How Do I Motivate Myself to Write—Brandon Sanderson

[Music] how do i motivate myself to write well this is a really interesting question i don't always talk about this in class so i'm glad you brought it up right now you should be motivated to write for some of you by the fact that you have to turn in assignments um don't feel bad if you need external motivation to make you do things one of my big sort of philosophies in life is success in all aspects of life can often be traced to learning how to make yourself do the things you want to have done right that's that's what adulting is about i'm explaining to my 13 year old as you become adult the job your job as a teenager to figure out how to have done things um how to make yourself do the things that you want to have done and the trick is every human being is motivated in slightly different ways and exploring what motivates you and what makes you create the things that you want to have created is a wonderful thing to be working on throughout the course of your life for me i am motivated i noticed very much by kind of uh watching numbers count up i'm the first video game generation right the first generation of people who had ataris and nintendo's when they were kids and video games are very good at exploiting this watching your little bar count toward the next level is basically like the entire thing for video games but it's also there in books i always like watching how many pages are left in a book i like knowing what percent of the book i'm through that gives me natural motivation to finish it when i realized this i started keeping track of my daily word counts and having a spreadsheet says this is how much i did today this is how much i finished per hour and this is what percent i am done of this font book by projection those of you who are fans of my work and visit my website might know that there's a progress bar counting up on my website to the finishing of my books this is because my project process naturally lends me to this i always know what percent i am through a book at least in a rough you know guesstimate um usually for a shorter book i'm using a hundred thousand words as the guesstimate um and for a stormlight book i'm using four hundred thousand they are big um this works really well for me if i naturally record my daily word count then i am naturally motivated to make that number go higher uh sometimes a little bit of carrot also helps with me saying the sooner you hit this word count goal you have for the day the sooner you can then go do this other thing you want to do um that works pretty well for me as well and this this really is handy because i can then project how long it will take to write a book um i can say i want to have this book done by this date because i know a new revision for another book is coming in or something and i can actually just have the spreadsheet split out how much i would need to do per workday to do that that becomes my word count goal i shoot for that if i've made that and still want to write i can but if i've made that and i'm feeling tired of writing then i can go do something else um which still might be work related but switching projects can be very exciting for me so that might work for you it might not work at all i have friends that an external deadline is just essential for helping them be productive this is one of the values of writing groups or having a writing partner or having a cheering section in your family even maybe that sort of external validation and thing uh and and um external motivation is important for you don't feel bad everyone is different um not everyone is motivated by the same things if it makes you do the things you want to have done and it keeps a good life work hobby balance for you in your life then it's probably a good thing that you should invest in and learn how to do that consistently it'll serve you very well in all aspects of your life some people it's a stick they say the carrot and the stick the stick can be unless i meet my word count goal i can't do this or if i fail to meet my world count goal i must email my entire writing group and say i didn't meet it today and they have already been told not to say that's okay they've been told to say you can't have any chocolate today and then i don't get any chocolate um right like whatever it is for you figure out what it is practice that refine it and use it being successful in life is partially about hacking your brain

Channel: Brandon Sanderson

Views: 80,268

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Id: UMI21xuZB5U

Length: 5min 7sec (307 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021