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Get Back to Your Writing Goals for Fall: 10 Tips for Boosting Your Writing Productivity

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photo credit: sxc.hu John Price

School is back in session, the summer is coming to an end, and this is the time of year when we kick off the flip-flops, slip on the pumps and get back to business. If you’re a writer and you still have school-aged children at home, summer can wreak havoc on your writing schedule. Your daily word-count goals eventually go out of the window as you become occupied with keeping your kids, fed, entertained and occupied.

If you are, like me, all ready to dive back in and make your writing a priority again, it’s time to set some new priorities and guidelines for your writing practice. Here are ten tips to inspire you to crank up your writing productivity and get back on track to achieving your goals:

1. Set Daily Goals
Whether you set a daily word count goal or a page count goal, decide what you can realistically accomplish at first and set this as your goal. Now, I’m all for stretch goals that make you sweat, but for now let’s just set a goal that you can keep consistently. After a few weeks you can revisit it and see if maybe it’s time to expand that goal a bit to challenge yourself.

2. Set aside a writing space
If you don’t already have a private writing space where you can go in and close the door when it’s time to write, set aside a space in your home where you can write every day. This is important in establishing the habit of writing to be able to go to the same spot each day and write. After awhile you’re going to want a change of scenery, and that is fine. Maybe there’s a coffee shop nearby that has wifi and good soy chai, or maybe there’s a spot in your local library where you can sit at a table near an electrical outlet and write uninterrupted. Regardless of those places that you get away to to write, you need your comfortable, inspiring home base writing spot.

3. Make an appointment with yourself every day to write
Open up the calendar on your phone and set a daily appointment with an alarm for your writing session. If you have a paper calendar on your wall, mark off the days you sit down to write and your word or page count. Draw an, “X” through those days when you don’t show up and write at all. If you start seeing too many X’s on your calendar, it might be time to re-visit your commitment to your writing practice.

4. Write first thing in the morning every morning
For those people who can’t seem to find any room in their calendar to write, getting up an hour earlier in the morning solves that dilemma. Unless your work schedule doesn’t allow for it, writing first thing in the morning virtually guarantees that you will not be disturbed. An added bonus is that wonderful feeling of accomplishment that you get when you close the book on your daily word count. When you get your creative work done first thing in the morning it can energize and inspire the remainder of your day.

5. Find an Accountability Partner
Join a writing forum and make a connection with another writer who is willing to be an accountability partner for you. You don’t need this person to be your BFF, all you need is for them to agree to ask you about where you are on your writing goals, and you can do the same for them. If you are having trouble working with a peer and want to hire a coach instead, a writing coach will hold you accountable for the goals you have set for yourself, and reflect back to you when you start coming up with excuses about why you aren’t writing.

6. Get inspired & stay inspired
Do you ever feel blocked when you sit down to write? Most writers deal with writer’s block in one form or another. The best way to handle this is to prevent it. Take the time to give some thought to what inspires your creativity and keep yourself steeped in these things at all times. When you get down to the root of it, writer’s block is really just fear, or resistance, which you will have to let go of if you want to be a writer and get your work done.

Take out a piece of paper and make a list of the things that inspire you to write. Here are some of mine:

  • Attending poetry readings
  • Visiting art museums
  • Walking in the park
  • Reading poetry
  • Listening to interviews with authors
  • Painting
  • Free writing

Make your own list. Buy a book or two of writing prompts. I have one that’s got 365 days of writing prompts. There’s no rule that says you’ve got to use the prompt for that day. Just find a prompt and use it as a jumping-off point.

7. Gather your tools
Aside from your pen and notebook, or laptop, there are some other writer’s tools that might be helpful to you as you seek to establish and maintain a daily, productive writing practice:

  • Smart phone apps:

Evernote: I would not want to be without my evernote. It’s a website clipping utility that lets you store and categorize things you find online along with notes, photos and other bits of information from your daily life. Snap a photo with your phone and save it in Evernote. You can save clips of blog posts and other research. This is a great tool and it’s free.

Voice recorder
If you are walking along and a bit of inspiration strikes, pull out your phone and speak it into the voice recorder and listen to it later.

Dragon dictation
This handy app will transcribe what you say and then you can email the text to yourself.

8. Join a writing group
Writing is a solitary activity, so it’s good sometimes to interact with other writers who are on the same path. You can find an accountability partner, or just enjoy the support of being around other writers, getting their feedback and offering your expertise where you can.

9. Reward yourself at the milestones
Don’t just keep your nose to the grindstone, day in and day out. Every few weeks reward yourself when you achieve certain milestones. Buy that book everyone is talking about, or maybe a fancy pen, or a leather bound writing journal. Find small ways to encourage yourself and keep you motivated to stay on task. Of course, we know that at the heart of it, writing should be its own reward, but the promise of a fun prize can help you to push yourself towards your goals.

10. Encourage another writer
Encouragement is like food to the soul of a writer. Was it Mark Twain who said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” So often the negative, discouraging words that we have heard ring more loudly in our ears than the compliments we have received about our work. A solid, constructive compliment from another writer means more than you can imagine to someone who has been struggling to gain the confidence to write and put their work out there. Take the time to encourage someone else and you might be surprised how good it makes you feel. I can’t really say that this will directly boost your productivity as a writer, but it will make you feel good as a human being, which can only be helpful to your writing endeavors.

*Bonus Tip*
Try meditation before you sit down to write

If you don’t have a regular writing practice, this might sound a bit strange, but taking the time–five to twenty minutes or so in silent or guided meditation before you start writing can do wonders for your productivity–not just for your writing but for your whole day. Meditation quiets and calms the mind, it centers you and gives you precious moments of silence where you can connect to your Source, or just bask in the blissful, peaceful silence. Meditation has countless mental and physical health benefits, but for the writer, it can help create a lovely space in which to begin your writing each day. There’s a free, MeditationFest coming up next week where you can listen to and be inspired by some meditation masters and grab some free, guided meditation audios.

I hope you found these tips useful. Please feel free to share your favorite productivity tips, your favorite writing tools, or some encouragement in the comments. Most of all, I hope that you find a way to commit to a regular, daily writing practice.

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Guest Post: Making Marketing Writing Easier

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By Robert Middleton

One of my favorite marketing sayings is, “Writing is to marketing
strength as pumping iron is to muscle strength.”

So, if you want stronger, more effective marketing, you need to
write. There’s really nothing else that has that impact. But
writing, for most people, is a real struggle. That is, it’s not a
pleasant task. In fact, it can be downright stressful.

Let’s look at what makes it that way:

1. You don’t have a method or structure for writing that works.
You’re not sure what to say and how to put it all together so that
it has impact and makes prospects respond.

2. You are intimidated by your English teacher and all the formal
rules of writing. So your writing comes across as stilted or overly
formal, not connecting with your audience.

3. You are afraid that other people will judge you for your writing,
so you hold back, not wanting to make a fool of yourself. What if
your writing makes you look unprofessional or ignorant, or worse,
it comes across as hype?

All of those are realities I’ll address in a minute, but first, what if
writing wasn’t such a stressful chore, then what?

1. You’d have a tool immediately available to you to communicate
about your business with impact. Your prospective clients would
get the information they needed to make a decision and they’d
be motivated to contact you to find our more.

2. You’d build business relationships quickly. After all, when
people first hear about your business and want to know more,
you’d have that information readily available in an easy to
understand and digestible format. Good writing connects you to
your prospects in a way nothing else can.

3. Confidence with writing would enable you to do other
marketing activities much more easily as well. Presentations,
audio, and video programs all start with writing. Once you’ve
nailed down the formula for writing, none of these things would
be a mystery anymore; you’d know exactly where to start.

Let me give you the two most important tips that could transform
your writing.

1. The place to start is with “conversational writing.”

One of my guest bloggers, Diana Kightlinger, covered that about
a month ago in some depth, so I won’t dwell on that here. Read it
if you missed it; it’s great:

http://actionplan.com/blog/258-conversational-writing

2. Use Marketing Syntax in all your marketing writing.

This is simply the order in which you organize your writing. And if
you take a look at this article, you’ll find I’m following marketing
syntax to the letter. Here are the steps in marketing syntax that
work for articles, blog posts, web pages, presentations, sales
letters, etc.

a) Start with a clear topic or issue in a paragraph or two.
Immediately make it very clear what you are writing about or
people will tune out fast. This may be either a problem that your
prospects face or a solution you’ve discovered. Sometimes a bit of
both.

So if you’ve discovered a way to help your clients get more
“employee engagement” which will increase productivity and
retention, let your readers know that right away.

b) Follow that with some issues, concerns, or problems regarding
this topic. This gets you and the reader on the same page:

“Have you ever experienced times when your employees are
disengaged and can’t seen to move steadily towards your
company’s most important goals? Perhaps some of these
symptoms are familiar?”

That draws prospects right in. Everyone likes to discuss what’s not
working; they can relate to it perfectly.

c) Then talk about what it could be like. You don’t have to go
overboard here, however your possible outcomes should be both
compelling and believable. This creates desire in the reader to
know how to get from where they are to where you’re pointing:

“Not only is it possible to get your employees engaged, once they
become engaged the power of peer pressure will get their fellow
employees engaged as well, often increasing productivity
dramatically.

d) Next, you list a number of points of HOW you actually get
those results. This could be anywhere from three to five points,
depending on the medium. You are giving away specific, hands-on
and how-to information your readers crave.

As you see, this is exactly how I’ve outlined this article. It’s very
easy once you have this structure of Marketing Syntax. Let me
review it again:

1. Get attention with a relevant problem or solution.

2. Get interest by discussing issues they can easily relate to.

3. Increase desire by explaining how things could be.

4. Provide fulfillment by giving away some practical ideas.

5. Make a clear call-to-action.

Suggest a simple action the reader could take to turn your ideas
into results for themselves. This might be a link to your website
or a certain service, or perhaps a meeting to find out more.

The call-to-action depends on the context of the written
communication. So here’s my call to action for this article:

If you found these ideas useful, you might like to learn more
about marketing syntax, effective marketing writing, and a whole
lot more, that would help you attract more of your ideal clients
with less struggle.

I’d like to give you a free hard-copy of my new book, “Marketing
Ball – Lessons on Attracting Clients from the Marketing Coach.”

It’s yours at no cost or obligation if you try out a month of the
Marketing Club which contains a wealth of programs, courses,
expert interviews, coaching calls, client tracking software, and a
whole lot more to help you grow your business.

If you’re already a member of the Marketing Club, I’ll send you a
copy of the book if you upgrade your membership to quarterly,
yearly or lifetime.

Just click on this link to find out more:

http://actionplan.com/fasttrack

Cheers, Robert Middleton

This post was written by Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit
Robert’s web site at www.actionplan.com for additional
marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional
service businesses.

 

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Book Writing Tips: Feeling Stuck or Blocked? Inspiration to Keep Writing

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Writers and other creative types often have days when they feel stuck, blocked or otherwise unmotivated to write. Stories of how writers can raise procrastination to a high art are legendary. It’s amazing how appealing that stack of dirty dishes looks when you’re not feeling your writing mojo, but there is a way that you can take that resistance you are feeling and turn it around to motivate you to continue writing your book.

As a writer I’ve been there more times than I care to remember, so I wanted to share some inspiration that might spur you back to your purpose. I also want to encourage you to think back to why you are working on the writing project you are working on. Is it something that you love or is it something that you are doing to pay the bills? Do you have a deep passion for what you are writing or does it feel like drudgery to crank out the words each day? Take a moment and get a fresh piece of paper and do a bit of free writing. Write a single sentence that captures the essence of what you are working on. Write about why you are writing this, what you hope to gain by writing it, and what you intend for the reader to gain when they read it.

Just going through the motion of writing down the answers to these questions might stir up your motivation to put more of yourself and your passion into what you are writing. It might cause you to take your work in another direction, or abandon the project altogether so that you can free up your time to pursue something more worthy of your time and attention. But taking the time to answer those and any other questions that come to mind while you are doing that exercise creates momentum. You are taking action and that in itself is getting you unstuck.

Keep in mind that resistance is real. In his book, The War of Art, author Stephen Pressfield writes, “Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possess comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.” Pressfield also writes about the fact that the greater importance the project holds for ourselves or for the world the more resistance you will feel about getting it done. Don’t get mired down by fear and resistance. The only way out is through as the saying goes, so keep your butt in that chair and your fingers flying. After all, is there anything more satisfying than looking back at the pages you just wrote after having battled your way through feeling blocked?

I thought I’d share these posts that have other points of view and inspiration for you to keep on writing:

Feeling Stuck? Read This. . .

By Tim Ferriss

Big successes often seem like foregone conclusions.

In reality, most entrepreneurs (read: creators) who appear to have unique genius suffer through the same frustration as the masses of unknowns. They simply test and persist a few steps further. Read More. . .

Stuck? Uncertain? Meet Your Muse.

By Lisa Tener

“For years now, I’ve been taking my clients and students in my book writing classes on a journey to meet their muse. I think of your muse as a creative aspect of yourself.

It may seem like it comes from deep within you or it may seem to come from a place outside of you–everyone has their own experience–all valid. Your muse may show up in all kinds of ways. My book writing students and clients are often surprised by the trappings of their muse.” Read More. . .

Writers Block? Are You Stuck? Draft, Then Craft. Get It Written, Then Get It Right

By Sam Horn

“Inspiration often emerges from our work; it doesn’t precede our work.” – Madeleine L’Engle (author of A Wrinkle in Time)

“A client emailed me to say she was having a hard time making progress on her book.

I sent her the following message – and thought it might have value for you if you’d like to get in that delightful stream-of-conscious state where the words are flowing out of your head so fast your fingers can hardly keep up.

(Name of client) . .. please keep giving yourself props for writing, writing, writing.

E.L. Doctorow was asked what it was like writing a book.

He said, “It’s kind of like driving a car at night: you can only see to the end of your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Keep driving to the end of your headlights.” Read More. . .

Writers: What To Do When You Get Stuck

By Writers Relief Staff

“Most writers have a secret stash of half-finished short stories, manuscripts, or poems—discarded when the author came to a screeching halt somewhere in the middle of things. If you’ve ever gotten stuck in the middle of a story or can’t find the last line of a poem, Writer’s Relief offers a few steps to help you get moving again.” Read More. . .

Do you have any words of wisdom or advice to share from your experience for writers who are feeling stuck? What is your favorite thing to do to get that mojo going again? Please leave a comment.

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