Finding your voice: Part 8 of 10

Here we are. Three more to go and I hope by now you're convinced that this method really works. Your mind is a well of writing material, entertaining and serious. There are obstacles along the way that stop you from putting down words on paper, but these can be overcome. Your voice is singularly yours and you shouldn't be frightened of seeing it on paper. Sometimes you might be disappointed in the things you write, but sometimes you'll surprise yourself and say, "hey, that's not bad!"

Let's summarise what we've said so far.

• Listen to that voice in your head continuously rambling on and on.
• Write down what you're hearing, don't edit, don't stop, just keep the voice active and speaking. Even if it veers off to the left, try to keep in step. If you fall behind, take a giant leap, stop where you were and continue with the voice so that you can keep going.
• Finish the thought, do it quickly because the next one's coming up. When you look up from the page, a new thought arrives and you'll have to deal with that. But after you've done step 1 and 2 for a while, you'll get comfortable finishing things off.
• Be weird and wacky. Horses talk, in horse language. Bees seem to plan their attack and sometimes you'll see the cat sitting in front of the television, watching and taking mental notes.
• Give yourself license to exaggerate. Put stuff in the writing that doesn't exist in reality, after all, it's your thought as long as you aren't being too serious about it.
• Along with exaggeration, contemplate, dream and think up unusual circumstances. This is very much like the fifth point, but it's really key to keeping yourself motivated in your writing. Part's 5 and 6 ask you to go outside the box. Dream, exaggerate and then move that exaggeration into outer space. The way I think about it is, the talking horse is exaggeration, the talking horse as the captain of flight 719 to London is the unusual combination.
• There is no perfect setting for writing. You should not look for the perfect time, the perfect location, just a place to sit quietly. Don't turn on the television and as much as possible, turn down the music. Recognise that you do get fatigued and discuss that fatigue by breaking into a writing practise. Start the novel in the middle, write parts back and forth if that's the way to get going. Sooner or later, you'll realise that an outline will allow you to track your path, but that's not important till you get going.

So here we are at Part 8, and in this part we continue to fight those demons that won't let us continue writing. Those urges to go get a drink of water or go for a cigarette, a drink of wine, or a stroll. Those things we call distractions that we identified in Part 7. In that section, I encouraged you to identify them and to discuss them in writing. In this section, we acknowledge them and let them have a bit of control. There will be circumstances where you will get up and go away. Smokers will find it difficult to keep to the page while they're urged to go outside for a smoke. And so after we've been through the advice of part 7, we've analysed our distraction and found that we can commit to a distraction, we give in and make a pact with ourselves to continue. As you can see, this isn't boot camp for writing. This isn't the perfect writing school that will make you churn out novels every three months, but acknowledging that you are tired and truly need a break is one of those things that's very difficult to determine. Do I really need a break or am I struggling with the writing? If I'm struggling with the writing then it's time for a practise exercise. That's as good as a break but it keeps you on top of things. But if you're truly tired, then use a timed break.

Many of us have regular jobs. We show up at nine in the morning, or eight, and work our seven, eight or nine hour shift. That work is predetermined and we are expected to behave a certain way and produce certain things. We have a job description that lays out what we should be doing. Our writing life isn't like that. It's more of a hobby, not serious enough to be considered a vocation unless you are writing for a living, which means that your writing alone makes you money. At work we have breaks and lunch at which time we down tools and go off for a break. At work we can tell how far ahead we are with specific tasks and how far we have left to go. Our writing lives aren't like that. We can procrastinate forever. We turn forty and swear that by the time we hit forty-five we'll have that grand novel published. But forty-one, forty-two and forty-three slip by without anxiety because we know that forty-five is still a couple of years away and that once inspiration hits, boy, watch out world!

But if we are to be serious about our lives, that we write not because someone else tells us to, like in a job, but we write because we must or we die, then we need to create a job description for our writing lives, complete with the recognition of distractions. It is this job description that makes us sit down for those five minutes and write something down, no matter how good or bad it is. No matter how we feel at the time. No matter how rushed we are. We sit down because we're on the job.  And an amazing thing happens when we do that. If we follow the writing practise method, it ceases being a chore to get started, but rather becomes a happy obsession. You are happy continuing. It's starting that's always a problem, going on isn't until you hit that distraction. And if you obey the instruction in Part 7, and discuss it in a quick practise exercise, and have your job description that says you will write for fifteen minutes, then this step urges you to step away. Put the pen down. Stop typing, and think and look and imagine and relax. Take time to yourself. If you must leave the desk, if you really, really must, because you've been there too long, then give yourself a time limit. We all must have bathroom breaks and walk breaks, a drink of water, a stretch and sometimes these things take over the rest of the day. You should have a way to go back to the writing.

Make a pact with yourself to accomplish a few more lines and then stop if the urge to step away becomes too great. Give yourself a job description, it works for your professional life, it will work for your writing life too.