Fresh Every Day

"I took your advice," said the man sitting across the table from me.

What advice was that? I inquired. 

"You told me I should write something everyday."

Ah, yes. It's a suggestion I make to anyone working on a book project. Write something everyday even if it's only one sentence. Why? Because it keeps your head in the story or the project. When you work on your book everyday you don't lose your train of thought so easily. When you take time off, whether it is for a couple of days or for a few months you have to then go back and pick up the threads of your work and try to weave together the ragged ends again. 

I know this from experience. At one point, while writing my novel, Picking up the Pieces, I took over two months where I didn't even open the book's file. I felt swamped with other work and just put the project on hold until I could catch up and concentrate on it in a more focused way. What happened though, was that when I did get back to writing, I had to go back through the entire manuscript, get to know my characters again and figure out what they had been up to before I abandoned them. I spent so much time just getting my head back into that writing space that I wasted a lot of time that could have been used for writing.

Now I advise my clients to work on their book projects everyday if even for a few minutes. Write a few words or a paragraph. Flesh out a scene or re-write the last one. Doing this keeps the project alive in your thoughts even when you're doing other things so that when you have time to get back at it in earnest it will be fresh in your mind.

---