On What Keeps Me Motivated

Hey guys!

Question of the day, How do you stay motivated while writing a long piece?

I've heard people say anything from making sure you sit down for five minutes a day to sitting down and cranking out ten pages a day. It could be somewhere between writing for your family or writing for yourself too. So really, motivation depends on the person who needs motivating.

For me, motivation is all about pressure. I do my best work when I'm in a time crunch. Obviously, with no publisher deadline to fill, as I just finished my first book, I set my own time crunch. At the end of July (the 26th to be exact), I started myself on a 40 day writing schedule. I had decided to finish a rough draft before I got back to school.

On a self set schedule you get a lot of flexibility. While flexibility can be good, it's a problem if you're trying to keep yourself in a tight time frame. That's where the second part comes in.

In the past, whenever I started a story I would be all gung-ho about it and then I would hit a wall. Right about the 15,000-20,000 word mark I would miss a day and then two and so on. Then when I would come back I'd be lost with the story and start being super critical of my own work. This time I tried something different.

I told my brother about the project. Just him, no one else in my family even knows yet now that I finished. But he would check every couple of days to make sure I was still on track. I knew there was nothing that he could or would do if I wasn't, but the pressure of someone else knowing kept me going past that mark.

The way I write is with a very loose skeleton of where I want the story to go. I know how it starts, how it ends, and a couple of points in between, but how they get between those points is a mystery when I sit down. I let myself discover the story as I type it, almost like reading it. The sense of discovery and adventure is the part that ties together my motivation. I want to know how it's going to happen, I NEED it even.

So there you go, motivation for me is a good dosage of pressure plus a drive to discover. Let me know how you stay motivated in the comments and hit me with any suggestions for this article or questions you might have in that handy form on the right there.

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B