“How do I do this? How do YOU do this? How does it get done, this book-writing, storytelling thing? I keep starting and stopping, getting distracted, getting bored, getting broken…. what’s the secret?”
The following paragraph has long resided in the sidebar of my Livejournal blog. Some days (weeks, months, years) it’s useful to shake it out and look at it again.
You sit down. You tell a story. You do it any damn way it comes out that works consistently for you. You hope people like it. You hope people pay you for it. You do it again. And again. That’s all I got. Zen and the Art of Writer Maintenance. You can cheer me on and I can cheer you on, but in the end? In the end it’s down to how you get your getting done, done. So get it done.
You still need specifics? Ass in chair (or feet planted on the ground). Fingers on the letters (or wrapped around a pen). Small goals over and over again until you’re done. Everything else is personal, and subject to change as the writer changes. Stop looking at me. Write.