Adrenaline

by Morgan Barnhart

As writers, there are few times when we get to feel the adrenaline kick in. Let's face it, sitting in front of the computer screen/note pad isn't life threatening. Unless the computer decides to short circuit or your pencil breaks and the lead flies into your eye, or heaven forbid you get a paper cut, those things hurt!

My point is, when a deadline is approaching, I become my strongest. Of course it's better to play it safe and just write as many words a day as needed or get it done early so you don't have to worry about it later, but where's the fun in that?

For example, it's the end of November and my NaNo is only at about 10,000 words. That's pretty pathetic considering I only have eight days left to get to 50,000 words. I've won NaNo in many different ways, but the way that has been most effective, year after year, has been when I'm down to the last few days of the month and I need to kick out 30,000 words. A bag full of sugar to my left, coffee to my right and iTunes geared up; I'm ready to kick some novel butt.

Nothing can top that kind of rush.

While some may argue that writing under that kind of "stress" causes your writing to falter since you just write down whatever is on your mind whether it has to do with the story or not, I beg to differ. Writing under that kind of pressure releases new ideas in which you never would have thought of under a calm mind set.

This technique may not work for everyone considering everyone handles pressure in different ways. You also have to be disciplined enough to actually push yourself to that limit and get the writing done no matter the cost.

So let's get that adrenaline pumping!