Back when I was a screenwriter, I had to plow through a lot of revisions and rewrites. To stay in the zone of the characters, you needed a relationship with them, and like any relationship to stay current, you needed a touch every day. So that meant writing every day until you got to the finish line and typed THE END. Screenwriting is different than writing self help (which is what I write now…) I would need sometimes 8 hours of writing a day to really figure out what characters would do (I had no kids, lots of time, barely a job at the time). I needed all that time to sit and be frustrated by nothing good coming into my head, or knowing the motivation of the characters. Then I would get a hit of an idea four hours in and have to write another two or three hours. With self help, I write about I have lived and witnessed, so it flows out of me faster and the characters are the folks in general I am writing to. For my first book, abuse survivors, and now with my second book, women who need to stop asking permission for everything. My original writing and editing can be done in two hour chunks a day. Once I get into real deadline editing on later drafts, I need five hours, but that is in a shorter span of time.
To write this next book, I found that when I picked a deadline of the end of the year for the first draft, I had to get qualitative about what that meant in terms of time and page count. I figured out for a 250 page book I would need to write five pages a day to make it to the deadline. I was like, how am I going to do that when writing time can easily get engulfed on my calendar by book coaching work. I then understood that I could bring back to light what helped me write the screen plays on deadline which was this brilliant system by comedian jerry Seinfeld called Don’t Break The Chain. Jerry committed as a comedian to writing material (even one joke) every day of the week, even on weekends. He never stopped writing. Clearly it worked because he found great success as a comedian.
I decided to bring it back for my self help book writing. I printed two paper calendars old school for November and December and put them on the wall. I then started to write the chapters on a legal notepad for an hour every day. I knew that I could get the bones down on the pad and then do the typing into the computer when I was ready to do more editing and structural decisions. I am proud to say at this moment, I have written 6 days in a row, including a Saturday and Sunday, and intend to write on this book every day by December 31st. On New Years Eve, I will be celebrating the finished manuscript of my second book!
I tried to find Jerry’s original Break The Chain calendar. It was fun to download back in the day, but it no longer exists. Therefore, any kind of blank calendar will do. I do not advise doing this in your phone. The very same technology that you think will be keeping you accountable will also distract you and you will find that you have gone from the calendar blocks of writing to worrying about that other deadline for a client, or that call you didn’t make to your kid’s orthodontist about the lost retainer. The accountability needs to be on paper, taped above your writing desk and you have to actually cross Xs across the box. It has a sense of accomplishment and conquer the world when you take that action.
I have always been successful with old school visuals and mapping. When I look at an event I am planning, I need to see the schedule on paper printed to really feel into the flow of the day. When I bought my house, I had Google maps taped to the wall with zip codes circled off areas I liked. I needed to see the way I had traversed Los Angeles (which is so vast) in my search.
Use pen to paper for accountability beyond writing pages. Write out your dreams and our visions. The pen tells the truth. You cannot lie with a pen to the paper unless you are a psychopath and you are excellent at lying to yourself and others. Which most (I hope) of us are not. Step away from technology as long as you can in the incubation process of writing. Make time work in your favor not against you. Stay in the flow, stay consistent and soon you too will have a book in your hands.