I started Send My Love to Anyone January 2021 when I was suffering from severe writer’s block. I had a book on contract, and I was really stuck. So I started a newsletter thinking it would force me to write, which did! But better than doing my own writing it allowed me to share the work of others which kept me going and inspired.
And I'm happy to say I finished the book which was published in September 2023.
Now I’m working on a new project, a novel, and I’m feeling the same panic that I did when I was working on my story collection. For me, the fear of a new project just never goes away.
My new attempt to deal with it is to just commit to ten minutes a day. That’s all I have to do. Ten minutes a day. Hopefully I’ll do more, but I will have reached my goal if I just interact with my novel ten minutes a day.
I tried doing word counts before, and it never worked for me, so I’m hoping this approach will get me some movement without being overly structured.
I would love to write fiction. I used to write smut. I have a short story collection and a novella in the world and another draft of a novel and numerous starts of novels . But...I can't get grants for fiction, only for poetry. I have to make money. To be honest I prefer not to write within genre boundaries at all. If I had time and didn't have to make money I would work on this thing called Companion Reader, a response to stuff around me in the form of letters, memoir, essays, poems, dialogue, theatre, collage,doodles and visual poems. I also have a collection of essays/memoir about health, polyamory etc in the works called Gutless Wonder that I can't get funding for either. It needs a good editor.
I'm enjoying working on a long poem about loathing winter that I'll apply for grants with. I do like writing poetry. It's my main thing. Your 10 minutes a day plan is a good reminder that maybe I can spend 10 minutes daily on one thing I want to write. It's such a drag being broke.
I started Send My Love to Anyone January 2021 when I was suffering from severe writer’s block. I had a book on contract, and I was really stuck. So I started a newsletter thinking it would force me to write, which did! But better than doing my own writing it allowed me to share the work of others which kept me going and inspired.
And I'm happy to say I finished the book which was published in September 2023.
Now I’m working on a new project, a novel, and I’m feeling the same panic that I did when I was working on my story collection. For me, the fear of a new project just never goes away.
My new attempt to deal with it is to just commit to ten minutes a day. That’s all I have to do. Ten minutes a day. Hopefully I’ll do more, but I will have reached my goal if I just interact with my novel ten minutes a day.
I tried doing word counts before, and it never worked for me, so I’m hoping this approach will get me some movement without being overly structured.
What works for you?
I would love to write fiction. I used to write smut. I have a short story collection and a novella in the world and another draft of a novel and numerous starts of novels . But...I can't get grants for fiction, only for poetry. I have to make money. To be honest I prefer not to write within genre boundaries at all. If I had time and didn't have to make money I would work on this thing called Companion Reader, a response to stuff around me in the form of letters, memoir, essays, poems, dialogue, theatre, collage,doodles and visual poems. I also have a collection of essays/memoir about health, polyamory etc in the works called Gutless Wonder that I can't get funding for either. It needs a good editor.
I'm enjoying working on a long poem about loathing winter that I'll apply for grants with. I do like writing poetry. It's my main thing. Your 10 minutes a day plan is a good reminder that maybe I can spend 10 minutes daily on one thing I want to write. It's such a drag being broke.
Thanks for sharing Amanda. Love the title Gutless Wonder! I also prefer no genre boundaries too!