Boice mentions a writing tactic that I always fail to use despite being able to start it at any time. Rule #4 states, "Practice a regular habit of writing to instil reliable motivation." Although he insists on having only one l in "instill", this rule still rings true and the writer who can take its pith and put it into production will be rewarded.
Hypomania, as Boice hints, has a romantic quality to it. Some of the writers question if Boice has ever been through such harrowing and exhilarating moments of hypomania, and they exalt the marathon session. One of my profs had mentioned writing a twenty page paper in one sitting--two pots of coffee and half a carton of cigarettes later he had his essay in hand. As disgusting as that sounds, I can't help but admire him and stand in awe of his accomplishment.
Regimented writing feels mundane and unsexy compared to an all-nighter--a story about finishing a twenty page paper in two month's time is not riveting. But regimented writing is so useful that I am kicking myself now for not creating a schedule already. My most successful times as a writer--admittedly there are few--were when I had to write every single night. Not surprisingly, I was writing for different courses and for different people each night, which caused me to be more relaxed about writing. I like to think of writing as a building muscle memory. Like the NBA center who practices his free throws every day, we too need to do something involving writing everyday in order to build our writing muscles.
I enjoyed that Boice is grounded and understands that writers won't fully dive into a writing regimen. Fifteen minutes a day seems reasonable. It may not seem as magical like hypomania, but it seems healthier and more realistic.
I can't quite figure out how to post in this site so I'm just posting this as a comment instead of an actual post:
ReplyDeleteI have found Boice’s Rule #2 to be the most intuitive and yet most difficult to implement of all his proposed strategies. His recommendation to “begin before feeling fully ready or inspired (because motivation comes most reliably in the wake of involvement)” makes perfect sense and is something I have heard in various forms from several professors. However, whenever I have tried to begin writing before feeling ready, I rarely used the writing I then produced in the final essay and then felt as if I had wasted my time.
The problem for me was not that I felt I was writing without inspiration or motivation, but that I had yet to find a suitable structure to govern my essay. I find it incredibly difficult to write without such a structure in place, which is why constructing an outline for a paper is typically how I spend the bulk of my time and energy in the process of writing a paper. Having read Boice’s article, however, I feel I should revisit the idea of writing before having a structure in place and then attempting to discover the structure in the process.