For My Paid Subscribers: Building Writing Stamina

Pearl of Writing Wisdom

If you don't schedule your sessions, you won’t write.

If you don’t write, you won’t build stamina.

If you don't build stamina, you can't write a book.

When I was writing my first book, I had to face some problematic issues like continuity and tension. I knew nothing about them. They hadn’t come into play when I was writing a story or an article. But penning an entire book with a theme, characters, and story arcs, one chapter flowing into the next and finally ending up somewhere that made sense, was brand new. I had no idea how to organize such a huge undertaking. Writing an article was a sprint but writing a book was a marathon. Did I have the stamina to get through it?

When I voiced my reservations to a journalist friend, she gave me some great advice. “At this point, don’t think about the book as a whole,” she said. “Think of each chapter as a separate story or you’ll end up in bed with the covers pulled up over your head.”

I knew that posture all too well and it sounded like she did, too.