I was skimming the comments from Wednesday’s check and something Jaci said caught my eye.

And Laura, don’t worry about catching up. Only work forward. If you didn’t start strong, don’t worry. Just think ahead and pick up your pace where you can. You’ll do fine.

Pacing is a weird thing. Some of write fast. Some of us don’t. But we write, otherwise we wouldn’t be involved in this challenge. What works for one isn’t going to work for others. What works for me might not work for you. Me, I don’t care if I have music playing or not when I work, but I know some writers can’t focus without it. I can’t focus so well sitting at my desk, so I tend to get more actual story-work (as opposed to edits) if I’m sitting on the couch with my laptop. I know some people who can’t do their writing anyplace but their desk. I know some writers who are satisfied if they get 1000 words done in a day, and one particular writer I know isn’t happy unless she does about 8000.

All different. But all of us have a story to tell, otherwise we wouldn’t be taking the time to write it down.

My words of wisdom today….when you sit down to write, don’t think about anything but the story. Just the story. When you’re writing it, make the story all that exists. Don’t worry about the challenge, don’t worry about whether or not the story is any good, don’t worry about whether or not it’s going to sell, and don’t worry about what to do once you’re done. No of those worries have easy solutions and worrying about them isn’t going to get your story written. Writing it is the only way to do that. So write now…worry later.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Shiloh Walker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.