Thursday, August 11, 2011

Good Article About Writing Productivity

This is a good article that looks more closely at the old rule of thumb that we must write ten thousand hours before we achieve anything approaching mastery. Worth a read.

Theresa
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1 comment:

Adrian said...

A timely read for me, as I'm actively trying to find ways to "engineer my workplace" to increase my writing efficiency.

So far, I've found the best thing I can do is to unplug the network connection (literally) when I sit down to write. No email, no IM, no "quick" online searches for a synonym that always end up getting derailed into research and notes but very few words of prose.

I've abandoned do-it-all word processors in favor of a vanilla text editor. Everything (outline, notes, and text) for each project is in a single file. I delete the bits of outline as I write the prose. I delete the notes as I incorporate the ideas into the book. Those sections you know you should delete but can't bring yourself to destroy get pasted at the bottom of the file (after THE END). I can afford to be cavalier about deleting stuff, since I use programmers' "source control" tools to keep history.

Now, based on my success with the Hacker's Diet, I'm making a little program to track my progress. Having a graph that charts progress is a great motivator for me, and it also helps set realistic goals. I think the NanoWriMo people have something like it that plots word count over time. Mine tracks my writing time in addition to word count.

August 12, 2011 at 2:36 PM

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