Tag Archives: Productivity

The Time of Turtle Steps

Posted on November 27, 2011 | Comments Off

For the past month, every time I sat down to write a major post about goals, productivity, and other topics of interest to me, I’ve ended up tossing out what I wrote instead of posting it. Too much of it read like boring platitudes.

I was probably spouting too many platitudes because there were a couple of life crises that happened during the last two months behind the scenes, and as a result I had to hunker down and focus on using what little time I had to just write. Everything else–blogging; getting the editing done on stories to be published as ebooks; marketing plans–got temporarily paused.

I now call times like these the “Time of Turtle Steps,” because even when I keep working, I feel like a turtle surrounded by hares. It feels like everyone else is racing past me while I plod along far, far behind.

And yet, I’ve now learned enough to know that I’m wrong. Those turtle steps add up over time if I keep doing them step by step by step…the hard part is to keep going. Too often we stop out of despair.

Let me give an example from my own experience. In October, a couple of crises hit at the same time.

I wasted a lot of mental energy in October beating myself up for my slowed pace in writing and in working on my career. There was little time to write, and my final word count for the month was 23,255 words.

In November, I decided that while I couldn’t participate in NaNoWriMo since I wanted to keep working on my novel in progress, I could at least change my attitude and stop beating myself up. The crises continued to eat up lots of time in November, but once I accepted that I was a turtle, I found I could mentally relax and enjoy the writing more when an opportunity appeared to grab an hour to write, and I passed the 50,000 word mark for November two days ago.

So my productivity more than doubled once I stopped beating myself up about my writing pace and lack of time to do career tasks.

There are times in our lives when a crisis hits and we have to jettison everything but the most essential tasks. Be kind to yourself and don’t beat yourself up for the slowed pace. It’ll just make it harder to get anything done.

Be a turtle. Do each step by step by step, and keep going…and you’ll be surprised by how far you can get in a month. I certainly was.

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Posted in Life, Psychology of writing, Time Management

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The Madness of Perfectionism

Posted on September 26, 2011 | Comments Off

I hate making mistakes, no matter how small. Hate, hate, hate it. I’m one of those perfectionists that psychologists like to lecture about. And I know I’m not alone in the world–there’s a whole lot of perfectionists I know.

Being a perfectionist is a pain in the butt when it’s out of control, because it means one can get stuck in a rut of endless actions done over and over and over, or else one quits too soon. It’s an “all or nothing” mindset.

It’s a good thing babies don’t have this trait. Can you imagine a baby deciding after his first babble: “Hey, that didn’t make sense at all. I must have no ability for talking. I might as well quit now and stay silent.”

And yet I’ve seen people quit endeavors after one or two tries because they weren’t perfect at it. Perfectionism, when allowed to reign out of control, can shackle us in mental chains. We give up too soon. Or don’t even try at all, telling ourselves, “There’s no point, I’d screw it up anyway.”

As a perfectionist who loves to write, there are days when I wonder if I’m just a glutton for self-punishment by doing fiction writing on a daily basis. There are so many balls that need to be kept in the air during the writer’s juggle: plot, characterization, setting, narration style, word choices, grammar, structure, etc….no matter how a writer tries, there’s going to be mistakes.

For instance, I just got back today a corrected novel manuscript from the copy editor, and discovered that I’d accidentally left out a few bits of information about one of the villains that readers needed to know.  As the writer I can see into all the character’s heads at the same time, but the reader can only see into the characters by the words that were written on the manuscript page.  That’s why writers have first readers go over a manuscript–no matter how hard we try, we will not fill in all of the “lost” information the reader needs.

Still drives me bonkers when I forget to write something down for readers. I’m a perfectionist. I want to get it right the first time.

I’ve had to learn to accept that mistakes are going to happen. I still get upset, but at least I no longer quit or cycle endlessly in revisions. I find it helps to remind myself about my years in QA in the software industry, and how there was a point in the software release cycle where there were diminishing returns on the investment of time in revisions. There comes a point where a manuscript–or a piece of software–begins to fall apart the more you mess with it.

I’ve always like the advice one old pro gave me, which was, “Once you find yourself changing something in the manuscript, then changing it back to how it was before, it’s time to stop revising and send it off.”

There are days I’m sorely tempted to take the current urban fantasy manuscript that is being edited and hide it so that it’ll never see the light of day, even though it’s been read by an editor, several fellow writers, a careful first reader, and a copy editor at this point. My perfectionism flaring up.

I have to keep reminding myself that there comes a point that a piece of work needs to be released into the world to fend its way on its own.

Also, if I’m continually redoing old work to death, new work won’t get done, ala George Lucas and his endless revisions of the Star Wars films. Lucas is going to end up the patron saint of perfectionism at this rate. :P

So when perfectionism rears its ugly head, remember Saint George…

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Posted in Business of writing

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Welcome to the Era of Being Hurt by Too Much as Well as Too Little

Posted on July 28, 2011 | Comments Off

After a long hiatus, I went to the movies this summer to see several films (Thor was very good), and I was stunned to notice how huge the sodas and popcorn bags are.

I’m old enough to remember when today’s “small” soda size was more like a  “large” back in the 1970s.

I wondered if maybe my memory was faulty, so I did some digging around, and found some outside sources that confirmed that this change wasn’t just in my head. Check out this portion quiz done by the National Institute of Health if you want to see how things have changed in the past 20 years. And here’s an article from several years back at USA Today that covers “Portion Distortion.”

For those of us in the U.S. with the money to pay for food, we can now literally eat ourselves into obesity and bad health if we aren’t paying attention to what is being served to us.  There are so many choices and the portions have gotten so oversized that we can literally eat our way to an early death.

And yet there are still people dying of famine and starvation in this world.

Welcome to the era of being hurt by too much as well as too little. And it isn’t going to just be too much food. It’s also going to be too much information, too much communication, and too many entertainment choices.

In the old days, most people could get away about not being mindful about what they were doing because either the choices were limited, the costs were high, or their disposable income was limited.

But prices are coming down and the technology barriers are falling. We’re about to have too much to choose from and deal with, instead of too little.  Think about it. Already there’s more blogs and e-books and video games than someone could  experience in a lifetime. Internet connections are on 24/7/365 through social media and cell phones, so that the communication demands never stop unless the person mindfully chooses to take a break.

Long ago, when I wanted to goof off from my homework by watching TV, I had only five channels to choose from. There were no VCRs. There was no cable. If I didn’t like what was on those five channels (which happened quite a lot), I was out of luck and had to find something else to do–like read a book, or stop procrastinating and finish my work.

Now I’ve got so much to choose from on my TV that I could spend my entire life on my couch watching show after show and never run out of things to watch. I find myself in an era where I have to make strict rules about TV usage (limits on the number of hours, and having to mindfully think about what I want to watch) or else I’d fritter the hours of my life away.

I’m willing to bet that time management is going to become a critical survival  skill. It was hard enough to manage time in the old days. Now someone’s entire life can easily disappear down a black hole of web surfing, social media, and entertainment, and the big dreams in life will never get done.

A big dream (for example, to become an archaeologist) requires long hours and hard work. It requires focus and dedication over decades. I find myself wondering how many people are going to wake up thirty years from now to discover that they’ve frittered their dreams away by not being able to manage the overabundance of having too much.

I speak of these things because I struggle with them on a daily basis. These days I must consciously remind myself to get off the internet, get away from the TV, or put down my e-reader. I can no longer rely on boredom to get me to stop an entertainment activity since the choices are almost limitless now.

I love it that favorite authors of mine are putting up their backlists in electronic format. I love being able to obtain and watch famous films that would have been unavailable to me in the past. But now I have think about what I want to do and experience, because the options are too vast otherwise.

I was told about Randy Pausch’s lecture on Time Management, which I watched and found a helpful introduction to various ideas and techniques. There are also books by Steven Covey and Peter Drucker that do a good job in teaching time management.

Through trial and error I’ve found one of the most useful questions for me to ask at the beginning of the day is, “When this day is over, what will I regret not getting done?”  Whatever things pop up become the major goals of the day and I do everything I possibly can to do them.

So let me leave readers with this question:

“When this day is over, what will you regret not getting done?”

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Posted in Life, Time Management

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Hillary Rettig on Dealing With an Inner Critic

Posted on July 9, 2011 | Comments Off

Hillary Rettig has gone and written a very helpful post, “Writing Isn’t Hard!” on a favorite technique for dealing with an inner critic while writing. She’s been gathering all kinds of productivity tips and techniques and experiences for a book for writers called The Seven Secrets of the Prolific that will be coming out in August.

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Posted in Craft of writing, Psychology of writing, Voice, Writer's block

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Shutting Up Your Inner Critic

Posted on July 5, 2011 | Comments Off

Dean Wesley Smith reposted an edited version of his essay on the attitude that “Writing is Hard,” and it got me thinking about how to get the inner critic to shut up. You know, the inner voice that says, “This sucks! You suck!” when you’re trying to get your first draft written.

I just came up with a nifty technique for shutting up the inner critic that I’d like to share. It’s sort of a mental combo of National Novel Writing Month‘s daily word quota assignment, Laura Resnick’s essay “The Long Haul” in Rejections, Romance, and Royalties where she compares writing to trucking, several episodes of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, and thinking about my past experiences as a cafeteria worker.

Step 1: Choose a down-to-earth analogy for writing. It can be trucking, bricklaying, road paving, plumbing, cafeteria cooking, whatever. However, choosing an environment that will make your inner critic feel uncomfortable to be in is a definite plus.

Step 1 Example: I really liked Laura Resnick’s trucking analogy for writing a long fantasy novel, so I chose trucking. Instead of meeting daily mileage goals, I’d be meeting word quota goals. But the mindset had to be the same. I have yet to hear a story about a trucker moping at a truck stop about how his inner critic keeps  telling him his driving sucks…and so he’s stopped driving in mid-journey.

Step 2: Hone in on that inner critic voice that keeps showing up when you’re trying to write. Give it a physical persona that you can visualize in your mind–what does he or she wear? look like? what profession? etc.  (Note, if it takes on a persona that won’t be intimidated by the analogy chosen in Step 1, choose a new analogy.)

Step 2 Example: When I honed in on my inner critic voice, it morphed into an English professor guy who likes to wear tweed.

Step 3:Imagine your supervisor for your analogy to writing.

Step 3 Example: I found myself visualizing that I worked for “Flo.” She runs a small trucking company in North Carolina and loves to eat cole slaw burgers for lunch. There’s a stack of James Lee Burke and Nora Roberts paperbacks on the corner of her desk that she likes to read during breaks. Often she wears NASCAR T-shirts. She has 0% patience for whining or crap.  The trucking garage smells of diesel and there’s the rumble of engines as trucks pull up or drive off.

Step 4: The next time the inner critic voice shows up during a writing session, tell it “Go away. I’ve got a quota for this first draft I’ve got to meet.”  If the critic refuses to go away, make him or her go visit your supervisor to complain.

Step 4 Example: When Dr. Inner Critic showed up and wouldn’t shut up during the first draft work I was doing, I imagined sending him off to Flo to whine at her instead about the quality of my writing. Writers, by training, have very vivid imaginations. My imagination gave me a whole short scene of Inner Critic beginning his whine about my writing, and losing steam as Flo glared at him. Then she asked him, “Are you going to do L.M.’s work?” which made him hunch up as he replied, “No.” Then she ripped into him verbally with insults about his stupidity and laziness until he slunk off. I got back to work since there was a quota to meet. Inner Critic left me alone since showing up again would mean  another yellfest from Flo.

These days, whenever an inner critic voice pops up during the writing of a first draft, I do the steps above, and it shuts that voice up darn quick. I hope it does likewise for you all. Good luck!

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Posted in Psychology of writing, Writer's block

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A Blog Post to Give Comfort in Rough Times, and a Few More Links

Posted on June 30, 2011 | Comments Off

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has gone and written a blog post for all writers who are suffering through rough times right now due to the upheavals in publishing, “You Are Not Alone.” If you know a writer friend who is thinking of quitting writing or suffering from severe depression due to publishing industry changes, this essay is a must.

I also found out about a website that has various posts by pro writers (such as David Morrell) about the publishing industry.  It’s called Backspace – The Writer’s Place.

Another great resource is the NINC blog. Members of NINC have to be multi-published in order to join, so I find the information and blogs professional in tone and attitude.

Also, there’s Bob Mayer’s blog. He has 20 years of experience as a fiction writer in traditional publishing, and 2 years of experience doing indie publishing, so I find his posts have a lot of depth to them.

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Posted in Agents, Business of writing, Editors, Markets, Publishers

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Turtle Steps Add Up To a Long Distance Over a Year

Posted on June 19, 2011 | Comments Off

Turtle steps add up to a long distance over a year.

But we all know that maxim already. But there are days that I have to remind myself of this truth. It’s gets hard to remember it when the rabbits are racing by (or at least bragging that they’re racing through things).

Many of us have jobs and family obligations that demand a lot of our time.  And there’s a temptation to take an “all or nothing” stance to writing.  That attitude that either we need to be writing thirty manuscript pages a day, or else quit.  Yet, writing just one page a day adds up to a 365-page manuscript over a year–a good length for a novel.

Finding the time to write thirty pages a day may be impossible.  Finding the time to write one page a day is not.  Even if you’re a slow typist and writer, we’re talking about finding 15-60 minutes of time–the time can even be broken down into increments of 10 minutes if needed. Most writers I know need only about 15-30 minutes to write that one page (about 250 words).

It’s like people’s attitude towards losing weight–the “shock and awe” approach.  Many go after the extreme weight loss over a two month time period by starvation-type dieting, instead of the steady permanent loss over two years by small changes each week in lifestyle.

I’ve learned from trial and error that tiny steady changes over a year can lead to more extreme results than a “shock and awe” approach to a goal. And when the time frame goes to three to five years for turtle steps, the changes seen can be stunning.

Part of it has to do with the fact that the “shock and awe” approach is often unsustainable over a long time frame.  Sooner or later a crisis happens, or one’s health collapses from overwork, or when one doesn’t meet the outrageous goal for the month, one quits trying at all since there’s that “all or nothing” mindset. For example, being on a strict diet and going off the wagon to eat half a pizza at a party, and then saying, “I failed, so there’s no point in going on” and continuing the eating binge for weeks.

Slowly I am learning not to compare myself to the rabbits bounding by, and to instead keep my mind focused on the next small step as I move along in my turtle-like way. The rabbit path is not feasible right now, but it’s not the only way to get where I want to go.

Or to quote Benjamin Franklin:

It is true, there is much to be done, and, perhaps, you are weak-handed; but stick to it steadily, and you will see great effects; for ‘Constant dropping wears away stones; and by diligence and patience the mouse ate in two the cable; and little strokes fell great oaks.

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Posted in Business of writing, Craft of writing, Markets, Psychology of writing

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The Craving for Validation Can Really Screw Things Up

Posted on May 31, 2011 | Comments Off

Writers–especially new writers–crave validation the way a cat craves catnip. I’ve seen the craving result in a few writers doing some incredibly destructive things from a business perspective. I myself did quite a few stupid things business-wise due to the validation crapola in my head until I learned from much more experienced writers that the crapola was there and that I needed to get rid of it.

Validation is NOT asking “Is this piece of writing any good?”  Validation is all about saying stuff like:

When thus-and-so happens, then will I be a REAL writer.

It’s the part about “then I will be a real writer” that messes writers up in the head. Badly.

Several wise old pros told me, “a real writer is someone who writes, day in and day out,” and I used to be inexperienced and stupid enough to scoff at that saying.  Surely there had to be more to being a “real” writer.

I don’t scoff anymore, because I’ve learned the hard way that there’s a core seed of truth to what those writers said.

A writer writes.

A painter paints.

A singer sings.

A coder codes.

Whenever someone quits doing the action (code, sing, write, etc.) that is the core of their dream, everything grinds to halt in a matter of time. Writers who stop writing will eventually become the topic of “What ever happened to so and so?” among readers.

Also, validation is NOT about setting goals.  It’s fine to have goals.

What I’m talking about here is having a mindset where a writer is totally dependent on a particular thing happening to feel like a “real” writer. This dependency results in neediness that can be manipulated by scammers, and a frantic urgency that results in bad business decisions that can postpone (or even wreck) the ability to make a living as a writer.

For quite a number of writers, “thus-and-so” is “published with a NYC publishing house.” The problem is the “When I am published by a NYC publishing house, then I will be real writer” mindset leads to a neediness that makes it hard for a writer to do the negotiating that needs to be done to get a decent contract.

Here’s something to think about.  These NYC publishing contracts are between a writer and a corporation.  We aren’t talking about two individuals working out a joint partnership here. Those people you meet from the corporation can be really really nice, but at the end of the day it’s the corporation the writer signs with. Editors and CEOs can be fired.

The craving for validation from corporations based in NYC can be used against a writer in contract negotiations. It’s just the nature of business–the writer’s book is a profit-and-loss statement for the corporation. If a writer wants to play doormat, that’s the writer’s problem as far as the corporate entity is concerned. Sometimes an editor will warn a writer if the writer acts too much like a pathetic wuss in negotiations, but for the most part the writer is on his or her own.

The other nasty part of this “NYC publishing house” requirement for being a “real” writer is that all the great middle-sized publishing companies get ignored because one is chasing after a narrow definition of being “real.”  There are some terrific small and middle-sized publishing houses out there, ones that are going to be big publishing houses 15 years from now.

Lastly, the whole mindset of  “when thus-and-so happens, then I’ll be a real writer” also makes it harder to keep morale up. Several old pros have pointed out to me that writing is disheartening enough as it is due to the rejection process; there’s no need to pile more anguish on by setting absurd goals for what is “real” as a writer.

A real writer writes, day in and day out.

Everything else is just a goal to aim for.

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Posted in Business of writing, Contracts, Copyright, Craft of writing, Markets, Psychology of writing, Publishers

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The Pricelessness of Time, and a Couple of Great Links

Posted on May 23, 2011 | Comments Off

There are only 24 hours in a day. That’s it. Even those people who have a natural need for only 4-5 hours a sleep a night (or even none) can’t get around this time limitation.

Several swift deaths that have happened to people I cared about over the past three years have brought home to me just how priceless the time we are given is.  Once Death shows up for you, it’s over.  That’s it. We all like to assume we’re going to live into our eighties or later, but there’s no guarantee. And people love to assume that they’ll have lots of time to put their lives in order and do those things they always dreamed about.

Death can kill you in seconds. A stroke can strike you down where you stand and there won’t be time to say, “Goodbye,” or write a couple of poems before it is too late.

Never assume you can wait until retirement to do the things you dream about. People die before they reach retirement all the time. If your dream is to go to Paris before you die, start planning out tiny steps tonight that you take to work towards making that dream a reality sooner rather than later.

I think about time a lot, since I’m in the “squeeze” years. There’s work to do, a family to raise, a house with never-ending repairs to deal with, and writing to do. Several of my hobbies had to be put aside when I started to pursue writing in a serious way–there were only so many hours in a day.

Several months ago, I decided to turn off comments on my blog, because it was either do that or stop blogging all together. I didn’t know what impact it would have, but one of the surprising results was that now my blog thoughts sometimes dig deeper into things.  The time I used have to waste wading through spam in the queue instead gets spent thinking and writing the post instead.  There is only so much time each week I can devote to a blog, and I was actually surprised at how much a help it was time-wise to have comments off.

Zoe Winters did a post not too long ago about why she turned off comments on her blog, and brings up her reasons why a writer may want to do so.  Every writer is different–one writer’s healing potion is another writer’s poison. So each of us will have to experiment to see what works best.

In other news, I stumbled across a wonderful short essay by James Lee Burke on writing, “Seeking a Vision of Truth,” that can give consolation to writers in difficult times. I hadn’t known that his novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie received 110 rejections during nine years of submission.  I’ve provided the link to get to it on his website.

Also, musician Jonathan Coulton has done a long thoughtful essay on how he became a success as an indie musician. I think what he has to say also applies to becoming a success as a fiction writer (whether traditional, indie, or a traditional/indie combo).

So, I leave you all with the question, “When Death comes for you, is there anything you’re going to regret having not done? And if the answer is ‘Yes,’ what small steps can you take here and now to change that?”

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Posted in Business of writing, Craft of writing, Psychology of writing

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The Health Hazards of Too Much Sitting

Posted on May 16, 2011 | Comments Off

A few days ago I saw an e-brochure on the health problems created by too much sitting each day, and immediately thought about all the people I know who are now full-time writers or programmers. Writing and programming are jobs that often involve 8-10 hours a day of sitting in a chair in front of a computer, especially if the work is done in a home office.

I do a lot of sitting myself these days.

One thing I’ve noticed is that after spending a year sitting for 6-8 hours/day rather than 1-2 hours/day, I experience more physical discomfort now while sitting that makes it hard to concentrate on writing. My hip joints ache a lot more than they used to.

I’m not a health professional, so what I’m about to say is speculation on what I’ve seen. Almost without exception, all of those I know who do long hours of sitting are having to deal with a variety of health problems that have flared up after a few years–weight gain, diabetes from the weight gain, high cholesterol from the weight gain, hip or back or joint pain, leg cramps, depression, etc. The only writers and programmers I know who are not having blatant health problems from 40+ hours/week of sitting are the ones who are biking or running for an hour on a daily basis AND are taking frequent breaks to stretch and move around.

Fiction writers who have a full-time job as a technical writer during the day–and then come home at night to write–end up with a double-whammy of too much sitting. After sitting all day, it’s hard to have to sit some more in order to write a story. A number of fiction writers I know much prefer to work as a waiter or waitress, or some other job that involves movement, than to take on technical writing to help pay the bills when money is short. I’m beginning to see why that could be appealing since I had never considered the physical impact of sitting too much.

Some writers use a voice dictation device to record the words for a story while they go for a walk or use a treadmill. This could be a useful way to get both needed exercise and writing done if one has a day job that demands that one sit all day. It does require the ability to tell the story verbally instead of typing or writing it down.

Another approach to get away from sitting all the time that I’ve heard about is having a treadmill desk installed to use. I was pointed to a piece on treadmill desks that was done on Good Morning America a few years ago. The treadmill speed is set very low so that the user doesn’t get breathless or sweaty. But the mileage walked does add up as the hours pass.

Word of mouth has it that typing is relatively easy to do with a treadmill desk, but that writing by hand is much more difficult. So either a keyboard or a voice dictation device is going to be needed for getting writing done.

I am seriously looking into getting a treadmill desk to use, at least to do desk work that requires less concentration like email and research. If I do so, I’ll post what I learn about them as far as how easy or difficult it is to do writing work.

Definitely there are health hazards beyond just carpal tunnel syndrome to watch out for when doing long hours of sitting at a desk. Be careful out there.

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Posted in Business of writing, Psychology of writing

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