Training For The Marathon

Have you ever sat down and written for three or four hours straight? 

I haven't.  I mean, besides college or law school when I was writing a paper or studying for an exam.  Even in all these years working as an attorney, I'm not sure if I ever actually wrote something nonstop for that long.  Usually, there are breaks between the writing where you talk to people, you check e-mails, you research stuff, you go back and read or edit what you have written already.  For me, especially for the legal work, the reading and editing of material was much more time consuming that the writing of it.

I have a feeling that it's the same with being a writer.  That re-writing and crafting is probably the more time consuming part.  But you have to actually write a lot first to have enough material that you can go back and piece together for a real story that flows and reads nicely. 

And to have that, I'm going to have to get used to writing at least a few hours every day.  The author that recently got back to me with advice said that she writes anywhere form 3 to 6 hours EVERY DAY!

Oh my God!  That's a lot of writing.  I've been thinking about it a lot and I realized that the most I've done in terms of creative non-fiction writing is maybe an hour or so at a time.  The rest of the time I was thinking about it and then going back and re-reading and editing the short pieces that I'd written.

It's like running I guess.  The more you train, the longer you can go.  You can't just start off running 20 mile race if you haven't even ran a single mile in years. 

I'm starting the training today.  I'm going to see how long I can just write the stories that I intend to share.

Wish me luck. 

P.S. If you hadn't guessed it, this post is me procrastinating after my first 20 minutes of writing.  :)