Marathon: Week One Blues

Filed in: Writing
Tags: Marathon

I really don’t want to blog today, so this will be short. I’m exhausted and blue, craving sleep, yet not able to. Life is busy, as usual, and I’m feeling overwhelmed. The result: I have not written a word since starting my personal marathon on Sunday.

Nada. Zilch. Zippo.

0.

Today is NOT over, so I’m only counting 0 on three days on my marathon tracking sheet (more on that later) and trying not to be to dismayed over the idea that I’m now 4500 words BEHIND in my goal.

But one secret to successful marathon is that it’s like dieting – if you fall off goal one day, don’t give up. Get back on and don’t look back. Which leads us to tip #9.

#9 Turn Off the Internal Editor and Don’t Look Back

Too often, we trip ourselves up by constantly re-reading what we’ve written before, editing forever. Or we get stuck on a sentence trying to find just the right word. Or we’re obsessive about making sure that what we wrote yesterday has no errors. Or we . . .

Whatever. TURN IT OFF. Do not read what came before, not even to keep up with where you are. That’s for the polishing stage. Just WRITE. No correcting, no searching for the right word. Put in a place holder and keep going.

For some of us, including ME, this is the hardest stage ever. But view this as a discipline that will help you grow as a writer. Too many writers I work with have half a dozen unfinished manuscripts in a drawer somewhere for just this very reason – that odd search for “just the right word.” Remember, nothing screams I’M A WRITER like a finished book.

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