My credo, divorced from reality:
Don't brag about your lightning fiction writing pace,
for Slow and Steady won the fiction publishing race.

I recently read an online article on "Book Writing Tips to Speed Write Your Book for Maximum Sales Sooner". It inspired me to write my own article on writing habits.

It's all about the journey and not the destination, they say. I've taken that to heart in the fiction writing arena. I enjoy and savor the writing of a story so much that it takes about three years to finish a short story. I am able to achieve this remarkable feat through the art of slow writing.

Where are you in writing your story? If you are almost finished after several years, my slow writing tips may help you before you finish prematurely. You owe it to everyone else to procrastinate as much as possible before it sees the light of day.

For years, I rattled off short stories of all types. No more; now I write my stories timidly and slowly.

Here's some story writing tips to help you slow write your book into oblivion and spare the general reading public:

1. Setup a regular writing schedule. Can you fit 7-10 hours a week in? If so, take half that number of hours. If not, half the number of hours you can fit in for your writing. Keep reducing the number of hours in your schedule in half until you only have a enough time to power up your computer and start your word processor. Go have a snack or visit a funny web site.
   
2. Forget about your reader. The reader is only important to completed and published stories. The only purpose of slow writing is too avoid that at all costs.
   
3. Set yourself up for failure by not planning. If you have to have a goal, make it something like "At some point this week, I will think about writing something soon."
   
4. Break your writing into short sections, a few words, five or six, every few weeks.
   
5. If a simple word will do, use a much longer and complex one. If necessary, consult a thesaurus to find just the right word. Consult multiple thesauruses.
   
6. Spend a good deal of time researching. You needn't restrict your research to relevant facts. It may suddenly become urgently important that you know the sexual habits of cuttlefish for your spy thriller.
   
7. The top way to slow write your book is Act Later. Succumb to paralysis and fear. Welcome writer's block.
   
8. Focus like an incandescent light bulb. Become a diffuse array of light, your attention scattered over writing, house cleaning, important TV watching and Internet surfing.

If you use these story writing tips to avoid finishing too quickly, you may be fortunate enough to be working on the same story this time next year working on the same book project. Finish slow; enjoy the journey.