When I had a full-time day job and could only write in my spare time, I yearned to be a full-time writer. To have all that time to write would be wonderful, wouldn’t it? And yet, after writing full time for over twenty years, I still don’t have enough time to do all the writing I want.
I often stop on June 20th, World Productivity Day, and reflect upon how I use my writing time. What steps can I take to make better use of this time? How can I be more productive as a writer? After all, we learn our craft by writing, so the more time we can devote to our writing, the better.
However, being productive isn’t just about writing more words. It’s about making better use of our limited writing time, whether we write full-time or have to fit it in around a day job and looking after the family.
Productivity Paradox
One lesson I soon learned when I became a full-time writer is that I am not creative all the time. Even though I may have eight hours a day to write, I simply cannot do it. Sometimes I have, somehow, written several thousand words in a five or six hour writing sprint. But those moments are rare.
We can’t be creative all the time. Our muse doesn’t work like that. We need inspiration, which is often found in the real world, not sat at our writing desk. In my early full-time writing days, I noted my productivity dropped as the week wore on. At the weekend, I ignored my writing, and by Monday morning I was all fired up again, only for the word counts to drop off as the week wore on.
Then I began going for a daily walk. Not only did this improve my health, but I interacted with people, made time for mindfulness, and experienced life. This gave me something to write about. As the week went on, I realised my word count remained consistent. I was writing more, even though I was at my desk less.
Paradoxically, to be more productive, we need a make time for breaks from our writing.
Pomodoro Permutations
Having a sizeable chunk of writing time can affect our productivity. Whenever I found myself with two or three hours in which to write, I would set a goal of writing an entire chapter, or producing a complete article or short story. But this pressure muted my muse, and I became frustrated because the words wouldn’t flow.
My inner editor was to blame. I’d write a paragraph, and the inner editor disliked it, so I’d delete it and start again. The Pomodoro technique is great for quietening the inner editor. Set a timer for twenty-five minutes and write without stopping to edit or re-read your work. Once the time is up, take a five-minute break, then start the next twenty-five minute session.
Romance author Bonnie Edwards (bonnieedwards.com), who has written over forty books, suggests a variation of this works well if you’re struggling to get started. Instead of twenty-five minute sessions, she picks a shorter time scale. ‘I will do very short sprints,’ she explains. ‘Fifteen minutes will work during times of stress. Short sprints are great for procrastinators.’
Often, getting any words written spurs us on to write more.
Regular Routine
Our brains are our writing muscle, and we can train them to be more productive. We are creatures of habit, and so sitting down at the same time of day can improve our productivity. Even though I’m freelance and can work whenever I like, I keep office hours. That routine helps me.
In 1990, Robert Boice published Professors as Writers, where he monitored the writing habits of twenty-seven professors and found that those who wrote every day produced three times as much as those who binge wrote.
Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages technique involves writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing upon first awakening each morning. If ever I find myself blocked or creatively exhausted, I use this technique to kick-start my creativity.
Dorothea Brande recommends something similar in Becoming A Writer. She urges writers to ‘to rise half an hour, or a full hour, earlier than you customarily rise,’ and ‘begin to write.’ The exercise is not to write anything for public consumption, although I often find some great ideas within my early morning ramblings. But as Brande explains, the exercise isn’t about content creation. ‘What you are actually doing is training yourself, in the twilight zone between sleep and the full waking state, simply to write.’
Batch Blocking
Batch blocking is an effective technique both full-time and spare-time writers can make use of. Focus on one activity-type in each block of writing time.
For example, when I’m writing my novel and realise I need to check something online, I make a note of this and continue writing. Writing time is not research time. I keep writing. Instead, I do the research when I’m next online. This stops me from falling down an internet rabbit hole and then losing valuable writing time.
Blocking my time like this helps me determine how best to use it. I focus on writing during the longest time blocks, and leave research and admin work for shorter blocks of time. This also helps me plan my days. I’m more creatively productive in the mornings, so I block them out for creating first drafts. The first few hours of the afternoon are for editing, and the last hour of my day is for admin.
My admin time is for online research, sending emails to writers I want to interview, checking my Amazon or Facebook Ads, and processing invoices.
By blocking my time like this, not only am I creating regular routines, I’m also batching similar work together, which is a more efficient way of working. This, ultimately, frees up more time for writing.
Deadline Duplicity
Of course, nothing focuses the mind more than a deadline, and heaven help me if I miss the deadline for my monthly Business of Writing piece. That’s an external deadline, which is the best type because I can’t change it. A great external deadline we can all make use of is a competition closing date. Writing competitions are useful, not only for learning our craft, but helping us focus on completing a writing project by a set time.
Disciplined writers should try imposing self-set deadlines with their work. Emma Finlayson-Palmer (X @FinlaysonPalmer), author of Autumn Moonbeam – Dance Magic, finds giving herself a reward for achieving a self-set deadline encourages her to take it seriously.
‘There’s nothing quite like having a deadline, even if it is self-imposed! I use little rewards to dangle like carrots to motivate me.’
Combining a couple of these tips can work effectively. For example, adopt the Pomodoro technique of writing in blocks of twenty-five minutes, then reward yourself with five minutes on your favourite social media channel. (Don’t forget to set a five-minute timer, though!)
Tracking Tendencies
Productivity is something that can be measured, so keeping those records can become a motivational tool in themselves. I have a page in my notebook where I record the current word count for the novel I’m writing. Others prefer keeping a spreadsheet detailing how many words they write each day.
If writing every day is not possible for you, track your data in other ways. Collect weekly totals, or record how many articles, short stories, or poems you write in a month. Creating a visual expression of our productivity can be a powerful way to keep us motivated and productive.
The Don’t Break The Chain concept builds on this, encouraging people to mark on a wall calendar every day they achieve a particular goal. After several days of achievements, this visual representation of successes becomes an incentive to keep going because we don’t want to break the chain of calendar ticks.
Review Reality
It’s important to be kind to ourselves. The Don’t Break The Chain technique can become counter-productive if it leads to resentment because of the pressure it creates to meet the daily target.
I keep a journal and use it to reflect on my day’s productivity. If I don’t feel I’ve been as productive as I’d hoped, I consider why this is. Often, there’s a legitimate reason. A recent trip to the opticians ended up taking three hours, not the half an hour I’d expected. With travel time, it meant I lost half a working day, so expecting to write what I would normally achieve in a day was completely unreasonable.
Our productivity can change throughout the year. I often write more during winter’s long dark evenings, so this is when I schedule my biggest projects, like novels. I only discovered this when reviewing my productivity comments in my journal.
What I’ve learned over the past thirty-five years as both a spare-time and then full-time writer is that being productive isn’t necessarily about churning out more words. It’s about achieving and completing the writing projects I want to create. We shouldn’t compare our productivity with that of another writer, because we’re two completely different individuals on different writing journeys.
So, if you’re not achieving everything you want to achieve with your writing business, why not use World Productivity Day to record in a journal which productivity tips work and don’t work for you? Ultimately, being a more productive writer is all about having a better understanding of how you work as a writer.
Business Directory – Keeping A Productivity Journal
- Document daily what you have achieved with your writing.
- Assess whether you fell short, met, or exceeded your writing goals.
- What else happened today that affected your writing?
- If a specific productivity technique was useful, can you repeat it? If it had a negative impact, what steps can you take to avoid it happening again?
- Summarise your day in one sentence.
- Review these summaries on a weekly and monthly basis. Are there any trends? What can you learn from this information?
© Simon Whaley
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