Month: October 2012

Finding Your Writing Process

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This post, by Mistina Picciano, originally appeared on The Oolong Inkwell on 9/23/12.

For any aspiring novelists out there, how many books do you have on how to write a novel? At least a dozen are sitting on my shelf, with a handful more taking up space on my Kindle – all mocking me. I probably subscribe to the same magazines that you do, and I’ve read many of the same articles that debate the merits of outlining versus “pantsing,” or discovery writing.

All these resources have led me to one conclusion: no one can tell you the best way to write your novel.

Not really surprising, is it? After all, creativity is such a personal endeavor.

Guess what? Even writing your novel won’t necessarily tell you the best way to write your novel. It may, however, offer some valuable tips to point you in the right direction.

Trial and error… and error

My current novel project is not my first. It’s not even my second or third. It’s number four—the first not born during National Novel Writing Month.

Because of Chris Baty’s brilliance, I’m the proud parent of two very rough, completed novel drafts and 37,000 words of another novel that was my favorite writing project ever—before this current novel.

Given the nature of the assignment (50K in 30 days), all were generated via the pantsing method, which made sense since this was how I had produced all other fiction work.

Thus, I always assumed that I write best using the discovery method.

However, I suspected that something was awry when reading Stephen King’s On Writing the second time around. He described his revision process, which appears to consist of maybe three passes through the complete draft. Sure, he’s Stephen King, and he’s literally been writing longer than I’ve been alive.

As I started tackling the task of revising my first novel draft, I realized that I was going to need way more than three or even six passes. After a couple of false starts, I found myself roughly 120,000 words into the second draft—with no end in sight.

Back to the outlining board

 

 

Read the rest of the post on The Oolong Inkwell.

11 Practical Ways To Stop Procrastination

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 This post, by celestine, originally appeared on Lifehack on 6/3/12.

You have a deadline looming. However, instead of doing your work, you are fiddling with miscellaneous things like checking email, social media, watching videos, surfing blogs and forums. You know you should be working, but you just don’t feel like doing anything.

We are all familiar with the procrastination phenomenon. When we procrastinate, we squander away our free time and put off important tasks we should be doing them till it’s too late.  And when it is indeed too late, we panic and wish we got started earlier. The chronic procrastinators I know have spent years of their life looped in this cycle. Delaying, putting off things, slacking, hiding from work, facing work only when it’s unavoidable, then repeating this loop all over again. It’s a bad habit that eats us away and prevents us from achieving greater results in life.

Don’t let procrastination take over your life. Here, I will share my personal steps which I use to overcome procrastination with great success. These 11 steps will definitely apply to you too:

  1. Break your work into little steps. Part of the reason why we procrastinate is because subconsciously, we find the work too overwhelming for us. Break it down into little parts, then focus on one part at the time. If you still procrastinate on the task after breaking it down, then break it down even further. Soon, your task will be so simple that you will be thinking “gee, this is so simple that I might as well just do it now!”.For example, I’m currently writing a new book (on How to achieve anything in life). Book writing at its full scale is an enormous project and can be overwhelming. However, when I break it down into phases such as – (1) Research (2) Deciding the topic (3) Creating the outline (4) Drafting the content (5) Writing Chapters #1 to #10, (6) Revision (7) etc, suddenly it seems very manageable. What I do then is to focus on the immediate phase and get it done to my best ability, without thinking about the other phases. When it’s done, I move on to the next.
     
  2. Change your environment. Different environments have different impact on our productivity. Look at your work desk and your room. Do they make you want to work or do they make you want to snuggle and sleep? If it’s the latter, you should look into changing your workspace. One thing to note is that an environment that makes us feel inspired before may lose its effect after a period of time. If that’s the case, then it’s time to change things around. Refer to Steps #2 and #3 of 13 Strategies To Jumpstart Your Productivity, which talks about revamping your environment and workspace.
     
  3. Create a detailed timeline with specific deadlines. Having just 1 deadline for your work is like an invitation to procrastinate. That’s because we get the impression that we have time and keep pushing everything back, until it’s too late. Break down your project (see tip #1), then create an overall timeline with specific deadlines for each small task. This way, you know you have to finish each task by a certain date. Your timelines must be robust, too – i.e. if you don’t finish this by today, it’s going to jeopardize everything else you have planned after that. This way it creates the urgency to act. My goals are broken down into monthly, weekly, right down to the daily task lists, and the list is a call to action that I must accomplish this by the specified date, else my goals will be put off.

 

 

Read the rest of the article, which includes 8 more tips for fighting procrastination, on Lifehack.