Molasses... Snails... Children at Bedtime...

Turtles... The last five minutes of the workday... My writing...

Sometimes I think writing is not so much a journey as a steeplechase. I find myself writing along, thinking I'm doing alright and then, BAM, there's this giant hurdle in my prose - unnecessary adverb usage that just has to be surmounted, or writing realistic dialogue, or how the crud do I plot this thing, anyway? And just when I think I've gotten over one obstacle and take a  few steps on firm literary ground, BAM, I recognize some other hedge holding back my writing.

My latest barrier is the speed of my writing, which, as you may have surmised from the title of this post, is

SLOW

Not a little tardy, but S... L... O... W...

Stephen King writes 2k every morning without fail (except maybe that one time he got hit by that car). Shannon Hale has a sitter come over four days a week, locks herself in her room and forces herself to write for hours. She consistently publishes a book a year. Thousands of people doing NaNoWriMo somehow find the gumption to write 1,667 words every day in November.

The truth is, professional writers put words on paper in a regular, dependable way. And to become like them, I'd better do it, too.

So, if my hurdle is your hurdle, here are a few tips I've picked up recently to help with consistency, substance and output:

On why a bowl of coco-crunchies and visiting that website for the 10th time in the last 15 minutes may seem more important than putting words on the page but really isn't:
"Is the Fear Monster Eating Your Words?" from Amanda Hannah over at YA Highway

A few reasons why writing consistently is essential:
EveryDay

A reason to keep you writing right now:
Write or Die

And the icing on the cake...(I'm using ellipses a lot today, aren't I?)... I linked previously to this great post by Rachel Aaron about how she bumped her writing up from an already amazing 2k per day to an astounding 10k. Well, Lindsay Smith (whose blog I've just run across, and love), has gone one better. In the spirit of  Couch to 5k, she's hosting
Block to 2k
She's up to week 4, but it's never too late to join in.
I am.

hth