In Friday’s Finding the Button post, Shiloh said:

So what I did…I made myself focus. (…) I cut my blog-hopping in half (sob).

Over the last several months, I’ve done the same thing. Part of it was necessity; I was working the day job and on deadline and I had no choice but to stay offline. But you know what I discovered while cutting back on the online involvement? I didn’t miss it. Yes, of course, I kept up with my friends, and remained on the few writing loops I participate in - yet even those I set to digest and would only read once a day.

Now that I’m writing at a much more comfortable pace, guess what? I still have those loops on digest, and I don’t visit but a half dozen blogs a day, and the ones I do visit are the ones where discussions are industry related, craft related, inspirational, etc. I rarely visit the sites I once lived for, where comment threads would run into the hundreds. Looking back, I recognize that I used those as distractions, thinking I needed to be on top of what was going on in the online world.

Guess what? I don’t. You don’t. What we need is the focus Shiloh mentioned, and that focus needs to be on our work, our health, our families, our writing, our editors and agents and publishers and what they want from us. We don’t have any need at all to keep up with gossip, or industry disasters. No, there’s nothing wrong with doing so, but look at the time you spend going out and seeking information on everyone else and what they’re doing, and then consider what you could accomplish spending that same time on YOU and YOUR writing. Trust me. You don’t need to know everything happening online. Not unless it has a direct impact on your writing career.

I write fast. Always have. But I’m also very lazy…..I put the pro in procrastinate. Has nothing to do with not enjoying the writing process, just has to do with enjoying the procrastination process.

So when the first 70 Days of Sweat writing challenge rolled around, I figured I’d give it a shot, although I didn’t expect I’d change my writing ways much. Just because…well, I’m lazy.

I didn’t count on my competitive nature, though. I am very competitive. Doesn’t matter who I’m competing with, what it’s about, what it’s for. I don’t necessarily have to do better than others, but for some reason, the thought of competition motivates me. I take taekwondo, technically speaking I’m a blue belt because they started me back at white (which I hated) even though 9 years ago, I tested for my brown and was getting ready to test for red, then I got pregnant. You put me up in front of a black belt, it doesn’t matter that I’m an overweight asthmatic with little coordination… I go after them. It doesn’t matter that I might get my tail kicked, not as long as I make them work for it.

I’m competitve. So the challenge just pushed the right buttons for me. What did I do to boost up my writing output? I already mentioned I write fast. I can put out between 1500-2000 words in an hour or so if I’m left alone. And if I focus on the computer.

So what I did…I made myself focus.

I used to write with the TV, just for noise more than anything. No longer.

I stopped playing around on email.

I started keeping a spreadsheet towards the end of how many words I wrote in one day and then next day, I try to top it.

I stopped going back to re-edit ad nauseum, because that can wait until after the book is written.

I cut my blog-hopping in half (sob).

And what happened? My writing output went through the roof. I completed one full length book for Berkley, a novella for Berkley, two category length books for two of my epubs, and I started several new projects. I wrote more in those 70 days than I had in the previous five months.

The trick to getting a book written really involves no trick. It just requires writing. Whatever it is that motivates you, whether it’s competing (even if it’s against yourself) or promising yourself something special if you meet your goal at the end of the challenge, whatever it takes, find that button, and push it. Keep pushing it.

“As an inspiration to the author, I do not think the cat can be over-estimated. He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism. I do not wonder that many writers love cats; I am only surprised that all do not.” ~ Carl Van Vechten

To me, being a writer has a lot in common with the way I feel about living with a cat.

Cats can be difficult. They wreck your furniture. They wake you in the middle of the night, retching up fur-balls. They have no compunction about using their claws and teeth on you whenever they deem it necessary. For instance only last week my ‘darling’ Kuffer played rough and sliced open my lip so badly that I thought I might need stitches!

But all these issues fade into insignificance when a cat purrs at you when you’re sad, or snuggles up against you when you’re worried or ill. Or simply delights you by doing something cute or funny or loving clear out of the blue and just because he or she can.

Even without consciously being aware of it, cats give back a hundredfold to compensate for any trouble they might cause you.

It’s the same with writing.

Ideas are hard to find. Plots seem impossible. A work in progress can be a dead duck that drives you crazy and makes you wonder if you’ll ever write a single interesting word, ever again.

But all this angst is forgotten in those breathtaking moments when your characters are suddenly alive and talking and acting in a world that you, yes you, have created. When they make you smile and exclaim and sigh and they reward you for all the effort and the stress and the swearing that you’ve expended on them. The moments when your eyes fill with tears over their trials and tribulations, and when your heart sings at the end of their story because they’ve achieved the beautiful happily ever after that can be so elusive and hard to hang on to in the real world.

That’s why I write. Because when it purrs you forget the scratches and the fur-balls.

I’d like to say I have these great writing organizational skills, and every day I wake up, grab my cup of coffee and sit down at my neatly cleaned desk to pound out the pages, completely uninterrupted.

Ha! It never works that way. The phone rings, I have to deal with emails, to-do lists, promotional tasks, things that pop up that have to be dealt with immediately, and sometimes those kinds of things can take up the entire day.

So how do I manage to write for multiple publishers, have nonstop deadlines and put out several books a year?

I hate to steal from Nike here, but I just do it. I know what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and I manage to get it done. Why? Because I want this.

This is the life I dreamed of. This is the career I always wanted. Now that I have it, I bust my butt to make sure I make my deadlines. And before I was published, I devoted as much time as I possibly could to write a book, edit it and then write another.

So if you want this, you have to work at it. And if that means 6 pages a day, 1500 words a day for 70 days to get a book done, then it’s worth it. It’s not that much if you break it down into small increments instead of looking at the big picture. Write a paragraph here and there throughout your day. Fit it in where you can. Sometimes I’ll do a page, other times I’ll pound out anywhere from 2 pages to an entire chapter in one sitting. It all depends on what else is going on, how many interruptions I have, and what kind of day I’m having. But if I set a goal, you can bet I’m going to achieve it.

I’ve set a goal to get this book done. I’m going to get it done. I love a challenge. It gets my blood fired up, and knowing other people are out there doing the same thing really spurs me on to write.

Don’t come up with all the reasons you can’t do it. Come up with just one reason you can. Don’t you really want this bad? I do. I always have.

So write. And don’t compare your progress to mine, or to anyone else’s. If you don’t do 6 pages a day, don’t worry. Maybe tomorrow you’ll do 10. Maybe you won’t. But if you make progress on your book each and every day, isn’t that what counts?

I’m not a fast writer, nor am I a multi-tasker, and I find it takes me a while to get into the swing of things each day. The more things I have on my mind, the harder it is for me to focus on my writing. When I first quit my day job to write full time, I’d find my time was easily consumed by the minutiae of running my business and day-to-day life. Sometimes, I wouldn’t get a chance to sit down and focus on my book until late afternoon, and by then, I’d have too many other concerns on my mind.

And then my dear friend Kelly made a suggestion, and it changed my life. Fifteen minutes, she said. Set your alarm fifteen minutes early. Get up, maybe go to the bathroom and put the kettle on, but don’t do anything else. Don’t check your email, don’t pick up the newspaper, don’t read a blog. For fifteen minutes, stare at the blinking cursor on the end of your document. Maybe you write, maybe you don’t, and even if you do, you might not get much done in fifteen minutes.

But what you do is set your mind in story mode, when it’s blank and unconcerned with anything else. Then, later, as you visit the drycleaners or fight rush hour traffic or work at your cubicle — your head is still in the place of your book. Maybe you jot down notes on the subway or write a page or two at lunch. Even if all you write is a few hundred words, even if it’s total garbage that you delete later when you have a chance to concentrate, you’ve programmed your head to think about your book.

I don’t know why this works, but it does. I find that on days I do this fifteen minutes, it sometimes turns into two hours. And even if it is fifteen minutes, I find those two hours later in the day are twice as productive as on days where I don’t get fifteen minutes in. Kelly theorizes it might be because, when I sit down with my book at 2 pm or 5 pm or 10 pm, I’m not looking at a blank for the day. I’m looking at a few hundred words. It’s a jump start. I thin it’s more. I think if I do my book first, when my mind is still forming itself for the day, it gets the idea that, on a basic level, Book=First.

Try it today, or this weekend. Let me know how it goes.

Sorry I’m so late with this. The winner of the Box ‘O Goodies from August 19th is….

Maude Clare!

Maude, send me your snail mail address via joleigh AT joleigh DOT com, and I’ll send out your box of fun!