Letting Go Of The Chain

"Will I give up the chain someday even while continuing a daily writing routine? I suppose it's possible. But I know that if I did give it up and then realized I was having trouble keeping to a routine, I'd want to return to using the chain to help myself get back into a groove.

In the end, the chain is just another tool to help you reach your goals. Like any tool, you can use it when it's helpful and leave it in its toolbox when it's not."

- A Time to Let Go of the Chain? (Chapter 11, Write Every Day)

I've been considering this for a while, off and on. But I've decided to make it official with the start of 2013. I'm no longer going to be formally maintaining a Daily Writing Chain.

Announcing "Write Every Day" by Michael Haynes

(Cross-posted from the "Write Every Day" blog.)

Late last summer I started a daily writing routine, based on motivational techniques described by Jerry Seinfeld. One of my first blog posts was about starting this routine, or chain, and it's still one of my most popular posts. The central concept is quite simple:

You get a big wall calendar (or some other visible equivalent) and a bold marker. Commit to some goal which you will achieve every day. Then, when you've met each day's goal, put an "X" in the calendar for the day. Quickly, you'll have a chain of "X"s and then all you have to do, in Seinfeld's words, is "Don't Break the Chain."

I've been writing every day since I started my daily writing chain and I'm quickly coming up on a year since I started my daily writing chain. Along the way, I've learned quite a few things about how I write and ways to help keep myself into this daily routine.

Earlier this year, Australian author Valerie Parv asked me when I was going to develop my thoughts around this way of establishing a daily writing routine into a something larger than several blog entries. I hadn't thought about that seriously before her suggestion, but soon afterwards I started working on the outline of a short book around the idea of writing every day and the tools I've used to help make it possible.

And now, that book is (almost) here. Next Monday, June 25th, I'll be launching "Write Every Day" on Amazon for the Kindle. You don't have to wait for the 25th, though!  I'll select five people who sign up for my Write Every Day mailing list between now and 11:59 PM (EDT) on Thursday June 21st and send them a free pre-release review PDF.

Along with the release of "Write Every Day" I'll be publishing daily blog posts relating to helping keep your daily writing routine going. Most of these will be very short, such as a writing prompt or two for writers who are feeling stuck, but there will be at least one longer post each week.

Thanks for stopping by to read my announcement!

The Seinfeld Chain Revisited

This is going to be the 100th post on my blog and I thought it would be a good time to look back at one of my most popular posts "The Seinfeld Chain."

If you're not familiar with the concept, the idea is simple... You set a goal for something that you're going to do every day. In my case, that's write 500 words. Then, each day when you meet that goal, you put an X on a calendar. After a few days, you have a chain. And then, in the words of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, your job is simple. "Don't Break The Chain!"

I officially started my chain on September 1st, 2011. As you can see below, I've been able to keep the chain going on a regular basis. Each box through yesterday has a nice little X in it. (EDITED TO ADD: Someone asked me in the comments where I get the calendar templates. I get them from this site: http://myboatclub.com/2012/avycalendar2012_Month.htm.)

134 days and counting!

More about how I use the Chain past the jump...

On Persistence

Tuesday night I did not want to write. My shoulder hurt, I was tired, and we'd just watched (another) frustrating defeat of the local Columbus Blue Jackets.

In and of itself, not wanting to write one evening wouldn't be an awful thing. But I hadn't been able to devote lunch time to writing on Tuesday either. So, I was facing the prospect of either getting down to writing anyway or having to use my "mulligan" in my Seinfeld Chain. That's something I haven't done yet. In fact, I had noted on Monday that with 30 days in September, 31 in October, and 14 so far in November that I had a 75-day chain of writing 500 words or more every day.

The more I thought about using my mulligan, I really didn't want to do it. What if I ended up really sick one day and couldn't even get out of bed? I'd regret having using my mulligan just because I was feeling kind of tired and achy one night.

Tackling my NaNo project right then seemed daunting, though. So I said "Well, I've got a flash fiction to be writing for Friday, from Nellie's prompt. I guess I'll start on that." And I did that and when I wrapped up the first draft of that I was at 400 words and change.

If I was the type of person to say "Fiddlesticks", then I'm sure that's what I would have said at that point. But, stubbornly, I opened up my NaNo project. After all, how hard could it be to add 100 words to it and hit my 500. I could do that in just a few minutes. And an hour later I had another 1000 words on my project including some stuff I really like.

So I ended up with a first draft of a flash fiction and 2% of my NaNo work for the month. All because I didn't want to break my chain. No, this method won't work for everyone. But it's worked really well for me.

One Size Doesn't Fit All

There's a lot of writing advice out there. If you add up all of the blogs with tips on writing, editing, querying, ePublishing, and more I'm sure there's enough every day to fill a good-sized book. It can get overwhelming trying to make your way through all of the information. You're wanting to tell your story, and you've got dozens of "Do"s and "Don't"s floating through your head, crowding out your characters, plot, and dialogue. What's more, you can easily find one person touting an approach that worked for them and another suggesting that writers should do the exact opposite.

There's a simple explanation for this. Not every tip is going to work for every writer. In fact, I'd go so far as to say for every writing suggestion, there's at least one writer that it just won't work for.

Sunday Links : September 4, 2011 Edition

I don't think I've ever explicitly stated my blogging schedule in full. I post new items every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Every other week, the Wednesday post previews the new Dissecting the Short Story entry and Friday is the full dissection. Sundays I post links to new articles from the week that I found interesting and also recap the week on my blog.

Now, to the links!

The Seinfeld Chain

One of my first blog entries talked about how "Writing Begets Writing" and NOT writing begets not writing. I'm really committed to maintaining the momentum I've built up in the last month around my writing. Some days it feels like the easiest, most natural thing in the world. Other days it can feel like a real drag -- the words don't want to come on a new story, the story I'm going through an edit on feels like it's just not working, etc.

So I'm looking for ways to help myself keep writing. I've already talked about one of the techniques, using peer pressure as a way to keep myself writing, not wanting to have to tell people "Yeah, I guess I sort of set that aside for now." (Again.)

Getting into the Twitter and blog world has been helpful, too. I spend lots of non-writing time thinking about writing and discussing writing with other people. There's a hazard, though, that I could end up spending all my time talking about writing instead of actually writing. That's a balance that I'm trying to carefully calibrate. (Hmm... Could that be foreshadowing of a future blog post?)

My third approach to holding myself accountable to my own writing goals will be The Seinfeld Chain.

Writing Begets Writing

This isn't exactly a novel thought.  A google search for the phrase "writing begets writing" comes back with quite a few results. There are a lot fewer hits, though, for the equally true converse "NOT writing begets NOT writing."

For me, at least, it's incredibly easy to NOT write.  I've repeatedly gone years without doing any serious writing at all.  Then something will spark me to start writing again, and all of a sudden, I'll be at it full-tilt. Until something comes along and I stop writing and start not-writing.

I've gone through this off-and-on cycle as far back as I can remember.  I dabbled at lots of various juvenile writing when I was, well, a juvenile.  Then around my senior year of high school, something led me to start writing. A lot.  Just in the last few days, I found my old folder of (handwritten) records of story and poetry submissions to magazines in the 1990-1992 timeframe. There were probably over a hundred submissions, in all, for around two dozen different works.  (I've always been surprised when a professional writer indicates that they've forgotten about something they wrote. I guess I shouldn't be surprised any more. Several of the titles I'd written on those pages meant absolutely NOTHING to me.)

Then, around early 1992, I just stopped writing, other than papers for my classes. But, from time to time, I'd start back up in a burst of activity.  One summer was spent in part working with two co-writers on an epic comedy screenplay.  (This, most likely, did not play to my strengths as a writer. But it was an interesting experience all the same.)  Probably the second most-sustained amount of writing I've done was in 2007. I wrote quite a few new short stories during that time, a couple of which have been published.

For a while during late-2007 I was doing a "Seinfeld chain" where I wrote at least 500 words every day.  I wrote the longest story I've ever written then -- a mystery of about 9000 words.  Then I hit a bit of a dry patch.  For a few days I said "Well, I'll do revising on some of the things I've written, and I'll give myself credit for that."  My self saw through that ruse real quickly and said "Hey, we're back to NOT writing now. Groovy."

And that, mostly, is where things sat until recently. I was still occasionally looking at my submission log (now in a nice spreadsheet) and sending out what I'd written, but there were even long lags in this activity.

In the last few weeks, I've written two new stories, come up with an idea for NaNoWriMo, made notes on another story, and done some moderately-heavy revisions to one of those 2007 stories.  Clearly, the switch is back to ON.

So, why write all this?  Heck if I know.  I'm writing now, right?  So, I guess I'm writing about writing. And hopefully some of my friends are reading this, and they'll ask me from time to time "So, how's the writing going?" Maybe that will help me keep from going back to NOT writing.