Since I am only writing notes drafts of my stories where I figure out what works and doesn't work and stuff like that, I don't want to spend a month writing each story. How can I make sure I don't take forever to write these?
Set yourself a word count goal every day and hit it. Set yourself a weekly deadline and hit it. Set yourself a biweekly deadline, whatever... just hit it. This can be x amount of words, getting a story written in a certain time period, whatever. Just set whatever goal you want along whatever timeline you want and hit it.
Writing is discipline. It is showing up for work every day, and going out to find inspiration with a club. It is coming home empty handed with no inspiration to speak of and still writing that day, because quotas.
You can't rely on inspiration. If you're tired of only putting out one story a month, set yourself up to put out a story more often. There's nothing really else to tell you. It's all on you to get the story out.
Inspiration is fickle, and no published writer I know relies on it. In order to hit deadlines, you have to write when you don't feel like it, when you don't know what to do, when you are struggling to get words out. There is something to be said about not forcing yourself to write when terribly depressed or terribly ill, but when it comes to simple "don't feel like it"s... that's a much different beast.
If you're tired of only putting out one story a month, discipline yourself to write more than one story a month.
That's the bottom line.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
To some degree, it's as simple as that. Decide that you're not going to take forever, and move on. For every story, there's a different time length. A story steeped in research might take a month, while a simple short story might only take a week. That's basically all I have to say. Over-complicating things, making things harder than they have to be is exhausting. Just write.
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