Okay, I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve been lax in my posts of late. I do have a good excuse, however (and don’t we all love excuses?). While I have no dog to eat my posts, nor do I have an adjective-munching brain parasite––that I know of, anyway––or even a case of the ultra-rare five-month amnesia.

Nope, it’s none of those things. Instead, I work in the film industry.

I know what some of you may be thinking. “Ooh, so glamorous! The celebrities! The fun times!”

Yeah. No.

I mean, sure, it’s fun quite often, however when you’re an author trying to meet your self-imposed writing quotas, working on a film set––both the hours and the environment––can be the antithesis of a good work environment for producing material.

My most recent project was a feature, which shall remain nameless, not because it was bad (in fact it was a fantastic crew and looks to be a great film) but because it’s just not cool to discuss those things, especially when you’ve signed and NDA.

Now, if you recall my much earlier post detailing the film industry occurrence we call Fraturday (when you start work on Friday and get off work on Saturday, thus destroying your weekend), you’ll have an inkling of what the past 10 weeks held.

 

Fraturdays. Every. Damn. Week.

I was trying to bang out a mere one or two thousand words a day during my down time on set (while having a walkie-talkie chattering in my ear), but sometimes that just isn’t possible. Like when you’re on location and it’s 108 degrees. Or when you are so busy loading people into ambulances that there’s no down time to write (my day job is as an on-set medic for film and TV). Or when you’re just so utterly toast from yet another 70+ hour week (yes, in 5 days) that words simply fail you. That, my friends was the last ten weeks.

So, how does one get anything done? By doing the first thing I mentioned in the paragraph above. Namely, banging out a couple of thousand words a day. It sounds like a lot, but if you write just 125 words per hour over a sixteen hour work day, that’s two thousand words. Voila!

Here’s the cool bit. If you work a less-intense schedule and in a more-conducive environment, cranking out a mere 125 words in an hour should be a breeze, especially if you’ve plotted out your story ahead of time. In my case, I typically have the entire book outlined and have chapter notes acting as placeholders in my laptop. As I write each chapter, I delete the notes until that chapter is fleshed out. But you do you, boo, obviously.

One crucial thing to remember, your first draft isn’t you telling the story to a reader, but rather you telling the story to yourself. It’s gonna be rough, it’s gonna suck, it’s gonna need rewrites. So don’t slow your process and edit during the exorcism of those words from your brain––just get it out!

If this seems intuitive to you, fantastic! You’re already taking those little steps toward a bigger goal. If, however, this is news to you, hopefully this tale of writing in difficult circumstances perhaps helped you realize it can be done, even on a crazed schedule. Tiny increments add up, and even 2k words per day (spread out) is 60k in a month. That’s 2/3 of a book––Huzzah!

Happy writing!