When Your Writing is on a Roll
When Your Writing is on a Roll
It’s all about the momentum, baby
It’s all about the momentum, baby
I wrote nearly 2,000 words today. That’s after four days of word counts above 1,000 per day, for a grand total of 7, 773 words so far this week.
I’m on a roll.
And in my opinion, there’s nothing better.
Years ago, the tagline on my blog read: Fall in love with your writing, fall in love with your life. (News flash: apparently the tag line was, Fall in love with your writing, your life, and yourself. You can see it on this Wayback Machine image here. I kind like it better without the yourself, though it is true.)
I’ve so often felt in love with the world after a good writing session. It opens you up to see the beauty and wonder in everything around you. Maybe that sound woo-woo and weird, but for me it’s always been true.
And this is the state that comes from momentum.
When you’ve got momentum going, the words just roll onto the page in a nearly magical way. Ideas spark, characters come to life, scenes write themselves.
This is not to say that there aren’t moments of staring off into space while you wait for the words to come, or times of near panic when you’re not sure what to write next. But in general, when you’ve got momentum, writing is just easier.
And life is easier, too, I swear it. All day today I’ve gotten things done quickly and efficiently, knocking off the items on my to-do list. That’s because I’ve done the most important thing already. I’ve gotten my word count (over my word count) in. I think of how many words I’ve written today and I realize that I’ve totally won it.
That’s what momentum will do for you.
So how do you achieve this mythical state?
It’s really very easy.
You write.
You do your best to write every day. Because when you do, the writing builds on itself. The story and characters are there in your brain. You don’t have to go back and reread everything you’ve written so far because you just worked on it yesterday. So it is in your brain, ready for you.
The more you write, the easier it is. The more connected you stay to the story. The more cohesive it all feels.
So you write as often as possible. And on days when you can’t write, you make an effort to keep the story alive in your head, by consciously thinking about it(driving is good for this, as is walking), by scribbling notes on it, or doing anything you can.
Sometimes it is damned hard to get yourself to the page. And it is even harder to get started when you get there. But once you do, the rewards are so big.
They are as big as falling in love with life.
Charlotte Rains Dixon is the author of the novel Emma Jean’s Bad Behavior (Vagabondage Press, February 2013), and articles published in magazines such as Vogue Knitting, The Oregonian and Pology, to name only a few, and her short fiction has been published in Somerset Studios, The Trunk and the Santa Fe Writer’s Project. She earned her MFA in creative writing at Spalding University in 2003, and has been teaching and coaching writers ever since, both privately and as an adjunct professor at Middle Tennessee State University’s Write program. She’s been blogging about writing, creativity, and motivation at charlotterainsdixon.com since 2007. She is repped by Erin Niumata at FolioLiterary. Visit her website at charlotterainsdixon.com and her travel site at letsgowrite.com.