Ep 212: Productive Writers Build Their Body of Work Pillar Three
[Ep 212]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFor about four years, I didn\u2019t do much to get healthy or stay healthy. I\u2019d talk about getting in shape but wouldn\u2019t actually do anything. I\u2019d wake up and think about it, then roll over and go back to sleep.\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s no surprise, of course, that the idea of exercising\u2014the thought of it\u2014didn\u2019t strengthen a single muscle in my body. The desire to be healthy, no matter how intense, didn\u2019t actually make me healthy.\n\n\n\nI had to take action.\n\n\n\nFinally, about a year ago, I decided to do something. I started by jogging, plodding slowly through the neighborhood on a route so short I called it the wimpy route.\n\n\n\nBut that\u2019s how it began. To start improving my health, I took action. It was humbling to start so small, but I got out there and ran\u2014I mean, plodded\u2014the wimpy route over and over.\n\n\n\nAnd wouldn\u2019t you know, action produced results.\n\n\n\nOver time, I ran a tiny bit faster and farther and grew a tiny bit stronger and healthier. By continuing to take action, I continued to see results.\n\n\n\nProductive Writers Take Action\n\n\n\nIf we want to be writers, we can\u2019t just talk about writing and wish our projects into existence. The idea of writing\u2014the thought of it\u2014won\u2019t get a single sentence of an article, blog post, poem, or short story composed. The desire to be a writer won\u2019t actually make you a writer.\n\n\n\nYou have to decide to do something.\n\n\n\nYou have to take action.\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s how it begins, no matter how humble or wimpy it may seem to you.\n\n\n\nProductive Writers Write\n\n\n\nIn the beginning, it doesn\u2019t have to be much. Just as I didn\u2019t expect to be running a half-marathon distance when I first started plodding around the wimpy route, we don\u2019t have to complete a 200-page novel in our first efforts to sit at our computers and write.\n\n\n\nWe can tap out a few sentences; maybe a paragraph or two. With those humble beginnings, it begins. And over time it adds up.\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s the foundation of a productive writer.\n\n\n\nA productive writer writes.\n\n\n\nProductivity Doesn\u2019t Mean Assembly-Line Production\n\n\n\nProductivity doesn\u2019t mean we have to spit out poems like candy from a vending machine or roll out blog articles like cars on an assembly line with repetition and precision. After all, that can lead to a loss of creativity and originality.\n\n\n\nWhat productivity does mean is we have to start and complete projects instead of falling down rabbit holes of research for weeks on end or avoiding the work out of fear or perfectionism.\n\n\n\nProductive writers finally step away from the search engines and library books and throw some of their discoveries onto the page to sort it out and produce a final project.\n\n\n\nProductive writers overcome perfectionism and fear by sitting down and tapping out their thoughts to create a rough draft, no matter how rough.\n\n\n\nPriscilla Long, author of The Portable Writer\u2019s Mentor, writes, \u201cIn the end what matters to the ambitious dreamer is a steady and even rather plodding stream of work.\u201d1 It\u2019s fine, she says, if much of the output is \u201crough, awkward, contrived, and arguably awful.\u201d2\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThat\u2019s part of becoming a productive writer. You regularly produce a \u201cplodding stream of work\u201d no matter how \u201carguably awful\u201d it emerges. Through the act of writing, you\u2019re discovering your voice, your style, your preferred genre, your message.\n\n\n\nYou\u2019re figuring out how to write and what to write every time you write. It\u2019s building a kind of creative strength in you, as you overcome Resistance and do the work.\n\n\n\nProductive Writers Finish\n\n\n\nEventually, after establishing a system of producing words and rough drafts, productive writers will develop a habit of finishing what they start.\n\n\n\nSo often, writers start project after project in bursts of creative inspiration but struggle to see even one of them through to completion.\n\n\n\nNot everything we produce will be publishable, but we have to start and finish projects to build our body of work.\n\n\n\nProductive Writers Set Up Systems\n\n\n\nTo be effective at starting and finishing,