworking sentences and paragraphs. But I must not do that. Not until the chapter/story is finished.

Once you learn to not ignore but put aside the nagging feeling that what you just wrote is about as good as a 5-year old’s half-hatred essay on fish tank cleaning he did in class then you’ll find that your amount of words written will drastically go up. Are they good words? Not all of them. But in there is the structure of a story. There are scenes and chapters. There are moments of brilliance and moments of utter rubbish. But you will be able to identify them, and you will have a greater understanding of your story as a whole.

But what do you do with all those thoughts? What if you discover there’s an important plot-hole that needs patching earlier in the story? What If you think of an important rewrite? Well, you make a note of that thought and where in the story it was and then you keep going. We’ll get back to those notes later.

4 - Keep Statistics

I have a spreadsheet that I write in the number of words I have written each writing sprint. This does some fancy calculations that tells me how many words in total per day and what my words per hour speed was. I do this to keep track of my progress and you soon build a desire to keep adding to it and to avoid the dreaded zero.

And that’s it. My secrets of how I’ve made more progress this week then the last 8 months. And it feels amazing.

But what do you do if you have writers block? Well, you just keep going. Write the first thing that comes into your mind no matter how bad it is. Or maybe find a random list of things that could happen, roll a dice and pick that option. You could even just end the scene early and move onto the next one. I find that writing a small synopsis of the current scene you’re writing can help guide you. I wrote these at first for about half the scenes in the story, but I found the further I got the less I relied on them. But if you wish the plan the whole thing, then go for it! Good on you.

And what about editing? You’ll eventually have to do that. And yes, you will. That’s my next step too and I’m going to have to figure that one out myself, so I’ll come back and let you all know once I’ve manged to do so.

Of course, it’s going to be a struggle keeping this up as I do have life, revision and other such things to do. Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays I have no free evenings as they’re dedicated to archery, D&D and other such things. I spend 8 hours of the day at work (sometimes more), plus over an hour commuting each way (fortunately I’ve discovered Audible so I can write this time off as “reading”). I have an exam this month that I need to revise for and another 2 that I need to take soon. I also have Equestria at War to develop and support almost constantly.

And of course, all of this relies on me being able to wake up fresh and happy at 6am each day, which is easier said than done.

It also takes some sacrifices. I’ve not played games, I’ve not watched the latest season of Stranger Things, and so on. It really is hard to stay focused and in the zone. I’m still struggling there.

But things are finally looking better.

As to what I have written, well, I’m sorry to say it’s not the latest chapter of Fallen Canterlot. I will work on that, I just needed to take a step back and do something different practice on. So, I’ve been working on something brand new. Something I’ve been wanting to write for almost a year now. It may not work out. I still have issues with it. But that’s for fixing later. What matters now is that progress is being made, and at the end of the day that’s all that counts.

Oh, and I was planning to set up a sort of review blog for things I’ve read if anyone is interested. I’ll see if I can get the first post up in a week or so.

Thank you all for reading. I’ll see you later!