Five Ways to Trick Yourself into Writing When You Don’t Want To

I have come to think of my writing self as a little self-centred, more than a little childish but luckily easy to confuse, so here are some tricks I’ve played on myself to get those words onto paper.


1. Give yourself a word count for the day and keep to it.

Depending on your own process, it may be 200 words, 500 words, 1,000 words, 2,000 words, but make a pact with yourself that this is the amount you are going to do every day.

No matter what else happens.

The secret is not in fulfilling it (after the first few days) but stopping when you’ve reached it. There will be days when you want to go on and on writing, but making yourself finish at the exact word count – even in the middle of a sentence - will send you back to the page the next day. And then the next.

2. An alternative to a set word count is to do what Hemingway is reported to have done, and deliberately finish mid-sentence.

It sounds daft, but it really does make it much easier to get into the work the next day. I’ve seen it called, Parking on the downwards slope. A phrase that sums up the perfect picture for me.

3. Have a soundtrack to a particular piece.

This is what I have done for every novel so far. It helps me get into the voice of my character, and the mood of the book.

Because it’s the same song every time, I soon stop listening to it but having it in the background, lets me sink straight into the writing.

4. Ask questions.

After you finish writing for the day, write yourself a question for the next bit of your project. Or your new project. Then when you come back to your desk, concentrate on the question you’ve set yourself. The writing will come naturally.

5. Use a mixture of carrot and stick.

Put away all the things that distract you – facebook, twitter, emails, the phone, today’s crossword – until you have written as much as you have set yourself for the day.

And then enjoy them with your full attention. Plus some chocolate, or a glass of wine, or whatever rocks your particular world.


Read also:

* FIVE WAYS TO WRITE MORE

* READ ME

* WHAT KIND OF WRITER ARE YOU?

PAINTING AND WRITING - IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PROCESS

I was lucky enough to go to Frank Auerbach's exhibition of London Building Sites 1952-1962 at Somerset House in London during its last few days.

Because the exhibition is over, I'm not going to tempt you with all the paintings you can't now see, but the similarities between the painting process as outlined by Auerbach and the writing process were fascinating. And when the process is that of a master, there always something to learn.

For example, the catalogue notes state:

He would work and rework a painting in a restless search for a unique image, trying to achieve what he describes as a 'formal grandeur.

and

The critic David Sylvester claimed that Auerbach had 'extended the power of paint to re-make reality.'

And in this drawing and painting of the same site at Bruton Street, Winter 1953, I could see exactly how this reworking achieved both the grandeur and the re-making of reality.

From this precise drawing of the scene...



... this painting was created. It's hard to see at first how the two match up until you see the triangle in the forefront, the line on the left.



As the notes explained, it was 'an attempt to find a secret internal geometry that lay behind it, the core.'

And it's precisely this core I realised I search for so fiercely sometimes in my own writing. I like the idea of it being 'a secret internal geometry'.

And this painting below of a building site in Earls Court Road, 1953, the actual reality is hidden, but Auerbach writes: 'Though nobody else may be aware of it, I'm aware of the amount of painting experience that's buried under those heavy lumps of black and white and ochre.'



And of course, it is exactly this power that comes out.. But what got me was the discipline and sheer hard work involved in searching and searching for the authentic core of the scene.

This isn't someone who just hung around waited for the muse to strike.

And from sketches like these four below, Auerbach manages to achieve an 'emotional truth' in his painting that leaps off the canvas by

amalgamating elements for different sketches from different sketches in the paintings, rather than replacing one particular view, in order to achieve a composition with power and integrity.

In a series of other sketches and paintings, the exhibition notes state that Auerbach often broke off from his work on principal paintings to produce small drawings and paintings. This:

allowed him to develop the composition freely and spontaneously

and also

even the smallest as an exercise to loosen up his brushwork, others were attempts to resolve the composition, structure and detail.

A useful reminder to keep trying to see the story from a different angle. To play on the page. To work through a technical problem by producing more work.

And most of all, to trust the process.