A member of my mini-course has just asked me a delightful question. How do you motivate yourself to write each day if you're struggling to hold down a job plus do the household chores?

Specifically, how do I keep writing - 3000 words a day - when at my age of 65 I should be growing heirloom tomatoes, she asked me? (I did that for ten years and grew so many tomatoes I traded them at the pub for beer. Yeoman’s Organic Tomato Soup was a great hit.)

I was tempted to return her a poetical reply. (Brace yourself for poetry.)

"In retirement, I have time but time does not have me. I can go to bed at 3am and wake at noon or versa, according to my vices. I can write for 20 hours then sleep all next day. The day vanishes from my calendar but what’s a calendar? Time is in my gift. It is no longer a fiat imposed on me by others."

Isn't that beautiful? Bosh.

Truth is, I have to motivate myself, like everybody else - the boring way. I use the Three Task Trick. Every night, I write down three tasks that I must perform next day eg:
  1. read ten entries in my writing contest and add brief critiques (that’s 2000 words);
  2. write two guest posts for other people’s blogs (1000 words);
  3. hoover the spiders out of my little daughter’s Wendy house (words cannot describe the squalor of it).
Next day, if I’ve ticked all three tasks, I go to bed happy. If not, then not.

Could you use the Three Task Trick?

Task one might be to write 1000 words. Good, bad, indifferent, it doesn’t matter. Task two: brush one’s teeth. Task three: make the beds. Tick off all three; result: happiness. Miss one; result: misery - and lumpy beds. (As Mr Micawber said.)

Hm, I’ve just written 300 words. I'm well en route to finishing the second task! (One cunning way to complete your word count, as you see, is to reply to people's emails with a long passage of drivel.) You can read even more of my drivel at the Writers’ Village Academy. (Please note: its modules are far better written than this.)

http://www.writers-village.org/courses

Perhaps I’ll meet you there?