Insecure Writers' Support Group (IWSG) is a really awesome meme that you should be doing along with the rest of us writers. Unless you truly are happy with your writing and don't feel the need to vent about your insecurities because they don't exist for you. But, really.... Don't they?
IWSG is hosted by Captain Ninja Alex at his blog, Alex J. Cavanaugh.
IWSG is hosted by Captain Ninja Alex at his blog, Alex J. Cavanaugh.
This month's IWSG Question is, "What is one valuable lesson you've learned since you started writing?"
I'm sure I could go on about the valuable life lessons I've learned since becoming a serious writer, or even not-so-serious writer, ala The After School Special, but I feel like I would rather blog about something I have learned more recently that I feel is extremely valuable in the practical sense.
I've been trying to figure out how to organize my time in such a way so as to be more productive and get things done in a timely manner. Obviously, my writing productivity was needing a boost, most importantly, because I found simply squeezing in time to write everyday was not producing a whole lot of writing.
That sounds like it doesn't make sense, but it ended up being very true because I am quite the procrastinator. What I've discovered is that when I have an infinite amount of time to get something done, I will almost always choose to put it off for the next day. Only, the next day becomes the next week, then the next month, and sometimes even the next year.
I decided to not give myself so many days in the week to write anymore. That sounds kind of stupid, right? To experiment, I dedicated only three days to writing and I would just have to get all my week's worth of writing done in those few days, or I wouldn't be getting my writing done. Those other days were simply meant for other things. Turns out, that worked wonders for me!
I am getting so much writing done, it's amazing. I have to spend more time writing each of those three days, of course, but it's working in producing thousands of word-count days for me, which I never got done in any given day with my old system because I was squeezing in writing time, rather than letting myself have all night to write as much as I could for only three days during the week.
Funnily enough, I learned about this technique earlier this year and happened to recall learning it from Bryan Cohen, an indie author marketing guru, through his newsletter. He wrote about a productivity hack called "batching," where, instead of doing something a bit everyday, you give it a dedicated day for the week and get it all done, like catching up on email, reading, organizing your closet, whatever.
I didn't jump to try it out back when I first learned about it, but I ended up figuring out batching for myself. I use it now for everything, pretty much, and I am finally getting things done. Last year, I went off the rails and just allowed myself to get distracted by every little shiny thing, which resulted in virtually no writing, or planning of novels getting done, at all. I'm happy I've finally discovered something to battle the procrastination beast with because he was beginning to devour me whole!
Have you ever heard of "batching?" Have any productivity hacks you feel work amazingly well for you?
