Turbocharge Your Writing

Continuing our goal setting theme for January, I thought I'd move on to the practical question of how to deliver on all those words that we've promised ourselves for 2012.

Late last year I went to a seminar delivered by Hugo Kearns. He travels the world helping academics to get their work down on paper and I thought many of his techniques were also relevant for writing popular romance fiction. His seminar was a lot of fun and as he described the many excuses and avoidance behaviors that writers employ I felt he’d been watching me.

He gave some great advice.

Work out where you are with the various writing projects and decide on the next thing that has to be done and do it. Make the writing goal specific and small.

• Writing is a creative process and your thinking will become clearer as you write.
• Don’t wait to be motivated. Sit down to write and don’t do anything else but write. Practice doing this every day and the words will come.
• Snack write – write little and often and before you finish decide on the next important thing that has to be written.
• Set specific times to write.

Hugo said that anxiety stops people from writing and that the best way to deal with the anxiety is exposure. Write for at least 45 minutes each day even if at first you produce very little. Keep at it and don’t do anything but write in that 45 minutes and the words will come. This ties in neatly with the snack writing concept.

All of this advice is contained in more detail in his book Turbocharge Your Writing which is available from his website http://www.ithinkwell.com.au. The book is written for an academic audience but the tone is humorous and engaging and it’s an easy read.

Let's get moving on all those words we've promised ourselves in 2012.