Let me bite you with my truth tooth (what am I talking about?):
- I am a corporate writer in real-life.
- I write all day, come home and then write at night.
My output is usually about 2k+ words a day when combined, and yes, my butt is very enormous from all of that sitting down. “But, by god Mintie! How are you so productive after working a full day of writing for corporate reasons?!” you cry, spitting wine all over your computer screen. Calm down, Boris, and I’ll tell you.
Let’s pretend writing is a formula, and that I am an alchemical genius who continues to produce gold from goat turds. Here are the ingredients to my wonderful success:
Ingredient #1: Word Count
Consider that Stephen King writes about 2k a day, and Hemingway 500 words. You should be aiming your mark for somewhere in between there; pick a number that feels like a comfortable little task without feeling like NaNo WriMo. You might pick 666, for instance, if you love the Devil. Or 777 if you love God? I don’t know.
My number is 500 a day for all personal projects, which means erotica. I give myself a thinking break every 100 words, and walk around my house saying “I AM THE BEST.” I write on Christmas, I write on my birthday, I never stop. And if by some chance a bunch of hunks break into my house, steal me, and make me go to Disneyland all day, then I catch up the next with 1k words.
A daily word count is the most important thing. It makes you accountable, it gives you a tangible hill to climb, and it keeps you from feeling overwhelmed at the bottom of a huge hill of writing. Just a tiny bit will do.
Ingredient #2: Cruelty
Never wait until the Muse strikes. The Muse is a lie made up by artists who had rich patrons back in the day, so they could gamble money on horses instead of writing or painting. Really, the Muse is a Capitalist fairy tale devised by comfortable, gouty rich people.
Sit your butt down and write. Don’t make yourself feel special with fancy pens and expensive coffee. Even if you are on a sinking ship and the love of your life is trapped in a lower cabin, just pull out your laptop and hit that word count before you go save them.
Nothing is worse than an artist who babies themselves. If you force yourself to work, Maybe 80% of what you write will be embarrassing, but that means at least 20% will be worth a Pulitzer, maybe.
If you don’t write anything, then you’ve written nothing. -Mintie Price (me)
Ingredient #3: Dreams
This year, my goal is to create a content empire of pornography, as well as an active blog with horrific content like this. Each day, I pick at this huge goal. Pick pick pick. I only do a little bit at a time, but my dreams keep me going. I dream about sitting in a huge jacuzzi with a hunk rubbing my feet and a dang old glass of expensive Scotch in my hand. And all of this will be paid for by my three million erotica stories on Amazon, each sold for .99.
Get some dreams. Smell those dreams.
Every night, spoon your dreams.
Think about the Bronte sisters, as I often do. They wrote like crazy on that windy moor with all of the graveyards around their freezing ass house. But they all dreamed, maybe about hunks, and kept writing. When no one wanted to publish their poems about death, they self-published and paid the money. And then at last, they wrote themselves into fame. They wrote themselves into their dreams. Let’s just pretend they didn’t die of disease shortly after.
Now Combine These Ingredients
Think about how much work you could have accomplished already, writing 500 words a day for a year. YOU COULD HAVE WRITTEN 182,500 WORDS. You could have written a chunk of War and Peace every night, instead of spending those 30 minutes watching Wheel of Fortune. I’m so mad at you, I could smack you.
Follow my recipe and enjoy the alchemical gold that was once your own goat turds.
Mintie Price 