Write for a Reason
Write for a Reason
Times to Write
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What time works best for you, to write?
Maybe there's more than one!
In this episode we look at how you can get into the habit of writing daily, but also how to grab other moments when you feel the inspiration flowing.
Enjoy!
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Welcome to the Write for a Reason podcast. My name is Janet Wilson. I'm a publisher of Christian fiction for kids and teens with Dernier Publishing. If you're a Christian and new to writing stories for kids and teens, stay tuned for encouragement, creative writing tips, and actionable strategies you can implement immediately to become a better writer. Today we're going to be having a quick think about when you write. Now, obviously, this is going to be very different for everybody. It may be that mornings are the best time for you. You may be one of those people who jumps up in the morning full of energy and your imagination is all ready to go. You may be a night person, so when everybody else is going to bed, you're starting to get your best ideas and really feeling it. Here's the thing: why don't you try and pick a time, the best time for you, that you could write at the same time every day? Now, the thing they tell us about habits is once you get into the habit, it's so much easier to do than every so often. So if you write every so often, it may be several days before you actually get round to doing any writing, you lose the thread a bit, you need to read the story again to get back into what you were writing before and to kind of really feel it again. You know what I mean? So a regular time. It can be hard to work into your life at the beginning, but like cleaning your teeth, it soon's become a habit, and then little by little your story will take shape because it's always top of mind. So whether it's 10 minutes in the morning, half an hour at lunchtime, an hour with coffee after your evening meal, that's what I did when I was writing year 33. That automatic habit can help you make sure that you don't get stuck in your story. Because as I say, the longer you leave your story, the harder it is to get back to. So for some people, a chaotic life is fun and to be embraced, you love variety, and the thought of writing every day at the same time might seem, well, something that either you couldn't manage because perhaps you do shifts or just the way that your life works at the moment, or because you just don't really want to. But a little bit of stability and order and a sense of knowing that things are not going to change can be really useful when you write your story. Anyway, the important thing is to do you and to get your story done. So if you can possibly find a time every day to be able to write your story, even if it's only 10 minutes or so, just to get back into the swing of it and to keep it top of mind, that would be a really good tip. But here's something else. It's really good to not just do that 10 minutes or that half an hour or that daily practice of writing, but to write at other times too. So to kind of grab the moment. I'm a big fan of sitting down to write when you say you will, and you soon get into it. But here's the thing, sometimes you're just in the mood for writing, and if you have the time, make the most of it and relish getting into the flow. So it may be that you're a morning person and you usually write in the morning, but at 10 pm in the evening you suddenly get an idea, and unusually for you, the ideas are flowing, the imagination is there, make the most of it. You know, grab that moment and get into that flow. We're all very different and our lives are different. We have different things that we need to do, we have different habits, we have different work patterns, we have different families. But however our life is, if we've been called to write, we need to get our stories done. So I hope these two hit tips are really helpful for that. Try and grab a moment, the same time each day, 10 minutes or so, so that your story is always top of mind and it's always getting done, and grab those other moments as well. Let me know how this works for you. Everybody's different. And don't forget to pray before you start writing or at any point during the story. We need the Holy Spirit to inspire us and help us, don't we? Because we're doing kingdom work. If you'd like lots more free creative writing tips, hop on over to writeforreason.com and you'll find lots more resources there and encouragement to help you write excellent, relevant, fun novels and get them into your readers' hands. If you haven't yet done my free course, Gripping Beginnings, you can sign up and start immediately. You can also sign up for weekly writing tips that go into your inbox. We have a membership group and I also run a writing course, an online writing course, the Right for a Reason Academy. Do check it out on rightforreason.com. So there we go, folks, don't put it off. Today is a gift to use wisely. Only you can write your book, and if you've been called to write, someone's waiting for it.