just start – The Productive Indie Fiction Writer

Puzzle-Piece Scheduling: A Writing Model for the Non-Marathoner

June 20, 2025 / Scheduling & Tracking / 2 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment

What if, instead of waiting for those rare marathon writing sessions, you fit your writing into the cracks of your day—one or two hours at a time? Puzzle-Piece Scheduling is about breaking your writing into smaller chunks that still add up to real progress. It’s not about being perfect—it’s about being consistent. Even short sprints can keep your story warm and moving forward.

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The Definitive “Just Start” Strategy To Get You Writing.

February 16, 2024 / Discipline & Motivation / 5 minutes of reading

Just Starting is a way around procrastinating, a way to make yourself write when you should. I mention “Just Start” a lot because it works. It is one of my most effective…tools. Hacks. Tactics. I’ve spoken about it here, here, and here, and more indirectly in many other posts on The Productive Indie Fiction Writer.

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A Powerful Tactic to Achieve Almost Anything

February 2, 2024 / Discipline & Motivation, Habits / 11 minutes of reading

We indie fiction writers are shafted by the nature of our business. Nearly everything we do takes forever. A novel can take weeks or months (or years!) to write. Building your back catalogue takes years. Marketing is a long term strategy that takes months or years to pay off. Once you’ve figured out what habits

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What Your Daily Word Count Should Be

May 21, 2021 / Creativity, Discipline & Motivation, Prolificacy, Technology, Tools & AI / 4 minutes of reading

Michael Crichton is my hero. I only just found out. Here’s why: I get a lot of email from authors asking how many words a day they should be writing. I confess that the question puzzles me and I’ve hedge and hummed and fumbled to find a useful answer because the real answer is: “Whatever

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Just Start — Let’s Revisit This Idea

May 14, 2021 / Creativity, Discipline & Motivation, Prolificacy, Technology, Tools & AI / 4 minutes of reading

For a long time, now, I have spoken of “Just Starting” (here and here and a lot of other posts, too) as a way of overcoming your resistance to getting into a writing session. The basic approach I have, whenever Resistance shows up, and if I don’t fall prey to it, is to tell myself:

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How To Use Tiny Habits To Make Yourself Write, Every Single Time.

May 15, 2020 / Creativity, Discipline & Motivation, Prolificacy, Stoicism & Perspective / 6 minutes of reading / 1 Comment

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

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