The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don'ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life by Charles Murray

Author:Charles Murray
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780804141451
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-07T18:30:00+00:00

18. Don’t wait for the muse.

The last of my tips about writing is simple and absolute: Don’t wait until you feel like it. Find out what time of day you write best and develop a routine that puts you in front of your keyboard and screen at whatever time that might be.

I’m a morning person, so I’m up by 6:30 and usually sitting at my computer before 7:00. By 11:00, I have usually stopped writing first draft. I can edit existing draft or do data analysis indefinitely, but first draft takes something out of me. After a couple of hours of intense work, I look at the paragraph I’m struggling with and know that it will be easier to finish it tomorrow. Other writers who talk about their routines usually make the same point—three or four hours a day is about the maximum that can be expected.

What about the days when you can’t face the prospect of putting new sentences on the screen? Turn to the great cure-all for all things pertaining to writing: reread. Mentally cut yourself some slack, agree not to try to do first draft, and set out to look at what you’ve got and make whatever edits occur to you. At worst, you’ll be spending your time usefully. More commonly, you will get caught up in an edit that turns out to be more significant than a few tweaks, and you’ll regain consciousness an hour later with some good new draft that you hadn’t planned on writing. In other words, fool yourself into writing.

What do you do if you get writer’s block? I’ve never suffered from it. From what I’ve read about the torments experienced by those who have, you had probably better get into another line of work. But first make sure that it’s really writer’s block. Probably you just don’t feel like writing today, which takes us back to where we started: Don’t wait until you feel like it.

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