Wordcount vs. Waiting for Inspiration

The Year of Our Lad (as some folks here in the Boston, MA, area might pronounce it) 2015 has been a toughie for this writer so far. It's been tough getting going after the daze of Xmas/New Year's/etc. I had been turning out (or turning in?) some words on my novel most days, but, so far this year, I've only really had one productive day. So I got a bit mopey about it on Facebook, and ...

Most of my writer friends understand the battle. You want to get into a routine. You want to produce every day (of course you want what you produce to be great, but you also just want to Get Stuff Done). If it ain't great, you can always revise it to be so at some point down the road.

But others - even a few writers - will say "only do it (write) when you're inspired." "You don't want to turn out half-hearted crap."

And they've got a point. I don't.

So how to strike a balance? How to keep momentum going ... keep in practice ... while not turning writing into a chore or "necessary evil," like exercise can be?

I'm not sure I've got an answer. In fact, I'd love suggestions. I will say that I've sometimes made progress by just doing it and not really paying attention to whether I'm making progress or not. And then I look back and see that, yeah, I've made some progress. It's been like that the past few months. NaNoWriMo came along for November, and, while I knew I wouldn't be able to really participate, I decided to TRY and turn out some words every day. I didn't, but I did it most days. And, in the process, I put down about 10,000 words in November. That's not an astounding amount, but it definitely blew away what I usually did. And I did a lot in December, too.

And then I hit January, and ... thud. Hardly anything. What gives?

Anyhow ... I've been in this game long enough to know I'll figure it out, at least I'll figure some of it out. I'll be writing again and getting some great words down. It's just a matter of when and how. But there are some "blocks" I have in general that I'd love to defeat ... perfectionism being the biggest. Anyone else have problems like these? What do you do?

I'll close this entry with a couple of requests: If you like this blog, consider following, please, so I know you're interested. Also, if you've read either my book or short story, which are both available on Amazon, please, please, please leave at least a short review ... even one sentence.

A writer likes to know someone is reading. Sure, we dream up/live these stories for ourselves, but the main reason to write them down is to share them with others!

THANKS!