Participating in NaNoWriMo? Molly Peacock says if you want time to write, make time to write
November is National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo. The annual event, which started in 1999, challenges people to write a novel that is 50,000 words in length in 30 days.
With all that writing to do, staying motivated is no easy feat, but CBC Books is here to help. We're publishing two writing tips each week to support and inspire you along the way.
This writing tip is from poet, essayist and fiction writer Molly Peacock.
"One thing I hear from writers is that they don't have time to write. But I give an assignment when I teach a 'sonnet studio' workshop where I ask the writers to write a 14-line poem. I give them 20 minutes. Just about everyone finishes. What if you set a clock for 20 minutes and asked yourself to compose 14 lines? Everyone has 20 minutes at some point during a day — it's only a third of a lunch hour! A book can get written steadily. Just think, if you wrote those 14 lines five days a week, you'd have material for a book by the end of a year. I'm not saying to get up at 4:30 a.m. like Anthony Trollope. After all, Trollope had a servant who got up at 4:00 a.m. and made him tea! But writing on a lunch hour is possible. It's possible with breakfast. It's possible instead of watching the news. The news will catch up with you, and so will all the tasks of your day. But if you write first, then the whole day shakes out differently: you know who you are."