Writing Productivity Tip #6: Revise for the Reader’s Productivity The previous posts in this series have been about finding ways write more fluidly and easily. The revision process is your chance to extend this same courtesy to the reader. Put in the effort to make the experience of reading as fluid as possible. It’s a matter of scalability. There’s […]
Writing
Writing: Rest Before Revising
Writing Productivity Tip #5: Give the Draft Room to Breathe You’ve dismissed the inner editor and created the first draft of your blog post, report, book chapter, whatever. You’re on a roll – what next? Now walk away. Give it some breathing room. Writing and revising are separate disciplines, and don’t work well when they crowd […]
Write for Flow, Not Perfection
Writing Productivity Tip #4: Give Your Inner Editor the Day Off You’re ready to start drafting something – a blog post, report, short story, or chapter of a nonfiction book. Do you write swiftly and efficiently? Or do you spend time struggling over word choice and sentence structure? The best possible case is to achieve a state of […]
Persistence – The Essential Writing Practice
Writing Productivity Tip #3: Welcome the Bad Days. Really. Even the most productive writers have days when things don’t go well: You’re too busy with other things to write. You don’t feel well. There’s something else you’d rather do – anything else, in fact. Writing feels like beating your head against a wall. Everything that comes out is terrible. You’ve […]
Write What You Don’t Know (Yet)
Writing Productivity Tip #2: Write What You Don’t Know – Yet! Every writer hears the mantra: “Write what you know.” The heck with that. What fun would it be if we only wrote what everyone already knew? Try writing to figure out what you want to know. In other words, Write before you know what you’re […]
Secrets of Crazy-Productive Writers
Everyone cherishes the image of a tortured writer, laboring long hours, crumpling sheets of paper, drinking in a back room, spiraling into depression. That doesn’t sound like much fun for the writer. I’d rather be someone who writes fluidly and creatively, while engaging with the world, family and friends. A normal person, in other words. […]
