One of the better tips I got was from some simple questions that King asked; if you aren't writing? What are you doing to advance your writing career or your writing in general. If you aren't reading about writing, what are you doing to become a better writer? If you aren't thinking about your writing, why not? What are you doing to become a better writer or make your writing better.
I may have mentioned once or twice before and this venue that I now have an extremely long commute every day. I have to wake up at 5:30 to commute to the other side of town, an hour long trip, and then I have at least another hour to get home. This is a lot of downtime to listen to books on tape, I suppose I should call it "Audible" now, to think about things, usually work, and to generally agonize about the day.
Lately I have been trying to train my mind to focus on my writing thanks to King. I have found it to be wonderfully productive not for actually writing but for providing some background and deepness to my writing, such as may exist there at all.
Just the other day I was on my commute when I started to think about the history of one of my main characters and his motivation that led him to do certain things. All of a sudden I was able to craft a far deeper and richer history for that main character and I look forward to putting it into the novel.
Instead of having wasted time I'm hoping to produce some valuable time for my writing. By that same token I also hoping to find a better voice to text dictation app that will allow me to actually write my novel as I drive. That still seems to be a far distant future.
