While I was in the shark tank, I made some notes at the end of my marathon days. Here are the results of day 1:
Locking yourself in a room to write is a lot like sensory deprivation. When you cut off the outside world, the internet, your phone, your friends and family, you’re left with three things.
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Body: You become aware of any ailments or diseases you might have or think you have or fear you have. Your arthritis will be ten times worse. Your diabetes will have you feeling drunk and exhausted. Your back pain will have you howling by the end of your first thousand words.
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Mind: All your psychoses, your depression, your mommy issues, your panic attacks will rear their ugly heads. You’ll be taking double doses of your favorite anti depressants just to shut the voices in your head up long enough to listen to the voices in your head that tell you your stories.
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Spirit: Your faith in yourself as a writer will be tested to its limits. Can you even write? Are you wasting your time typing all of these words? Will anyone even want to read this book? All these hours wasted, will the editor even accept your manuscript?
I planned my latest writing marathon the way I always do. I block off three days several weeks in advance with the understanding that I’ll rent a sleezebag motel in a city far enough away that quitting in the middle of the session would be more of a pain in the ass than just sticking the whole thing through. Generally this method produces good results. So far three of my books have been written this way. And all three have received above average reviews.
But at the last minute, I had a change of heart. I’m not exactly in financial trouble, but the idea of dropping a couple of hundred bucks to write a book that will probably only ever make me a couple of hundred bucks suddenly seemed rather silly. So when my day came to shut off the outside world and start dumping words to page, I elected to have my very first at home marathon.
I have software on my laptop that allows me to lock my web browsers down for as long as I want. I set it to 72 hours and turned off my phone before I went to sleep the night before the marathon was to begin.
Seems like such a simple thing, doesn’t it? Why don’t I just turn my phone back on or uninstall then reinstall my browsers? It’s just simple psychology. Or at least it is with me. As long as I put a single barrier between myself and the outside world, I have all the willpower necessary to stay focused and get the work done. But one flashing notification on my phone, or one click of a mouse to open a web browser and it’s facebook rants, PMs with pretty girls and porn city all day long.
Now on the other side of day 1 (with a possible several hours still left in the air after I write this, depending on how tired I am) I can say that these simple barriers to the internet and my phone have allowed me to accomplish ten times (and counting) my average output in a day, even while dangerously staying withing the comforting walls of my own apartment.
Just like that. I’ve smashed through page after page, and I’m not even pushing myself today. There’s no sense in blowing your load on day 1 to try to get an impressive word count if it’s just going to slow you down in the waning hours of day 3.
Writing is exactly like running in that respect. Pace is everything. Start slow and build up to a comfortable pace. Time yourself by the hour and try to maintain a comfortable word count throughout the day. Soon you’ll find the pages melting away effortlessly while a typical day might yield you half or less pages you’re able to do on a marathon day.
I find that when left with nothing but the irrational fears of my bodily health, the emotional scars of my past, and the self doubt about my abilities as a writer, I’ve only allowed myself one direction to move. Like a rat in a maze moves ever toward the cheese, I zero in on my story and do my best to leave all of my real life baggage behind. If my only options are to confront my life choices or tell a story, I will choose telling a story every time.
Day 1 of a three day writing binge in the books, so to speak.
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