This is clearly good advice, which I ignore (obviously), written by Margaret H. Bonham.

Following up on loads of questions asked by folks here, one question lt260 asked was: Do you have a 12-step program for gaining good writing habits?

You know, with the amount of writing I do, you’d figure that I wouldn’t need this so-called 12 step program, but the reality is sometimes even the best authors don’t write as much as they should. But, of course, I don’t follow many rules, so these are my 15 step program for gaining good writing habits. So, here are my recommendations for gaining good writing habits.

1. Apply butt to chair; fingers to keyboard (or pen to paper). Seriously, most writers don’t write because they fail to just sit down and write. Sitting down and putting yourself if the position to write will at least get you to the medium you intend to write on. After that, the rest is up to you.

read the rest ….

Yesterday I used the ‘snowflake method’ to write a single sentence description of a novel, and then expand that into a paragraph providing more detail. I actually quite like the idea I wrote, it’s something that’s been knocking around in my head for a few weeks. But I can’t help the feeling that ‘I am not worthy’ and that I should leave writing to the people who know what they’re doing.

I guess that’s the internal critic people talk about, telling me I’m not able to do it, and that I should learn how to tune it out and just get on with the writing and see what develops. Maybe I will. The next stage in the method is to write up some information on each of the characters, quite a lot of information and that will prove to be a challenge. Although I think I’m up to it. There are some technical difficulties with elements of the plot and I wonder how much attention I should pay to those at the beginning and if I should just ignore them and work them out as I go along. It’s possible that I’m getting hung-up on those issues due to some sekrit internal critic plot to stop me doing anything (this is main theory #1) so I’m going to try and not worry about them. They’ll either work out or not, and if they don’t I can try different things.

Still early, only just gone 8:08. Played a little Resident Evil 4 on the Wii, I like the control system. It’s pleasing that they managed to use the Wii features and not just rely on the standard controller. Playing it on easy, I suck at computer games in general, and got to an early section where some Evil Dudes[tm] were lobbing what looked like sticks of dynamite[1] at me, and inevitably I stumbled and went the wrong way and didn’t shoot the right guy and got blown up, maybe I’ll have another go later.

[1] is it dynamite these days? Does anyone still use that? I guess they do, a quick check reveals it’s considered to be a high explosive. Ooh I learned a new thing, the difference between low explosives and high explosives. Low explosives undergo deflagration (i.e. propagates through burning) where-as high explosives detonate rather than deflagrate.