Productivity Tips for Writers

I’m always looking for ways to write faster, even though I’m pretty prolific (11 textbooks, three self-help books, and three novels out with one more coming on Friday, Memoir of Death, my first YA!) Some of the productivity tips I’m posting here are ones I routinely use and others I’ve culled from the sources listed below. 1) Planning what to write before you write it: I can easily get stuck and stop writing (or never even begin) because I don’t know what to write. It’s true that sometimes you don’t know what will come out until you start writing (i.e., No Plot, No Problem or The Artist’s Way), but it can also go the other way. I sometimes grind to a halt or get too nervous to even start because I don’t have enough direction. Rachel Aaron in her blog post (listed below) suggests that you sketch out in writing for at least five minutes what you’re going to write about. You can think about this approach as being like an artist’s. Lots of famous artists have sketches in pencil or in a smaller scale than what they ended up committing to canvas. I don’t know where writers get the idea that you have to have a perfect product once you begin writing. Instead, you can do some sketching first where you list out what might happen next, and what the characters may say to each other, or a description of where they are located. You can also do some quick bullet points of what needs to happen next and how you will get this to happen. 2) Getting out of the house: Lots of writers will attest to this trick. When you go somewhere else to write (my favorite is a Starbucks or Panera), then you are beholden after you have made the effort and paid for a latte to sit down and actually get some writing accomplished. The caffeine helps, too. If I really want to stay off the Internet, I just bring a pad with me and write longhand, leaving the computer at home. 3) Create accountability: Sometimes you need to create a facsimile of a deadline, even if no one is clamoring for your work. A critique group for which you need to prepare pages does the trick here, or pay an editor to read your chapters as you finish them. 4) Commit to five minutes of effort: Usually, getting started is the hardest part. Reassuring yourself that you only need to write for five minutes helps you circumvent this barrier. You can stand anything for five minutes, and usually, once you start, you discover that it’s easier to go longer. 5) Write the parts you’re interested or excited about or inspired to write: Start at the ending, jot down bits of dialogue, or write a hook at the end of a chapter. The point, according to blogger, Beth Hill, is to jump in during a writing session, doing what comes most easily for you rather than forcing yourself to write in a sloglike way from start to finish. As an example, what ended up as my mystery Maiming of the Shrew began as little vignettes about my children when they were young – cute things they would do or say or particularly frustrating moments. Then I built up scenes around them and added the mystery. Slowly, the mystery started to take over and eventually I reached 80,000 words. In this example, I started with parenting vignettes. Usually, my first drafts involve mostly dialogue, some interior thoughts, and a few gestures here and there. Of course, I have to go back in and layer in more description, but at least I have the bare bones to work with at that point. The hard part is pulling words from thin air, so make it as easy on yourself as possible. 6) Limit TV: This is one of my biggest productivity tips – I’m genuinely not interested in watching the shows on T.V., so I don’t have this big time suck that I know people struggle with. Although I do watch movies that we get on Netflix and that leads to the next tip … 7) Multi-task: There are tedious aspects to writing when you don’t necessarily have to be terribly creative. One of the things that I’m constantly doing is typing up what I have written longhand, or typing in editing changes I’ve made on a hard copy. This is boring to do unless I have another way of occupying myself. This is where Netflix comes in. I’ll watch movies to make the typing a bit more pleasurable. 8) Related to multi-tasking is to have multiple projects going: Then when you get stuck on one thing, you can move to the next, until you grind to a halt there, and then try something else. This works well with my academic and my creative writing. The academic writing is drier but it is based on sources (i.e., I’m not just making up what I’m writing out of thin air) but then that can get boring and I switch to the more creative side. But then making up stuff gets too hard, so I switch back to my sources and studies. 9) Eat popcorn and M and M’s: This is another one of my original tips, and I’ve recently learned that popcorn contains lots of anti-oxidants and people who eat chocolate regularly have lower body mass index, so I’ve been vindicated on this almost daily snack. While I stuff my face with a bagful of microwave popcorn, I write. This gives me both a reward for writing and helps me munch through some of the frustrations of creating. What works for you? Until the 23rd of the month, Jacqui Corcoran http://www.jacquelinecorcoran.com/ MEMOIR OF DEATH, release date May 11, 2012 Sources http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-i-went-from-writing-2000-words-day.html by Rachel Aaron http://theeditorsblog.net/2012/02/21/what-to-write-first-when-writing-fiction/ by Beth Hill http://annerallen.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-get-out-of-your-own-way-secret.html by Ruth Harris