Tag Archives: productivity

Mind the Gap

In the London subway system, iconic signs exhort patrons to step with care across the space between platform and train with the words “Mind the Gap.” Not bad advice for time management while writing, either.

Here I refer to a different kind of gap. Inspired by Andrew Gudgel’s post on June 3, 2019, which he based on Samantha Leach’s article in Glamour, I’m referring to a gap in writing productivity.

The blogpost and the article state that author Danielle Steel writes 20 to 22 hours a day. That’s not a typo. My math says Ms. Steel uses between 83% and 92% of all available time for writing. On occasion, she goes the full 100%. Put another way, in an average 8-hour period, Ms. Steel writes for 7 and squeezes the rest of her life activities into the remaining 1 hour.

I suspect very few other writers (perhaps none) maintain that schedule, so let’s consider that an upper limit of what is possible. Is Ms. Steel’s time well spent? Well, she’s the best-selling living author. She’s written over 141 novels, all of which were best-sellers. Yes, I’d say she’s used that time productively.

Right now, you’re mentally comparing your writing schedule to Danielle Steel’s and feeling rather inferior. You’re thinking you need more than 2-4 hours of sleep each day, and there’s also eating, showering, dressing, and undressing to consider.

That’s the gap I’m talking about—the writing schedule gap between you and Danielle Steel. If you keep thinking about that gap, you’ll get depressed.

Still, in a detached way, you can see how someone could get there. Say you enjoyed writing and wrote a debut novel that became a best-seller. You’d feel a strong incentive to write another. If that novel also succeeded, you’d be motivated to repeat that process. If nothing else in life gave you as much satisfaction as writing, and if all you got was positive feedback for doing so, you might end up writing for 20-22 hours a day, too.

To avoid comparison envy and anxiety, I encourage you to focus on a different gap. Forget about Danielle Steel. Think about how much you write every day, and compare it to where you were before becoming a writer. That’s the gap that matters. That’s a gap you can work on improving.

Writing Productivity Gaps

By instinct, I prefer metrics where more is better. The less=better metrics—golf scores, unemployment rates, the you-to-Danielle Steel work-hour gap—just feel wrong to me.  

As the London subway signs say, “Mind the Gap,” but mind the right gap. Always here to provide uplifting advice and encouragement, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 30, 2022Permalink

The 4 Stages of Writing Productivity

If you write, you’d like to write faster. But how? On October 20, I attended a webinar by prolific author Vi Khi Nao, and she said some things that might interest and help you.

Vi Khi Nao

She titled her talk, ‘How to Write Effortlessly and Quickly,’ and I was struck by her four ‘productivity techniques,’ called Inflexible, Exact, Flexible, and Ideal Muse.

When she declared that last one, Ideal Muse, as her favorite, I figured I’d skip to it. Then she said you can’t skip. You must work through each technique in order.

Dang. That makes them more like steps or stages. You must go through them in order, she stated, because you will learn something at each stage that helps you in the next one.

I’ll outline each stage in my own words. What follows is my interpretation of what she said. If I got it wrong, it’s my fault, not hers.

Inflexible

Determined to write more, Vi Khi Nao put aside as much of her non-writing life as possible. She limited her interactions with others, devoting herself to writing. She filled her days with writing, and became ‘inflexibly disciplined’ about it.

Her output grew. She wrote a lot. However, she considered most of the resulting manuscripts bad. Her own prose bored her, and it required heavy editing. In the end, after many drafts, she ended up with a tiny amount of quality writing. Practicing this technique, many of us might find our health suffering, along with our relationships with friends and loved ones.

Still, she learned writing discipline, the value of daily ritual. She experienced writing in the flow, without self-editing.

Exact

She tried something else, setting a more modest goal of 10,000 words every two weeks. This time, she strove for quality as well as quantity. She decided any kind of writing counted as part of her 10,000 words—short stories, novellas, screenplays, and poems. She worked on bits of everything, alternating, much like a farmer rotates crops.

With a variety of projects going at once, she found her creativity stimulated. Although she didn’t mention it, I suspect her relationships with others improved after stopping the previous Inflexible technique. The new, modest, 10,000-word goal helped relieve some mental pressure, and her product required less editing. However, I suspect most of us would gravitate toward short and easy projects to meet the word count goal.

From this technique she learned a better balance between quality and quantity.

Flexible

Still seeking a way to produce high-quality writing faster, she set precise end goals (a novel by this date, a screenplay by that date, etc.) but allowed time for flexing. She wrote based on the momentum of the moment, when the mood struck. While maintaining the discipline of writing each day, if she entered the flow zone, she went with it.

The emphasis on quality helped her writing. Having established good writing habits in the earlier techniques, she got quantity along with it. However, I suspect she still felt guilty when not writing, and she still wasn’t in tune with her muse, her inner creativity.

The Flexible stage teaches the elasticity of time itself. All hours are not equal for a writer. All days are not equal. Quality writing requires time, but cannot be created in a linear way.

Ideal Muse

Knowing now that her muse didn’t clock in and clock out at specific times, she merged all previous techniques and allowed her muse to schedule her writing. When the muse struck, she dropped everything and wrote, no matter what. If shopping, she wrote in the store. If driving, she pulled over and wrote. She set product-driven goals, not date-specific ones. Sometimes she wrote for five minutes, other times for five hours. She monitored her health, knowing she couldn’t write in an unhealthy state.

At which stage are you right now? If increasing my productivity means I must start with the Inflexible stage, I’m not ready to sacrifice everything else in life for my writing. Still, I believe I’ve gone through a lesser version of the first two stages, and am in the Flexible stage now.

Whoops. Hang on. The muse is calling—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 31, 2021Permalink

The Inspiration/Perspiration Ratio

One of inventor Thomas Edison’s most famous quotes is, “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” There may be a similar ratio involved with writing fiction, too. Let’s find out what it is.

I got the idea for this post while reading a wonderful guest post by author Anthony St. Clair on Joanna Penn’s website. St. Clair takes the extreme view that a writer should forget the muse and just show up for work and produce prose.

For discussion’s sake, let’s postulate two possible aspects of writing fiction called Creativity and Productivity. Here are the attributes for each:

Creativity Productivity
·         Wait for the muse ·         No waiting—get to work
·         Muse whispers in your ear ·         Invisible boss yells at you
·         Book idea is fully formed ·         Book emerges from long process
·         Words flow like water ·         Words extracted with pliers
·         Pleasantry ·         Drudgery
·         1st draft = final draft ·         1st draft = crap
·         Mind to universe ·         Nose to grindstone
·         Work late at night ·         Work efficiently
·         Write in binges to exhaustion ·         Write on schedule to completion
·         Guided by insight and instinct ·         Guided by plan and outline
·         Lying on couch, thinking ·         Sitting at desk, working
·         Great ideas per lifetime ·         Words per day

If fiction writing consists of some amalgamation of those two aspects, what is the ratio between the two? St. Clair’s post advocates a ratio of 0% creativity and 100% productivity.

Creativity

Productivity

I can’t go quite that far. I agree it’s necessary to dispel the myth some beginning writers have about writing being all Creativity. Sadly, it’s not. If you wish to write, steel yourself to suffer through the items on the Productivity list. Most writing consists of enduring the attributes in the right column.

Most, but not all. There is, and has to be, some amount of stuff from the Creativity side of the ledger.

For me, the two aspects occur at different times and in different settings. Productivity occurs when I’m sitting at the desk typing, or when I have a pad handy and I’m writing by hand.

Creativity occurs when I’m doing some other activity that doesn’t require full brain engagement, such as yardwork, showering, or exercising. In other words, the Creativity part of writing happens when I’m not writing. Apparently, idle neurons spark best at those times. That’s when I conjure up new story ideas, work out plot problems, flesh out characters, imagine settings, etc.

The ideas ignited during those non-writing creative times remain with me and guide me when I sit down to do actual writing. They either form my plan or modify an existing plan.

To muddy things a bit, there are elements of Creativity within the Productivity sessions and vice versa. There are times, at the keyboard, when I get stuck and must summon my creative side for help. Likewise, my Creative moments often involve a measure of directed thought, not just waiting for muse whisperings.

Moreover, the Creativity/Productivity ratio changes during the development of a story. Early on, it’s nearly all Creativity. In the editing and polishing stages, the work shifts almost wholly to Productivity.

Given all that, what is my answer to the original question—the creativity/productivity ratio? In terms of importance or value to the process, I’d say it’s 50-50. Both parts are necessary. However, in the amount of time spent, I’d estimate fiction writing is one part Creativity and nine parts Productivity. At least, that’s the ratio for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 25, 2018Permalink