It feels like my creative brain invents a new way to ease me away from writing every time I identity the last super-sneaky version. I uncovered another mental habit keeping me from writing, the last few weeks, that you might be dealing with yourself. I’ve been deluged with administration stuff lately, with the work of […]
The Perfect Conditions to Write Don’t Exist Read More »
Fellow author and best selling post-apocalyptic and SF writer Kevin Partner has just put out a book on author productivity: Ten Minute Author: Writers write. Authors Finish. How to write your novel or non-fiction book one step at a time. You will find the book useful, if you struggle with procrastination and Resistance. I can
Ten Minutes To Train Your Writer Brain Read More »
Ryan Holiday has a post, “How Your Daily Routine Can Turn Into Your Biggest Enemy“, where he talks about how routines and rituals can make you fragile and easy to throw off-kilter–all of which is true. His solution is to have routines, not just a routine. If you prefer to write in silence, but they’re
Don’t Let Your Routine Become a Straitjacket. Read More »
Most of us are time crunched, and squeeze in 30 minute or one hour writing dashes one or more times a day, getting books written in increments. And this is absolutely a fantastic way to write in the cracks and margins of you day and still have a life. But. There are some serious side
How Really Long Writing Sessions Benefit Your Writing Read More »
As you can imagine, I read a lot of productivity books. Every month, more of them pop up. And over the last year or so I’ve noticed a trend in the common philosophy of many of them. It is the tiny habit approach to productivity. And I can’t tell you how much that trend
How To Use Tiny Habits To Make Yourself Write, Every Single Time. Read More »
Just a quick post this week. I’m getting back into the working groove and suddenly becoming (re)aware of the plethora of distractions that can lure you away from your manuscript–especially when you’re working at home, which is pretty much all of us right now. When you’re at home, you don’t have people looking over your
A More Deadly Weapon Against Distractions Read More »
I think we’ve all been there. Especially in day jobs where we’re showing up only for the pay cheque; on days where you just don’t want to be there, you find ways to look busy that don’t actually tax your brain too much. That’s busywork. When you are working for yourself, though, there is zero
Busywork versus Actual Work. How to figure it out. Read More »
On the weekend, I ran a two hour presentation on how to write lots of books quickly, and why you might want to. Because I was teaching and got immediate, in-person feedback on some of the concepts I have been speaking about here on this blog for a very long time, it was a good
Anyone Can Write Faster. Even You. Read More »
Writing sprints, as reintroduced by Chris Fox in his book, 5,000 Words Per Hour, is one of the most useful tools for increasing your hourly word count. I use them regularly to increase my words per hour rate. I don’t use them all the time, for a number of reasons. I will go back
Tailor Writing Sprints to Maximize Flow Read More »
I picked up Sean Platt’s new productivity book last week, which he co-wrote with Neeve Silver. How to Write Fast didn’t hold any super big surprises for me except one, which I’ll get to in a minute. You might be thinking: “Oh no! Not another book on writing fast/writing more!!” Fair statement. I think I have
The More Things Change… Read More »
