productivity

Quick Link: Want To Win NaNoWriMo This Year? 7 Tips On Writing And Productivity

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

How are you doing with your NaNo words? Even if you are not writing with NaNo this year, everyone can use tips on writing and productivity all year round! So head on over to The Creative Penn and check it out!

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Want To Win NaNoWriMo This Year? 7 Tips On Writing And Productivity

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Ready to take your writing seriously? Getting ready for NaNoWriMo and need some writing and productivity tips? 

I had a demanding day job when I did NaNoWriMo in 2009, but I was committed to the writing, so I got up every weekday at 5 am before work to get my words in.

Those words became the kernel of Stone of Fire, my first novel, and that month of writing changed my life. Now I have 15 novels and if I can do it, you can too!

If you need some help with writing or productivity, you can get 13 awesome books as part of the Storybundle NaNoWriMo special available for a limited time.

Here are 7 tips that I picked up from books in the deal. Click here to check out the Bundle.

(1) Schedule your writing time

Read the full post on The Creative Penn!

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: Embrace Your Boundaries

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

There is something so right with Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman being together.  So stay happy you crazy kids. That bit of randomness was brought to you by at Writer UnBoxed and his post about setting boundaries to help your writing. Read the post and you will see what I mean.

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Embrace Your Boundaries

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Today I want to talk about how having clear boundaries can HELP you gain momentum in three key areas:

  1. Your writing and creative work
  2. Publishing and sharing
  3. Engaging an audience

Boundaries are a gift to your creative work. Embrace your boundaries. Let’s dig in…

Why Boundaries Help

I’m sure you have very real boundaries. You may care for kids, have responsibilities to loved ones, work a day job, support an ailing family member, work through bouts of anxiety, and struggle to make ends meet. These challenges are real.

It’s easy to look at others and assume that they have the following things that you don’t have at the moment: money, resources, time, physical energy, mental space, confidence, and skills.

They don’t. These other people struggle with their own unique set of boundaries. It is helpful to remember that nearly all creative work is crafted this way: amidst limitations, lack of resources, and incredible amounts of pressure.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: One Way to Form Habits That Lead to Success

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

They say it takes three months of doing something to make it stick as a habit. The esteemable Shelly Hitz has a post and a podcast that gives you more tips on how to succeed with great habits.

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One Way to Form Habits That Lead to Success

By Shelly Hitz

Do you want to form good habits that will help you reach your goals? In this training, I share with you three steps to form good habits that will lead you to success.

Good Habits are Key to Success

What we’re going to talk about now is about habits. This is on my mind because, to be honest, I have some habits that need changing. So I’ve been working on this and I’ve seen some things that are helping me. That’s why I wanted to share them with you.

As an author, there are so many ways that consistent small habits can lead you to success. It could be a habit of having a power hour every week. Or it could be working on writing your book a couple of times a week. This habit can eventually allow you to finish your book.

The small habits of doing marketing every day can lead to more sales. In fact, one of my Author Audience Academy members, Kim Steadman, was just talking in the group today. She shared about how she had been busy and stopped posting regularly on social media.

For everyone it’s different. But for her, Facebook and I think, Pinterest is her thing. She observed that when she stopped posting, her sales stopped. And she was getting consistent sales.

Then when she started posting again, she started getting sales again. There are so many small, consistent actions and habits that can lead to success. And that’s what I want to talk to you about.

Honesty is a Start

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: 6 Attitudes of Highly Productive People

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Writing is hard, we all know this. And sometimes it is beyond hard. So with that in mind I have a great article from C.S. Latkin about how highly productive people manage to do what they do so well.

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6 Attitudes of Highly Productive People

 by C.S. Latkin

We’ve been exploring the power of positive thinking for a few weeks. It’s such an important topic because one of the biggest roadblocks to becoming a super-productive writer is poisonous negative thinking.

Writing for life is a hard road, with lots of curves and bumps and giant walls that suddenly appear on the horizon. if writers can’t learn to change the self-talk and transform negative thinking into productive, positive thinking, all the free time in the world won’t help a writer crank out great books.

Positive attitudes have been called “the undo effect” (Barbara Fredrickson, Positivity). They help us to quickly recover from negative emotions. When we generate a positive perspective, it helps us bounce back. And that “bouncing back” brings motivation or impetus. Which is what we need to be productive. Wallowing never got a book written.

Think of it this way: negativity is like a vise grip that squeezes and constricts our creativity. Negative emotions such as fear, anger, blame, and resentment narrow our focus in a way that obscures options.

Worry, especially, paralyzes us. We worry our books will get bad reviews. We worry that our plot is stupid. We worry that we’ll never sell a copy, so why waste all this time.

Studies were done with highly stressed students about to give speeches. In under a minute, their cardiovascular system relaxed (heart rate down, blood pressure lowered, artery constriction lightened) when these students were shown a movie clip of peaceful ocean waves and puppies frolicking. Other studies show that the more people entertain positive emotions, the quicker they can let go of negative ones.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: My #1 Best Productivity Tool – How to Get the Job Done!

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Time to get some work done! Do you have problems procrastinating? I do! ; )  So it is good for us that Shelly Hitz shares with us her tricks to just get’er done.  I actually use a slight spin to Shelly’s method. I set a timer for five minutes and promise myself that if I do just five minutes of solid work on the task I am avoiding, I can take a break. By the end of the five minutes, I am usually invested in the task and will continue. If not, I take a break and then try again. That said, I am a long time big fan of the “Pomodoro Technique” that Shelly also goes into. What are your tips for getting work done?

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My #1 Best Productivity Tool – How to Get the Job Done!

This is the kind of timer I like when it is time to read
This is the kind of timer I like when it is time to read

Shelly Hitz

In this post I share with you my #1 best productivity tool.  It is a simple tool, but very effective. I will also share some tips for you on how to be more productive and stop procrastinating.

Put that Timer to Work!

Let me tell you a story. I was trying to get some bookings for different potential speaking engagements, and needed to write a letter for mailing. However, I had been putting it off. It felt so hard for me and all I was thinking was “I don’t know what to write” and “I don’t know what to do.”

This had been my dilemma until I thought of putting my own advice into action and using a timer.

Yes, a timer!

So I took out a timer, set it to 25 minutes, sat down, got out my notes, and started writing. Then, I took a 5-minute break, set my timer to another 25 minutes and before I knew it, the letter was done!

The task that I have been putting off for weeks is finally done. And it’s all because of a timer.

This method is called “Time Boxing”.

By using a timer, you are setting a deadline on your brain, which will allow you to focus on that one thing that you are trying to finish.

Read the full post on Shelly Hitz

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Be a More Productive Writer While Also Achieving Balance

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This post by Jordan Rosenfeld originally appeared on Jane Friedman’s site on 4/23/15.

Note from Jane Friedman: Today’s guest post is by Jordan Rosenfeld (@JordanRosenfeld) and is an excerpt from A Writer’s Guide to Productivity, published by Writer’s Digest.

Surely you know one or more prolific writers who produce so much material that you wish you could bottle their energy and drink it down later for yourself.

Perhaps you even feel a little envious or resentful of their output: Hey, that could be me if only I didn’t have to [fill in the blank].

It’s easy to believe that a large quantity of writing is a sign of productivity, and thus, if you are not writing reams yourself, you aren’t being productive. But more writing does not necessarily equal better-quality writing, nor does faster writing lead to faster achievement of your goals.

 

The Pros and Cons of Fast Drafting

For at least six years, I, like millions of other slightly crazed, well-intentioned writers, have participated in NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month—in which writers attempt to produce a 50,000-word novel in thirty days while running on caffeine, blind faith, and a spirit of adventure. The part of me that is like an endurance athlete always thinks this sounds like a great idea and enjoys the endorphin rush of writing toward a fast finish. And it is fun at various stages—particularly at the beginning before reality has set in. But you know what the honest truth is? It kills me every year. By the end of November I am the crankiest, most burned-out, and spent writer I know.

 

Read the full post on Jane Friedman’s site.

 

Productivity For Writers: 5 Ways To Become More Productive

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This post by Joanna Penn originally appeared on her The Creative Penn site on 1/29/15.

Some of the most common emails I receive every day include: How do I find the time to write? And how do you get everything done?

While I don’t write a book a month (at the moment!), I do get quite a lot done!

[Time poor and want to finish a book in 90 days? Click here for a free video series from Self-Publishing School.]

I published 4 new books in 2014 in ebook and print, plus I had another one completed and on pre-order, so technically 5 books in total. Plus, I published books in German, Spanish and Italian, as well as several in audio format, resulting in a total of 19 new products for sale in 2014.

Plus, a lot of blog posts and podcasts which I hope you found useful 🙂 So today, here are some of my tips on productivity for writers and a resource I think at least some of you will find useful.

 

(1) Schedule your time

We all have 24 hours in the day, and we all have to balance the real life stuff with the writing. Before I was a full-time author-entrepreneur, I would get up at 5am and write, then go to work. After the day job, I would come home and get on with building my online business. We got rid of the TV so I would have more time to create, and I spent every weekend working. I was so focused on leaving my job that I cut out everything that got in the way. I was driven to schedule my time incredibly well in order to fit everything in.

Now, as a full-time author-entrepreneur, I still have to schedule everything. You might have noticed that I blog, podcast and speak professionally, as well as writing books. It’s just as hard to get everything done, let me assure you!

So I’ll admit to being a chronic scheduler! But seriously, it is the only way I get anything done.

 

Read the full post, which includes five additional productivity tips, on The Creative Penn.

 

Balancing Productivity and Art

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This post by David Farland originally appeared on David Farland’s site on 4/21/14.

If you are producing anything—toy dolls, bread, vacuum cleaners, or novels—there are some variables that you have to work with. Ideally, a publisher would like you to bring them in 1) quickly, 2) beautifully written, 3) and at a low price.

If you are producing anything—toy dolls, bread, vacuum cleaners, or novels—there are some variables that you have to work with. Ideally, a publisher would like you to bring them in 1) quickly, 2) beautifully written, 3) and at a low price.

But buyers will almost always be willing to make tradeoffs. Your goal is to provide two of the three. For example, I used to know an editor who handled a series of novels based on a major television series. A couple of times he asked me, “Could you write a novel for me in two weeks? I’ll pay you twice what I normally do for it.” In other words, he wanted a good novel quickly, and he was willing to pay through the nose. He wanted two out of three.

I told him “No” every time. The reason was that I felt that writing a novel that quickly would hurt the quality of my work, and ultimately a sub-standard novel would damage my reputation. In the short term, I might make some good money, but in the long term it would hurt my career. I’d rather write one great novel than ten bad ones. (Besides, I wasn’t a fan of that particular series, so it seemed a distraction.)

Yet more and more, it seems, this career demands that you be productive, that you up your word count. For many writers, that might seem frightening. They might feel that they are being pushed to write too quickly.

 

Click here to read the full post on David Farland’s site.

 

How Writers Can Stay Productive Even During Sick Days

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This post by Jennifer Mattern originally appeared on the All Indie Writers site on 1/13/14.

So far this year, I’ve had one normal work day. One. Just a day after returning to work from my holiday break, I needed a sick day. That turned into a “sick week.” And it’s now going on week two.

Surprisingly though, those sick days have still been productive days. I launched several new features here on this site. I published several blog posts on various sites I own. I installed and customized a new theme on my business site. And I completed plenty of other smaller projects in a fairly long to-do list.

The key? I stayed away from business emails, and I was officially off in terms of working with clients.

Why was this key? It meant my schedule in no way revolved around anyone else. If I wanted to work for ten minutes, I could. If I wanted to work on something for hours and I felt up to it, I did. And if I wanted to say “to Hell with it” and climb back in bed for the day, I could do that too. It also meant I wasn’t putting out client work when I was far from 100%. That wouldn’t have been good for anyone involved.

By all means, if you feel too sick to do anything, take off completely. Your health should be your top priority. But if you have even a little bit of energy, there are many things you can do to make sure you stay productive, or at least don’t fall too far behind, when you take sick time as a writer.

Here are some specific ideas for work you can do, even when you’re not feeling well.

 

Catch up on some reading.

Read blogs. Read books. Read magazines you plan to query. As a writer, you can never read too much. And this is something you can do even if you’re confined to bed while you recover.

 

Click here to read the full post on All Indie Writers.