Productivity

[Estella Magwitch]

As a writer, how do you count productivity?
I often feel that if I'm not finishing stuff and sending it out all the time, I'm not being productive. But my stories are longer and I'm a slow worker. So if I'm writing a lot, is that still being productive?
I'd like to think that the only way to fail as a writer is to not write. But in our society it seems that if you're not making and selling successful products, you are considered kind of a failure.
What do you think?

[robertcjgraves]

1. I write every single day. Every now and then I'll miss a day, but only under extreme circumstances.
2. My minimum goal is 1,000 words per day. I go through phases when that's tough, and I don't always like make, but then I go through phases when I can crank out 2,500+ per day.
3. I usually have two projects going at once. When I get really stuck on one, I switch to the other. For example, I switch between revising a fully drafted novel and drafting a new novel.
4. I think about what I'm writing every night before I sleep so my subconscious can work chew on things while I sleep.
5. I make time to read every day. Reading is essential to writing.
6. I read books about writing.
7. I often miss sleep in order to write.

[Artemisia]

I think that you can write a novel of a 1000 pages and say absolutely nothing, or you could write 50 pages that goes down in history as legendary....

Which one are you?

Quantity vs Quality?

[robertcjgraves]

I think that you can write a novel of a 1000 pages and say absolutely nothing, or you could write 50 pages that goes down in history as legendary....

Which one are you?

Quantity vs Quality?

That sounds like decades of writer's block just waiting to happen.

If 50 pages is all you write, you can rest assured that they won't be legendary, at least not for their quality. If you're drafting for quality, you're doing it wrong. Rewrite for quality. Draft to get it on the page.

Poet William Stafford, who most definitely is a "quality" poet, said:

I believe that the so-called “writing block” is a product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your performance … One should lower his standards until there is no felt threshold to go over in writing. It’s easy to write. You just shouldn’t have standards that inhibit you from writing

.

You don't get better at writing by trying to squeeze out diamonds. To get better you must write, write, write and read, read, read.

[tstaf4d]

Maybe I'm a little off (if that really can even apply to writers) but I do not count productivity by how much I have written during the day. I consider what I have written to weigh more than the length it took me to get my point across.

[Aithne]

I often hear people like to write every day. I only write every day when there is a novel on the go. Ideas come to me slower than some writers. I have to explore themes, pictures and myths to get new ideas but, once they arrive, the short story is done within a day or so and a longer piece is my next project.
I've sent stuff off, I've been published.
Productivity is still churning out writing and coming up with ideas to me.
Success however is getting things published.

[authorkcfinn]

I like to do something towards writing every day whether it's actual words on the page, planning or marketing. I find I'm not always able to get words down, especially at the start of a novel when I'm doing 'build-up' stuff, but so long as I have spent more hours writing in a week than internetting for marketing etc, then I'm happy!

[Craigable]

First and foremost, I'd suggest you stop caring altogether what people think about you with respect to productivity and/or achievement. Your chief focus ought to be on producing quality writing. If that means only one well-written short story per every three or six or nine months then so be it. Art's neither a contest nor a competition; it's a process. Try to focus on the process without getting hung up on expectations or timetables.

[authormaj]

I write every day. It's hard to combine with school, a job, and well, life in general, but it helps me feel productive.

[Anacoana]

I write every day, or at the very least do something writing oriented every day, which can be thinking up plot, fleshing out characters, researching, and so forth. You can't edit a blank page, and so if I write a sentence I write a sentence, if I read articles on writing detailed characters or write ten pages, that's what I've done for the day. For me the first draft of anything is where I'm searching for the story and carving it out of the marble since I'm largely a pantser. In the second and later drafts, that's when I polish and shine everything to make it shine. Quality is important, but you need to focus on quantity first with quality tagging along, so that way there's something for you to shine and focus on making into quality.

[Avid SciFi Fan]

I define productivity as moving a work in progress forward. That does mean just writing. If I'm at a breaking point or just stuck, I find stepping away for a bit can be quite productive. Think about the characters, the scene, layout the stories direction.

Why force yourself to ramble on in something your starting to lose interest in or rush through something just because you want to feel like you made progress, when you can lay out a scene in detail with your mind and tweak it several times before committing it to writing.

[Anacoana]

That makes sense! For me I do my best writing and working through things when I'm physically writing them down, so that's probably why I prefer to ramble and then pretty it up. If I try to work it all out in my head I get distracted too easily, while when I'm writing I can get pretty close to what I mean and then make it exactly what I mean later.

[moderntimes]

For me, productivity means doing SOMETHING each day. I may be hot to trot and churn out 2-3 chapters on my new in-progress novel. Or I might do some research into the book's factual foundations. Or I might review and edit earlier chapters.

I might be working on a short story instead, or an essay or book review or article.

Because I have a lot of irons in the fire, I don't set a specific goal. I however try to do something forward-moving.

But I don't write every day -- I've got a relationship with my live-in girlfriend and we may be going out or having fun at home. I may stick a DVD in the player and watch a movie. Or a football game, or whatever, and on certain days, not even turn on the laptop.

But I'll tell you this: even when I'm not writing, I'm thinking, plotting a new chapter or story or article. I keep the mind churning.

[Avid SciFi Fan]

I agree with "moderntimes", That's the way to do it.

[moderntimes]

Thanks. Please send $5.

Seriously, SciFi, I've been trying to find REAL SF (not fantasy) but don't seem to know any books that are hardcore SF. Just so you'll know, I'm a lifelong SF fan thanks to my Dad, who read all the old pulp mags w. John W. Campbell and others.

My personal likings are for the "new wave" writers of a few years ago: Roger Zelazny, Chip Delaney, Philip K Dick, Sturgeon, Jerry Pournelle, Robert Silverberg, etc. Things like the Ringworld stories and such. I also tend toward the genuine "adult" SF -- not necessarily graphic but with adult themes, not some YA story about teen space cadets. But I don't seem to find much genuine SF -- it's either fantasy masquerading, or Star Wars clone stuff. And if I find a sorcerer or fairy or elf or swordsmen, the book flies against the wall (ha ha).

Suggestions?