There is No Spoon

by Allison Pang

Several years ago, before I was published, I attended my first RT conference (think about 2009). I'd just finished the draft of A Brush of Darkness, and I was heading off to learn everything I could.

And I remember distinctly talking to the woman at the ticketing counter and she asked where I was going. I told her I was going to a writer's conference and she got that look in her eye and said those famous words "I'd like to write a book someday. I will, if I ever get the time."

And I'm sure most of us have heard variations of that particular line. (Or my other favorite - "Where do you find the time?")

The thing is I don't really know. The easy answer is that if you really want to do something, you will find the time to do it, regardless of how busy you think you are.

But it's a balancing act. The time I probably should be cleaning my house? I'm writing instead. The endless hours of gaming that I used to do? Gone.  You're expecting me to cook? *cackles*

I have to "make" time where I can, and that means sacrifices.

But here's the thing. I'm notoriously bad at keeping schedules. I'm perpetually in disarray. I also never say no to anything (and that is something I really need to learn to do. Someday.)

I've tried marking out the blocks of time thing. I've tried keeping a priority list. In the past that might have worked a little.

 But to be honest, schedules and planning don't mean much for me right now. Chronic pain and fatigue being what they are, I can have the best of intentions as to what I should do and when I should do it  - and then I get there and I realize I don't have any more spoons. That or one of the kids gets sick. It's like a freaking guarantee that if I have 3 hours of time to myself Friday night, someone will come downstairs at 10:15 with a fever. It's almost like if I plan my time out, I'm giving the karma gods a change to fuck with me. If I don't know what I'm doing, they don't know what I'm doing and I can get the jump on them.

So, the best I can really manage is a calendar with due dates and then attempt to meet those deadlines however I can manage. There's a lot less guilt for me that way - this past summer has been a string of productivity failures, simply because I can't fight my body anymore.

That being said - I'll be getting surgery at the end of the month that will put me out of commission for 4 to 6 weeks, so I'm looking for guest bloggers for some of those dates. (I've contacted a few people already, but I will need a some more, so if you're interested, please let me know!)

Full Steam Ahea...But WAIT!

Here's the secret to productivity. Have help. Just be aware that some help is less ergonomically correct than others.

 

Honestly? I may not be the best person to talk about amazing productivity. I'm a slow writer. I'm working on that - but man. It's a tough one. Add into it that I am The Queen of Second Guessing (This is NOT a self-awarded title. Entirely.) and you find my word counts over time kind of suck.

 

Still. Here's what I'm doing to change it.

 

1. Get the hell out of Dodge.

    I leave home. If I don't, the dirty dishes, the crunching floors, this chore, that chore - just one more thing THEN I can concentrate - oh look. Time for bed. Yeah. Must leave. Distractions R I. Admit this, cope with it. I handle it by taking care of two things at once - exercise and removing myself from the home front. Specifically - I bike a couple of miles to a tea shop. They bring me treats and let me work without any guilt about all of chores being left undone a few miles behind me. (Cat guilt? That's ever present.) A $4 pot of tea is the cheapest office rent ever.

 

2. Plan ahead

    Just like I wouldn't go out sailing in water I don't know without studying the charts for the area, I don't want to wander into my WIP without some notion of where the reefs and shoals are. So each morning, I spend five minutes (about the time it takes the tea shop to bring me my pot of tea) jotting notes about what needs to be accomplished that day. If there are specific questions that need addressing, I put them down. If I had thoughts or ideas from the day before, I've put them in my notebook as well and can incorporate those if I want. I also declare my intention in writing: GOAL: 2k on xyz scene. (The draw back to that has been that every single scene I have in my current WIP is exactly 2k...clearly this part of the system needs some refining.)

 

3. Zone out

    Headphones and an MP3 player. Most of my books have a playlist. Different books require different playlists. What worked for one book does not work for the next. I have very specific musical preferences that Pandora and other services cannot seem to fathom. So cueing up tunes that match my oddly wired brain is on me. Writers are sponges, right? Hear emotion in a couple of voices at the table next to you and your attention is sucked right in - not that you mean to eavesdrop - it's just that how these people sound in conflict, their posture, their expressions - it's all such great character study! It's also nil wordcount. Thus, pipe the sounds of your choice directly into your brain so you're harder to derail when other people's soap operas play out beside you.

 

4. Be accountable

    Keep track of your word counts. Set your goals so that you can achieve them - not just one day, but every day. Success builds success. You wire your brain to shoot for that success, to become addicted to getting it. But that only works if you keep track of it so you can see it accummulating. My CPs put a spreadsheet up wherein we each record our daily wordcounts. We have weekly check in meetings where we can brainstorm, problem solve or otherwise assist one another in meeting our goals. This is also useful from a public humiliation standpoint, if that sort of thing motivates you.

 

5. Get back on the horse

    When things go sideways, and they will cause life is like that, make sure you remember that productivity serves you, not the other way around. It's okay to let it go. Just don't fail to get back at it as soon as you can without winding up in a hospital, prison, or mental institution. They won't bring you treats. Not ones you'd want, anyway.

 

What have I missed? Also, any suggestions for giving up my Queen of Second Guessing title - totally welcome. How do you get past the notion that you're doing it all wrong?

Phenomenal Word Count Powers...

by Linda Robertson

Phenomenal Cosmic Word Count Powers....

...itty bitty time for a life.

I agree with pretty much all my fellow word-whores have given as advice this week. Setting priorities, breaking a contract down into daily word count goals with built-in time for revision at the end, and days where you're just off and not writing here and there. It's a very mature and professional manner of approaching the writing job.

It all means you're working. Your butt is in the chair. The magic of your creative mind is coalescing there on the screen-page.

But what if you do not have a contract?

The priority can seem less important. SEEM is the prime word of interest there.

Truth is: Life happens. There's work, there's parent-teacher conferences, the car is in the shop and you have to wait for the mechanic to get it done and bring the car to your workplace which threatens your chances to arrive on-time at the conference, and one of your best pals and her husband end up in the hospital...

That was truly my Tuesday.

Yeah. Not a single word on the WIP. But I wrote my blog. (hee hee... :-) )

Hell, major remodeling, shifting nearly everyone's life inside the house and painting, painting, painting, has kept me from being creative for a few weeks. It hurts. If you're a writer who goes off daily to play in your personal version of never-never land, you know how not being there can feel like you've missed something, that somehow you were transported to this "real world" without a Tardis or a Doctor to return you to the world you love...

Don't beat yourself up over it. BUT...Don't let it be the excuse, either. Attend to life. And get your ass back in the chair. No one but you can make it happen.

All I can say that perhaps hasn't been said already is that when you find yourself in the ring (why is a square boxing/wrestling area called a ring?) and you assess your opponent, Life, this hulking figure that seems to fill the space leaving you no room to move, no space to make your stand and take a swing, you have to fight. Fight for that time to write. Fight to follow the advice the other word-whores have provided. Fight to put/keep your butt in the chair with your blessed creativity flowing all over the scene, dripping in every paragraph. If you're a writer, that fight is worth every ounce of sweat and every sore muscle, because the reward of the finished story--of that whole new world that is yours--is more valuable to you than almost anything else.

I Can't Type Any Faster, Jim! 5 Tips for Increasing Productivity

Attaining Warp-Speed: How to Increase Productivity

Step one is to stop watching so many Star Trek reruns...unless you're imbued with all the powers of Q, then you can alter time to suit your schedule. ~muuwahahah~

Back in the real world, my five top suggestions for increasing productivity -- be it in writing or life -- are:

1:  Divest Your Life of Clutter
Yes, I am referring to everything from the spawning tchotchkes to the emotional baggage. You can either focus on the crap or you can focus on the achievement. Your choice.

2: Your Physical and Your Mental Well-Being Are Of Equal Importance

As a writer, it is so very tempting to sit on one's butt all day in the quest for MOAR WORDS (as my fat-pants that have now become my skinny-pants can attest).  For many folks, the day-job and the family don't permit all-day ass-expansion. Whatever personal time you manage to claim, do not neglect to exercise your body in addition to your mind. If you fail to balance the physical and the mental you will find your thoughts less focused, less clear, and less creative.

3: Set Specific & Reasonable Expectations
This applies to every relationship you have, including the one with yourself.  So much stress and anxiety are caused by assumptions and ambiguity. Never shy away from saying, "this is what I expect of you, and this is what you can expect from me." In an ideal world, the other party will work with you to reach an agreement of what is desirable and reasonable for both of you. In a less ideal world, by clearly stating your expectations, you have created the foundation for effective conflict resolution. In either case you have liberated yourself from uncertainty and second-guessing -- also known as emotional distractions.

4: Learn the Art of Prioritizing
Lots of people will makes lots of demands of you. It is your responsibility to decide what and who are most important to you. There are things that have to happen. Things that ought to happen. Things that would be nice to have happen. And there are things that just aren't going to happen. Don't be afraid of the latter. Sometimes "no" is the right answer. If you're having trouble prioritizing, go back and review your expectations -- starting with the expectations you have of yourself.

5: Always Include Make-Up Days In Your Schedule
Nope, not the L'Oreal or Cover-Girl kind of make-up. I'm talking about "shit just did not happen in the time I'd allotted" kind of days. There are infinite distractions out there ready to sink your perfect schedule. Allow for it to happen. My scheduling ratio? Five days of work: 1 day of awfuck recovery. If I need the make-up day, I have it. If I don't, I have an extra day off. Wheeee.

There you have my five tips for increasing productivity, dear readers. I'd love to hear one of your suggestions. Come, come, now. Don't be shy.

Approaching Word Count Like an Olympic Athlete

This is the photo I took when we drove back into New Mexico, after a road trip up to northern Wyoming. We lived in Wyoming for over 20 years and going back in February wasn't high on our list. But there was an illness in the family and we did what we needed to do.

Still, making it back home felt really good.

I took a series of road shots that day, documenting the journey from north to south.

 Once the roads cleared of snow and ice, then of city traffic, our speed increased. Until we hit blue skies and sunshine - then we rocketed home.

I guess the message here is obvious: to go faster, clear stuff out of the way.

I'm amused that this week's topic is  Attaining Warp-Speed: How do you increase productivity? I can't be the only one who reads "warp speed" and sees the stars going from pinpoints to blurs of light. Warp speed is awesome. It saves you from the Klingons and the Romulans. It gets you to that next planet in a few days instead of a few lifetimes. Who doesn't want a Dilithium Crystal of their very own, to catapult us from deadly dull impulse power to WARP SPEED??

And yet.

I hate to tell you this - and I hope this isn't a spoiler - but faster-than-light travel is still fiction.

Us flesh and blood beings are still relegated to the laws of the physical universe. Which means getting in shape and staying in shape.

If you read my personal blog, you know this is one of my THINGS. I'm a believer in the gradual improvement, in increasing endurance gradually.

I come at this from the standpoint of the decidedly non-athletic.As a major bookworm and a skinny girl, I didn't play sports games with other kids. When I got to school, I'd never learned any of the athletic skills that made you popular in gym class. I tried (or was forced) to participate, and ended up doing badly because I'd never learned how to throw a ball. When you attempt something and everyone yells at you for screwing up, failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. After that, I never learned to train my body because I didn't want to.

Until much later in life. I finally got serious about my slowly increasing weight. I didn't want to follow in the cankled footsteps of the obese side of my family. With a reason beyond trying not to get yelled at, I learned how to do things like run and lift weights. I started out at pitiful levels and worked my way up. It didn't matter how fast and fabulously the glossy, gazelle-like woman on the next treadmill ran, I had to work my way up via gradual increments. If I took time off, I had to scale back and work my way back up again.

If I didn't, I'd overdo - making myself sick, sore and miserable. Worse, I'd lose motivation.If I wanted to make sure I'd go back to the gym, the best way was to leave it feeling good.

These are basic animal-training techniques, right?

So, I'm sure you're all cleverly following my analogy here. It works the same way for me with increasing word count. I believe in the daily exercise. Establish a pattern and stick to it, then gradually improve my endurance and performance.

One way I've begun to look at this is by tracking my cumulative word counts, along with the daily ones. Some of you may have seen these charts on my personal blog on Friday (teach me not to look ahead to the Word Whore topic of the week), but I'll show them here, too.

These are my weekly cumulative word counts for 2013. I only started tracking weekly numbers in January, so this is a limited perspective. The partial weeks throw it off a bit, but I like being able to see the trend. (Actually, I replaced the chart with a better one, that combines the last and first weeks of each month.) I look at this every day and hope to see that I improve. It was cool to see my weekly count of 20K, following a big push. I can also see that I pay for it the following week. This doesn't surprise me, really. I went to grad school with people doing interesting work with Olympic athletes, studying patterns of training and - more important - over-training. A recovery period is necessary to regenerate the ability to perform.

These are my monthly cumulative word counts, which I've been tracking since October. December was a light month because I was doing a lot of revisions and back and forth edits with a couple of my editors. I also took time off for the holidays and to refill the well. What was important to me was to get cranking again in January. This chart helps me see I did quite well, getting back into shape. At the time I felt creaky - sluggish and over-celebrated. But I gradually improved over the month (as the weekly charts show) and did even better in February. I'm really interested to see how I do in March.

I joke about this being like animal-training, but that's a fair analogy. We have to treat ourselves as we would a treasured pet - with both love and discipline. You won't win the Triple Crown with a horse exhausted from too many races. This is partly why I take one day a week off from writing. From day job, too. It's my day to play - and very necessary for me to hit the work again with energy and enthusiasm.

Warp speed would be nice and I'll never stop admiring those gazelle-like women running at 7 mph. But I'll trot along at my 5 mph, making sure to reward myself for reaching those personal bests.

Making Deadlines: Work the Body to Focus the Mind

What do I do when deadlines claw their way into my peripheral vision?

 Run.

Okay, okay, it's true. I don't run. 

Ever

I walk. I attempt practice yoga. I do whatever physical activity encourages my body and my brain to be on the same page. I do that activity for an hour at the minimum but never more than 90 minutes. I'm after mental clarity not training for an Iron Man.

To Focus the Mind, Calm the Restlessness of the Body

Yes, yes, an hour dedicated to physical exertion sounds counterproductive. "Wait, I have to get the final edits in by the end of the week, I don't have time to pee much less exercise."  That might be true if the deliverable didn't depend on your creativity. However, we all know the point at which your muse walks away is the precise moment you're groveling on the floor, weeping, promising your first-born, and throwing in a box of kittens.

Exercise helps your brain focus

The thing is, you can lock yourself in the linen closet and you can be alone ... with your wandering mind. This is not the mind that is focused on the creative task at hand. No, no. This is the mind that wonders if red wine really is a good substitute for hair dye. Is twinge in your side too much broccoli or is your appendix afixin' to explode? And gee, look at those mangled nails. If you chipped the rest of the polish off they wouldn't look quite so horrible.

Arrrrgh! If only your brain would FOCUS.

The hour you wasted banging your head on the keyboard could have been used doing something less traumatic to your head and more conducive to your creativity.  The next time you have to knuckle-down and deal with a rapidly approaching deadline, clear away all the physical distractions -- those outside your body and those of your body.

What sort of exercises or physical activity do you, dear reader, do to focus your mind?

The 3-Step No Mercy Method for Increasing Productivity

This week's theme is tricks for "Make It Work" time - those productivity tips for when your back is up against the wall.

So let's be clear. This isn't about the sustainable schedule, the indulging-your-art days, the finding the happy, the being kind to yourself and enjoying your life approach.

No no no.

This is after you've been kind to yourself - maybe a little TOO kind - and it's time to whip out your inner boot camp drill instructor and kick your own ass into shape.

Thus we have my NO MERCY Method for Getting Words on the Page.

1. No Distractions Allowed

See Exhibit A above. It's very cute and snuggly that the kitten likes to drape himself over my typing arm. Because it's so charming and I'm a total sucker, I let him do it. But it seriously hampers my typing speed, not to mention all the pauses while I stop to pet him, which is his overall goal anyway.

The No Mercy Method says the kitten must leave the room. This goes for children, spouses, cute little birds that sit on your shoulder and nibble your ear. Close them out and lock the door. I don't care if that means you're sitting in the linen closet. Do it.

Distractions can also be inanimate, which is part of why I keep my desk pretty clear. Move all books, puzzles and interesting toys out of arm's reach. You'll see why when you get to #3.

2. No External Entertainment

No TV playing in the background. No favorite movie in the DVD player. No access to the internet. No sitting outside and watching the birds. Nothing but you and the screen of your mind. Annie Dillard says she writes facing a blank wall, so she has nothing else to look at. I've tried this when I've been crunched and it totally worked for me.

Okay, now I just hear you all whining through the internet (remember - there is no whining in boot camp!) that music doesn't count.

I'm going hard line and saying music does so count as entertainment, especially if it has words. Anything that's coming in from outside your head is one less thing your head has to come up with on its own. No music is the aural equivalent of the blank wall. You're not sitting there to have fun - you're there to produce!

I think coffee shops and other public venues also count, but I know a lot of people don't have even linen closets to sit in and you have to do what you can.

3. Set a Time Limit

And stick to it. I set Freedom for 90 minutes, but ANY length of time will do. I swear this works. Even if it's only ten or fifteen minutes, the whole trick is to make yourself understand that you're there for the duration, writing words and there will be no getting up.

For that time, I'm not allowed to get out of my chair for any reason. Maybe if my life was in danger, but that's it. The delivery guy comes, I wave and he leaves the box on the porch. I have to pee - I hold it until my time is up. The phone rings, I'll call them back. (I usually turn off the ringer, so the sound doesn't break my concentration.) I need to look up a word, I highlight it. Cute kitty wants to come in? She can wait. You want to check that citation - oh no, you can't reach the book. Alas.

It's kind of like the avoiding lava game from when we were kids - if you lift your butt out of the chair, you'll drown in lava! No one wants that to happen to you! Once the timer goes off, the floor is solid again - hooray!

Remember the No Mercy method means ruthless adherence to the rules - for yourself AND for all those other people (and kittens) who want just a moment of your attention. So, here's my sure-fire method for if someone tries to interrupt you. You know what it is, don't you?

Scream OH MY GOD - LAVA!!!!!!

Feel free to do this until they go away.

But remember to add those extra minutes to your timer.

Good words people!