Tag: ray-bradbury

Consistent Effort

When I wrote my first novel, I did it through the consistency of writing every day. Participating in 2022’s National Novel Writing Month, I wrote daily for weeks straight, plowing through a novel that I’d been dreaming about writing for more than two years at that point. (And all of that after ten years of struggling to write any novel.)

The following spring I wrote another novel, again in a wave of consistency. And later that year, I wrote my third, finishing it during another NaNoWriMo rush.

Lately, I’ve been struggling with getting to the keyboard. It seems like all the “little things” in life keep popping up, stopping me before I start. But it’s only resistance, and it’s only winning because I let it, because I’m in an all-or-nothing mentality. If I can’t get my scheduled couple of hours, I might as well not start.

Consistency doesn’t mean I have to spend hours a day writing, though, it means I have to spend one, or thirty minutes, or fifteen. It’s not about hours per day. It’s about days showing up. If I had sat down for even five minutes a day, I’d have more words to show for the last few weeks than I do now.

Ideally, I’d hit a thousand words a day. On average, that amounts to about an hour, even less if I hit a good flow. (For the record, I hit my thousand word goal this morning in thirty-two minutes.) Like Bradbury said, “All I need is an hour, and I’m ahead of everyone.” Hardly a day goes by where I can’t squeeze in at least an hour of writing, even if it means setting the alarm a bit earlier.

A thousand words a day, consistently, is enough to write every story idea bouncing around my head, fifty of them by my last count, about half shorts and the other half novels. A thousand words a day gets them all done by my fiftieth birthday, a kind of fifty by fifty scenario.

On that birthday, I can look back with regret, or I can look back on the years of consistency that took my life to the next level. It’s as simple (but not easy) as that.

Heading photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

The Skull Speaks

I’ve played with this chattering skull for forty years.

Recently, I’ve been working on a story called (for now) “Put Another Nickel In” and I’ve got a few thousand words on the page so far. Today, the main character finally gave me his a name, Hunch, and I hit my word count goal. It’s a solid day’s work, considering the habit I’m trying to build of writing a thousand words per day, every day, following the example of this Ray Bradbury quote:

“I’m accustomed, you see, to getting up every morning, running to the typewriter, and in an hour I’ve created a world. I don’t have to wait for anyone. I don’t have to criticize anyone. It’s done. All I need is an hour, and I’m ahead of everyone. The rest of the day I can goof off. I’ve already done a thousand words this morning; so if I want to have a two or three-hour lunch, I can have it, because I’ve already beat everyone.”

Consistency over quantity. I’ve had bursts of it before, but never managed to keep it going for long. Hopefully this time is different.

At some point in the night, though, I realized that Hunch wasn’t alone. I don’t mean all the monsters he’s tasked with keeping in their enchanted sleep, but as far as a true companion. There was someone else in that chamber of horrors, if I would only listen. Like Hunch and his monsters, though, I went to sleep.

When I got back to the keyboard this morning, I started by cycling back through those first thousand words and trying harder to hear what the story was telling me. Just a few paragraphs in, I found that missing party: Jaw, a talking skull in the corner of the room.

I kept writing, going back through yesterday’s words and continuing on to new story, all while listening more closely, and hearing his voice. He had plenty to say.

In the end, I hit my thousand-word count for yet another day, found a new character, and learned more about the world I’m exploring.

I think that’s a fine definition of a successful day.

Bradbury quote taken from his essay “Shooting Haiku in a Barrel”, collected in Zen in the Art of Writing