If You Want to Write...

Our second post in this middle-of-the-week blog series

Creating a Write State of Mind

Many articles on "finding time to write" suggest that you bring notebooks wherever you go, and whenever you have a spare moment, use it to write the next scene to your novel or edit the article you're working on. This is great advice if it's related to a new idea-- write it down fast or it will definitely fly away! But for anything much longer than a paragraph, I haven't found it helpful.

This is because I normally need a certain space and environment to write. I'm blessed to own a laptop that I keep in my room. I usually write with a) loud pop music, b) while I'm alone and it's c) very late at night. Something about the urgency of the late time and the hard beat of music pressures my writing forward like an unseen linebacker.

So, if you want to write, try to understandwhat your "state of mind and body" has to be to write the longest and best(est) you can. Maybe you have to be around people, or write really early in the morning, or maybe you really have no time to write so therefore you take every moment you can get. Figure out what works for you, so that it can work.