Writing your book one day at a time

By Dennis Mellersh

It’s a given that if you write a certain amount every day, it will not take long for you to accumulate enough pages of manuscript to have a book. You might call this the one-day-at-a-time approach to writing.

There is also an important psychological benefit for you as a writer in keeping your writing life in day-tight compartments. Writing is one of those professions that can entail a lot of emotion, and it’s sometimes negative emotion.

Some days you may feel that you are failing in your writing objectives and that your book will never materialize. But remember, that’s just how you are feeling on a given day; today the writing may not be going well, but tomorrow could be a day when the words flow effortlessly.

If you read the biographies, autobiographies, and journals of professional writers, or watch their videos on YouTube, you will find that, invariably, they all say that they have good days in their writing and days that are unproductive, when the words just don’t happen. Professional writers recognize that at such times, forcing the writing usually is counterproductive…so they take a break by reading, doing some research, or finding a distraction of some sort to take their minds off their work.

As a writer, you could take a lesson from professional athletes, such as baseball players. They know that they are not going to be 100% every day. If they can have days when they win 65% of the time as a team, they are doing exceptionally well. In the art of hitting in baseball, being productive 30% of the time, or batting for a 300 average is considered excellent.

They key point is to show up every day at your writing place, whether that happens to be on any given particular day a desk in your home, sitting in a coffee shop, a park bench, or jotting ideas in your notebook while waiting for a doctor’s appointment.

Just show up and write, take the good days with the bad or seemingly unproductive days, and you will soon have a book. And remember, even on the “bad” days, you will still be learning something about writing a book. Little “failures” for a writer are lessons in themselves.

It's all part of becoming a writer.