7 Paths from Busy to Productive

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: focus, productivity, writing

productiveAre you as productive as you’d like to be?

Earlier this week, we looked at the differences between being busy and being productive. Our time and energy are precious to us. When we spend both, we want results. Spinning our wheels uses time and energy too, but that depletes us, whereas being productive with our time and energy leaves us energized

So, how can we redeem our time, making sure that our time is invested and not wasted?

1. Monitor Your Thoughts

First, think about what you’re thinking about. Your thoughts about your writing create your feelings about it, and how you feel determines the actions you take. And, of course, your actions will determine the results you have at the end of your writing time.

For me, many times when I sit down to write a scene or chapter, I suddenly think it’s a boring or dumb idea and no one will like it. If I don’t interrupt my thinking right there and contradict that “stinking thinking,” my emotional reaction is to continue to feel that way until I want to procrastinate with “networking” Facebook or “researching” YouTube videos, or watching a show on Britbox or AcornTV. My thoughts tell me that I don’t have to write yet. It offers me a way to avoid dealing with my fear that my book idea is only interesting to me. This happens more times than I can count, and especially if I’m at a challenging point, or doing a rough draft, which is the scariest for me. I can so easily slip from my productive writing plans into busy work and distraction.

Most days I plan on having to do a “thought detox” when I get started. I know it’s probably coming. Each person must deal with their negative thoughts in their own way. For me, it works best if I pray, reaffirm that God is helping me create, and trusting Him with the outcome. Then I get to work. The sooner in the day you do the mental detox, the sooner you will be productive. You’ll also sidestep the anxiety and procrastination and addictive eating or Netflix bingeing. Too many days I’ve wasted most of the day planning to write but indulging anxious feelings first, then being disgusted with myself, then finally working on my stinking thinking, and getting down to writing about 4:00 in the afternoon. I’ll write 1-2,000 words and kick myself for not beginning much earlier and writing three times as much. What a waste of a writing day!

2. Set Self-Imposed Specific Deadlines

This trick pertains to those writing under contract as much as those writing on spec or who are self-publishing. It’s basic human nature. If you give yourself two years to write a book, it will take you two years. If you give yourself four months to write a book and that’s all you can give, it will take you four months. (Get used to deadlines. You won’t say to an editor, “Let’s leave the deadline in the contract blank, because I don’t know how long this will take.”)

You might think setting deadlines like that won’t work, but it’s just like when you were in school. You had two weeks to get a paper done, or you had two weeks to get the book read. How did you know how long it would take you to get that paper written? When was it due? That’s how long it took you. You have to treat self-created deadlines the same way.

Studies have repeatedly shown that when you give yourself a shorter amount of time to produce a result, it’s much more energizing and enjoyable. Bear that in mind when creating your deadlines. Giving myself two hours to write 2,000 words is much more energizing than giving myself all day to do it. It will take all day then, interspersed with lots of procrastinating which makes me even more tired in the end. With a shorter time deadline, there’s no time for stressing and confusion and procrastination, then making yourself get back to work. You just get to the writing and whiz along usually.

3. Break It Down: Daily and Hourly NON-Negotiable Deadlines

To improve productivity, set tighter production deadlines every day. Example: “I’ll write this blog post in two hours.” (Or “I’ll proofread three chapters” or “write 2,000 words” in two hours.) Then close out all your apps, set a timer, and go! It’s a mindset, a thought choice. You already have the skill of creating non-negotiable deals and deadlines with yourself. At one point, many of us made a non-negotiable deal with ourselves that said, “If my baby is hungry or has a messy diaper, I will always feed her and change her as soon as possible.” We didn’t have to keep negotiating with ourselves every few days when we didn’t want to get out of bed in the middle of the night.

We’ve made similar non-negotiable deals with ourselves about all kinds of things, from being faithful to a spouse, to paying rent on time (whether we felt like it at the moment or not, whether or not we were tired, and whether or not we just wanted to do something else.) Making non-negotiable deals with yourself and keeping your word to yourself is a skill you already have. Think about how you use that skill in other areas of your life. Then apply that skill to your writing.

4. Make Results-Focused Task Lists

To be more productive, don’t create a to-do list that has you spend time doing something, like “spend two hours on marketing.” That’s an invitation to busy work, not useful for productivity. You don’t want to just spend activity time—you want to produce a result. Instead of “spend two hours on marketing,” your to-do list item for those two hours might read, “write a blog post, find two more agents to query, and announce my new blog post on Facebook.” If you focus on results, you will be more efficient with your time and not get sidetracked on Facebook reading everyone else’s posts. Always focus on results, not time spent. (Your result might be words written or revised, pages of research for your novel, lessons done from a book you’re studying on craft, etc.) Save your browsing of social media for after your work is done.

I used to have on my calendar things like “study character book two hours.” It’s interesting and helpful to learn new information, but unless I actually do the exercises at the end of each chapter and apply what I learn to my WIP, I find the time hasn’t been very productive. (Remember, we’re talking here about producing results.) Taking in information, via books or podcasts or blogs, certainly can have value, depending on what you’re reading. But it’s so easy for those of us who love books and information to fool ourselves into thinking we’ve had a productive day because we read James Scott Bell’s most recent plotting book. It might have been good, it might potentially help us write better, but we haven’t actually produced anything simply by reading. I AM VERY GUILTY OF THIS. I would so much rather read about writing than write! It makes me FEEL productive without actually having to produce anything. I LOVE books about writing—I have so many that I could open a store all by myself. But I learned that I had to leave them as a treat or reward AFTER the daily writing got done if I’m only going to read them.

5. Eliminate Distractions To Be Productive.

Productive writers allow themselves very little or no time to indulge in stress or confusion. They don’t check Facebook, or turn on the TV. You give yourself one hour to revise four pages of your novel, you sit down and you get it done. And you’re very focused because there’s that timer going. See also I’m Losing My Mind and Your Phone Habit OR Your Writing Life: It’s Your Choice for dealing with smartphone distractions. I use Internet blocking apps too, like Freedom software and Anti-Social software (both free).

Oddly enough, I find that my 2,000 words written in two hours is just as good as the same amount produced over an entire day or week. When you give yourself a time frame, your alertness goes up, your focus intensifies, your productivity increases. You feel efficient. So, try it out. Race the clock. Set a timer and give yourself half an hour to flesh out a character for your book. Will it be complete in half an hour? No. You’ll add to it later, but you’ll have something solid to work with.

6. Plan. Plan. Plan Some More.

To be productive, plan before you take action. Starting faster doesn’t get it done faster if you don’t have a plan. This isn’t an “outlining vs. writing by the seat of your pants” issue. Pantsers have to make plans, or they would miss deadlines right and left too. No matter what your writing style is, no one meets deadlines without specific plans of what they intend to accomplish on any given writing day. If there’s something you don’t know how to do, then your plan includes researching how to do it, and the timeframe for accomplishing that. You don’t want to write from a pressured last-minute state—it’s like writing with a gun to your head—but from a planned and energized state. You’ll enjoy the writing more and be doubly productive.

7. Work Hard. Play Hard.

Studies show that the most productive people—not just writers—alternate working hard with playing hard. The most productive writers I know alternate short work periods (30-60 minutes) with decent rest or play periods (30 minutes). The rest or play can be anything rejuvenating that you look forward to: half an hour of a favorite show, a walk outside, relaxing with a fiction book of someone else’s, etc. (You don’t count things like folding laundry or loading the dishwasher as a break. It might be a break from sitting and writing, and you might untangle a plot problem that way, but it won’t rejuvenate you or energize you. It’s just a different kind of work.) Work hard. Rest or play hard. Work creates results. Rest creates energy. Rinse and repeat.

Most of us—me included—can do twice as much writing as we’re already doing. We’re all working on lots of things besides writing. We all have challenges in our lives that make the writing harder at times. I wouldn’t say that without the experience to back it up. Big challenges come in our personal lives, our work lives, and our health. If you continue to write long enough, you will probably deal with them all. But learning some productivity habits—knowing how to get results from the time and energy you invest—will keep you in the writing game.

 

Productivity VS Busyness: Diagnosis and Cure

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: productivity

I used to have frustrated students tell me, “I should have more  stories and articles accepted by now; I work ten hours per week on my writing.” That fact alone was meaningless. I didn’t know how many hours were productive hours: how much was written, how many submissions were made, etc. You want to be highly productive. You don’t want to put in a lot of time or effort with little to show for it. Productivity means having something to show for the time you invest.

So, it’s important to determine if you’re being productive with your writing hours or just being busy. And it can be surprisingly difficult to tell sometimes. It’s a bigger issue than learning how to focus, although that is critical too.

Busy or Productive: Which One Are You?

Busyness is about how hard you try, how many hours you work, how stressed you are, how much you multitask, and about putting in your time. If you’re just being busy, that’s how you often describe your days when someone asks about your writing.

Productivity doesn’t care about any of that. Productivity is only measured by what you produce.

What is your concrete, measurable end result when the work day is over? Productivity is about producing something, whether it’s a stack of new rough draft pages or several files of research material. Somehow, we writers lose sight of that fact, and we tell each other how many hours we worked, or how stressful the writing was, or how long it took to work through our writer’s block, etc. None of that has anything to do with being productive.

That might sound cold-hearted, but the unknown editor you contact won’t care about any of that. It’s like when you go to the store and buy something off the shelf. You don’t care how long it took the manufacturer to produce the thing. It doesn’t matter how hard they worked on it, and you don’t care how much stress was involved; you only want to know does the product work, and if you should you buy it. All you care about is that end product. And that’s what those unknown editors, agents, and readers really care about too.

So, what concrete evidence of writing do you have at the end of the day? If you’ve had a productive writing day, you have produced something concrete.

Another Tell-Tale Sign of Productivity

There’s one other factor that distinguishes a productive writing day from a busy one. We often overlook this sign. How do you feel at the end of your writing period?

When you are stacking up pages and producing results, that’s motivating and creates momentum. It’s energizing. However, if you’re just “busy,” the same number of hours of expended effort will wear you down and make you tired instead. You will have that lethargic “why bother?” feeling. There will be nagging worries: I’m spending lots of time reading agent blogs, and networking on Facebook, and posting on Instagram, and reading books on craft, but where’s it getting me?

For the next couple of days, observe yourself and make notes about your writing time. Are you busy or productive, or a combination of both? What do you have to show for your time? How energized do you feel at the end of the day?

If you determine that too much of your time is just spent “busy,” come back on Friday for ideas to help you swap being busy for being productive.

The Commitment to Write: Say YES!

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: commitment

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.” ~~Henry David Thoreau

Have you given yourself permission to really work? To invest the necessary time and energy you know it will take to achieve your writing dream?

Until you can answer “yes” to the following three things, your commitment to writing will always be a struggle. [The list of three things is courtesy of Vinita Hampton Wright’s book, The Soul Tells a Story, which I’ve expanded with my own thoughts.]

You must say “yes” to the work, the process, and the dream.

The Work

Are you able to say “yes” to whatever work you feel called to do? It might be writing humor for young moms, writing insurance information so that the common man can understand it, writing fantasy novels, or writing screenplays. (Or all of the above!)

You’re not called to be rich or famous, although that might be nice. You’re just saying “yes” (daily, if possible) to sitting down and doing the work. (As in the B.U.T. technique: Bottom in Chair.) You don’t worry about the eventual outcome or what others think of your idea. You’re not committing to a set number of hours every day–just that you will show up at the page regularly and do the work.

The Process

Saying “yes” to the writing process means you will accept the fact that writing gets messy. It’s not a process that goes from A to B to C like a dot-to-dot picture. The process is often murky as bits of ideas appear and then you shift them around. The shifting and changing is constant as you revise and (hopefully) as you continue to learn.

You can rarely see the end clearly from the beginning-even if you’re an outliner like I am. Plots can veer off into parts unknown. Characters want to behave in unexpected ways. The theme you start with doesn’t match the theme you end up writing about-what the story was really about, but you didn’t know it in the beginning.

Accept that the process will be gradual and full of failures or setbacks that will teach you about storytelling. You don’t have to do it all now–and you never have to do it perfectly.

The Dream

Last, you must say “yes” to the dream. Are you willing to take some risks? Are you willing to shift things around in your life so that the creation of your novel or play is possible? Can you let go of some of your volunteer work or hobbies or even paid writing in order to pursue your dream? Yes, it’s a gamble. Most things in life worth having are.

Are you willing to aim really high–without guarantees that it will all pay off in the end? Are you willing to grow and learn and be stretched? To do so, you must say “yes” to the dream.

Commitment Time

The work. The process. The dream.

Think about each separate part of the writing commitment. And when you’re ready, say a whole-hearted, no holds barred, no looking back, unequivocal YES!

The Dynamics of Change

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: goals, habits, writing habits, writing life

We’re nearly ready to begin a new writing year! Or ARE you ready? This year you don’t have to get behind on your goals or quit. Why? Because this time you’re going to take time to understand the dynamics of change.

Did you know that 75% of New Year’s Resolutions (or goals) are abandoned by the end of the first week? The number is higher at the end of January. There’s a reason for that.

From Temporary to Permanent

I spend much time on the blog encouraging you to make changes and deal with feelings that are holding you back. So I thought it might help us stay on track as we move through this new year to do a short series on the dynamics of change–or how to make permanent changes.

How do we make changes that stick? How can you be one of the 10% to 15% who keeps on keepin’ on and accomplishes his or her writing goals?

Change in Stages

One mistake we make is thinking that change happens as an act of will only. (e.g. “Starting today, I will write from 9 to 10 a.m.”) If our willpower and determination are strong, we’ll write at 9 a.m. today. If it’s very strong, we’ll make it a week. If you are extraordinarily iron-willed (and never have life interruptions or get sick), you might make it the necessary 21-30 days proven to make it a habit.

Most writers won’t be able to do it.

Why? Because accomplishing permanent change–the critical step to meeting any of your writing goals–is more than choosing and acting on willpower. (And if you master the mini habits way, you won’t need much willpower either.) If you want to achieve your goals, you need to understand the dynamics of change. You must understand what changes habits–the rules of the game, so to speak.

Making Change Doable

All of the habits we’ve talked about in the past–dividing goals into very small do-able slices, rewarding yourself frequently, etc.–are important. They are tools in the process of change.

However, we need to understand the process of change, the steps every successful person goes through who makes desired changes. (It applies to relationship changes and health changes as well, but we’ll be concentrating on career/writing changes.) Understanding the stages doesn’t make change easy, but “it makes it predictable, understandable, and doable,” says Neil Fiore, Ph.D., author of the The NOW Habit.

Change takes place in four main stages, according to numerous government and university studies. Skipping any of the four stages lowers your odds drastically of making permanent changes that lead to a sucessful meeting of goals.

Here are the four stages of change that I will talk about in the following four blog posts. Understanding–and implementing–these consecutive steps is critical for most people’s success in achieving goals and permanent change.

Stages of Change

  • Stage 1: Making Up Your Mind (the pre-commitment stage). This stage will involve feeling the pain that prompts you to want to change, evaluating risks and benefits of the goal you have in mind, and evaluating your current ability.
  • Stage 2: Committing to Change. This stage involves planning the necessary steps and considering possible distractions and things that might happen to discourage you or cause a setback.
  • Stage 3: Taking Action. This stage includes several big steps. You must decide when, where and how to start; you must show up to start despite fears and self-doubts; then you must focus on each step.
  • Stage 4: Maintaining Long-Term Success. This is your ultimate aim if you want writing to be a career. It will involve learning to recover from setbacks and getting mentally tough for the long haul.

(For a thorough discussion beyond the blog posts, see Chapters 11-14 of Neil Fiore’s Awaken Your Strongest Self.)

The Blueprint

So…that’s the plan for the next few blog posts. Do not despair if you’ve struggled with meeting your writing goals in the past. Help–and hope for permanent change–is on the way. I probably struggled with this for twenty years, despite desperately wanting to write full-time. But until I learned that there was more to it than Stage 3 actions, I failed repeatedly.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s make the writing discipline permanently effective so we can move on to the fun of daily writing!

Climbing Out of a Writing Hole

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: NaNoWriMo, psychology of writing, strategy, success, writing challenges, writing habits

“How does a project get a year behind schedule? One day at a time.” ~~Fred Brooks (IBM computer software developer)

While I’m not behind a whole year on my current writing project, this question has been ricocheting around in my mind lately. I have writing deadlines stacked up for many months, for which I am truly grateful.

But I am sorely behind where I had hoped to be at this point. Some things happened which I could not have foreseen–like happens to everyone. That’s life. There’s probably a lesson there on building more “what if something happens?” time into my schedule.

Right now, I don’t really have the time to do some big analysis of how this happened. I just need to get dug out of this hole and back on schedule. But how?

Faster, More, Hurry!

Our tendency is to look at how behind we have gotten with our writing projections (including you ambitious writers who are doing NaNoWriMo this year) and determine to buckle down and write 10,000 words every day till we are caught up. Then by Day 3 we feel rotten from no sleep or exercise, by Day 6 we are sick, and Day 7 we throw up our hands in despair and take necessary time off.

That has been my usual “catch up” method in the past. And it doesn’t work. It has never worked! And yet that is my inner urge, even as I write this. Stress, stress, stress!

Another Way

But this time I have decided to do it another way. And the minute I made the decision, I noticed my stomach settled down, I stopped hunching over the laptop, and I began breathing deeply again instead of hyperventilating. I will be climbing out of this hole differently.

What will I do? Use my writing GPS system and “recalculate.” Pretend that today is my starting point and I am right on schedule today, then figure out how much I need to do daily to make my deadline. I am relieved to see that it’s not 10,000 words either. It’s not nearly as bad as I was figuring, in fact. That’s often the way it is.

One Day at a Time

The quote at the top of the page shows how we all get behind in our writing projects: one day at a time. But the answer to the problem is also in that quote. We climb out of the hole one day at a time.

And if I concentrate just on the amount I need to do today–and each day after this–then I’ll make the deadline. And I should stay healthy as well. Then I can go out and celebrate when I turn in the book!

Head Space: Conserve Your Writing Energy

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: Boundaries

Published three years ago today…and I still need it today! Enjoy the reminder.~~~

Writers require “head space” in which nothing else is happening. You must have some mental space that is yours and yours alone in order to create and write.

“It takes quite a bit of energy on your part–a real effort–to maintain that space,” says Heather Sellers in Chapter after Chapter: Discover the dedication & focus you need to write the book of your dreams. “You have to put a wall around a part of yourself and protect it from the world of Needs and Stuff and Functions.”

Where’s the Energy Go?

If you still suffer from the common Being Everything to Everybody Syndrome, you very likely have little head space to call your own. Writers can’t do that all day, every day, and still have enough energy left for writing. Your head space is too full of other people.

One big energy drain comes from greasing the wheels of social interactions. Many of us have this habit, and it is a hard one to break. Some of us “grease the wheels” all day–at home or at work, with our family or friends, even with total strangers.

How do we do this? We see unhappy or uncomfortable people, and we rush in to fix their feelings and smooth their ruffled feathers and raise their self-esteem. We see troubled people and offer all the self-help therapy we can think of, then take them out for lunch. At social gatherings where no one is making any effort to converse, we turn somersaults trying to make people open up and connect.

Head Space: the Solution

We mean well. We can’t stand the discomfort of other people, and we rush in to fix it. Or we hate to have someone mad at us, so we rush in to fix it–even when the other person brought on the problem or bad mood him/herself.

Let’s face it. Most of our unasked-for advice isn’t appreciated. Sometimes it’s resented. And I don’t know about your track record, but 90% of the advice I so helpfully “offer” to others is never followed. It frustrates me, but it’s my own fault since they didn’t ask for my input in the first place.

It’s also a colossal waste of time and energy. And that’s what we’re trying to conserve here: YOUR energy. All this fixing takes place in the psychic head space we need for our writing.

Break Free!

Being able to focus on your writing means learning first to take your eyes off everyone else–and letting other perfectly capable adults figure out their own lives. Only then will you have the quiet space inside your head in which to mull over your writing and let it take shape.

Experiment with this idea over the course of the next several weeks. Each time you are listening to someone’s problems, just be a caring listener and bite your tongue unless you are specifically asked for advice. In a dead-end conversation, be polite and pleasant and say a few things, but don’t invest all your energy in this nonverbal bump on a log. (And if you don’t think you have the right to do this–or the ability–see “Boundaries for Writers.”)

One more warning from Heather Sellers : “We spend so much of our time Being Everything to Everyone, why on earth are we surprised when we have nothing left but the swamp of procrastination to stew in?” You’re probably not procrastinating–she says–you’re exhausted. “Save part of yourself. You must hold yourself back. For the book. Practice giving a little less of yourself to Everyone and Everything (yes, you can!).”

A Parent’s (or Grandparent’s) Writing Schedule

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: children, efficiency, family, focus, time management, writing challenges, writing life

With summer vacation upon us, it seemed like a good time to revisit the subject of writing when you are involved with children or grandchildren.

When my children were small–and even as they grew older–I struggled to find a writing schedule that worked most days of the week. After much trial and error, I would hit upon a schedule that allowed me to write nearly two hours per day.

Bliss–but boy, was it temporary!

Not For Long

That “bliss” lasted a very short time usually–until I once again had morning sickness, or someone was teething, or my husband switched to working nights, or someone started school, or someone else went out for three extra-curricular activities and we lived in the car after school and weekends.

It was many years before I realized there is no one right way to schedule your writing. The “right way” (by my own definition) is simply the schedule that allows me to get some writing done on a regular basis.

[For the five types of parent-writing schedules, read the rest of the article. This is an excerpt from More Writer’s First Aid.]  

Beware the Fuzzies–and Focus!

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: focus, productivity, time management, writing challenges, writing life

“How’s your focus?” It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with lately.

Last year my calendar was so full of very good things, but I was frequently exhausted and vaguely dissatisfied. (Well, not vaguely actually. It was a very pointed dissatisfaction with the amount of writing I finished on any given day.)

My children were grown and on their own. I had long ago given up time wasters (TV viewing, hanging on the telephone) and most hobbies (quilting, gardening), and yet…the struggle to write for quality periods of time persisted.

A Busy Blur

A recent sermon gave me a lot to think about. “Beware of living your life without focus,” he said. He talked about how often we substitute being busy for being focused. He finished by challenging us to really give this prayerful thought.

I wrote down his questions and applied them to my writing life:

  • Do you know where you’re going?
  • If you stay on the road you’re on, where is it leading?
  • (And my own corollary question: Are you busy qualifying yourself for a writing life you don’t want?)

Pull Back for Better Focus

You may need to get an overview of how you spend your time before you can answer those questions. It can be an eye-opening exercise to keep track of your activities, hour by hour, for a week or two. For example, you might truly believe that you spend two hours writing every day, plus one hour marketing, and a fourth hour studying. [That’s what I thought I was doing.]

After keeping track, you might find you actually write twenty minutes, but stop frequently to check email. Your marketing hour might actually be spent reading about marketing methods, but not truly doing any marketing of your own projects. Your hour of studying the magazine article on character development might actually boil down to twenty minutes of study and forty minutes of reading ads or following related links.

Training for What?

You may dream of writing novels, but your time tracker might reveal that your writing time is eaten up by writing free newsletters for two organizations you belong to. Or, if you’re well published, you can’t say no when asked to write an endorsement or review of someone’s new book. (That may not sound like much, but reading the book takes several hours, and a well crafted review takes another hour.) Maybe you haven’t had time to work on your own novel for three days because you’ve been critiquing for other writers or writing guest blogs.

All these things make you feel like you’re furthering your writing career as a novelist–but are you? Or are you busy qualifying yourself for something other than your dream? You’re actually gaining experience as a reviewer, a critiquer, a blogger, and a newsletter writer. (Those are fine jobs, if that’s truly what you want to be doing in the long run.) But if you stay on this road–if you continue to spend a large chunk of your writing time this way–do you like where it will inevitably lead you?

Solution?

Beware the fuzzies! Know what your dreams and goals are. We all have our own criteria for choosing goals–and different methods to determine what we’re supposed to do with our writing gifts. (Prayer and journaling work best for me.)

Once you’ve decided, don’t be vague about how you intend to get where you want to go. And stop being an automatic “yes” to each request, no matter how flattering. You must live on a higher plane–above the constant demands for your time–and say “no” to things that don’t further those goals.

Perfectionist Writers

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: writer's block, writing, writing anxiety, writing challenges, writing life

Does perfectionism keep you from getting started on your writing? Does trying to write your best create pressure for you?

If you, you’ll be encouraged something in Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It’s about being a perfectionist–and how to deal with the pressure it generates in all artists, including writers. Read about this experiment:

“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class, he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot–albeit a perfect one–to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work–and learning from their mistakes–the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

Quality from Quantity

Isn’t that a fascinating experiment? I know that we get better by writing more, like a piano player gets better by practicing more. But what struck me is how much more FUN the first group must have had (while at the same time producing superior pots.) They were just trying to create a lot of pots, without any emphasis at all on the finished product.

Could I use the results of this experiment to revamp my own writing that was often stalled by the perfectionist demon?

Reforming the Perfectionist

I decided to try an experiment of my own this morning. Most days I more closely resemble a pot maker from Group B: stewing, not writing, being unhappy with results and scrapping them, judging, blocking, and finally quitting for the day. Today I decided to be a Group A pot-making writer and just relax. I stayed off the Internet till noon and just wrote–a lot. [I had already outlined my book.] My only goal was to produce a lot of pages. I wrote for three hours with intermittent short breaks, and I had fun! From what I can tell, the nice pile of finished pages aren’t half bad either.

I think I’m onto something here! Don’t try to write the Great American Novel today. Just make some pots, lots of pots!

A No-Guilt Writing Life

Published on by Kristi Holl Category: family, writing, writing advice, writing challenges, writing life

Does taking time to write make you feel guilty? In her book Writing as a Way of Healing, Louise DeSalvo said, “Many people…have told me that taking time to write seems so, well, self-indulgent, self-involved, frivolous even.”

Does that describe you? Do you fight your own guilty feelings that say you should be doing something more productive? Does writing–especially if you haven’t sold much or aren’t making piles of money from it–feel selfish to you? Do the real (or imagined) opinions of others keep you from spending time writing or making it more of a priority?

The Stages of Guilt

When our children are small, we fight the guilt that comes with motherhood. Are we taking too much time away from the kids? is it really good that they’ve learned to entertain themselves so well? Is it really the responsible thing that my kids are the only ones on the block who know how to run the washing machine and cook meals? Will the children remember Mom as someone without a face, only a hunched back and tapping fingers?

I used to wonder all those things when my kids were small. But we needed the money from the book contracts I was receiving, and at least I was home. (Only technically, it felt sometimes.) You may know the feeling. When you’re writing, you feel like you should be doing crafts or baking with the kids. When you’re making the umpteenth finger painting, you long to be writing.

This Too Shall Pass…or Will It?

Once my children were grown and on their own, I thought the guilt would stop. But I really identified with Carol Rottman in Writers in the Spirit when she said:

“Now all I have to do is quell my guilt over the things I displace because of my indulgence in writing. There are so many worthy causes that regularly tempt me to leave the desk. A sister describes me as ‘driven’ when I am so serious about my work, and friends wonder why I don’t join them for lunch. My children and young grandchildren, all within a twenty-mile radius, can use as much time as I can give.”

The Cure for Guilt

As in so many cases, the cure for guilt seems to be in finding the right balance. Balance between time for writing and time for family/job/home/church/community. Have you found the balance that works for you and your family? It will look different if your children are babies than if they’re teens or adults.

But how do you find that balance and banish the guilt? Take some time on your own and prayerfully answer the following questions:

  1. What/who pushes your guilt buttons when you’re trying to write?
  2. How do you choose whether to keep writing or not?
  3. What questions do you ask yourself in order to find the right balance and keep your priorities straight?
  4. What are you willing to give up of your own in order to make time to write?

Once you’ve decided, make a schedule for your writing, inform friends and family, and then make a firm commitment to banish the guilt. Trust me on this. Even if you now prioritize your days according to guilt (like I did for decades), you can do this. And in a surprisingly short amount of time, when you see the world goes on functioning while you’re writing, the guilt will fade away.