Tips For Writing Productivity

In Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing[ISBN:0-913507-13-X], RobertBoice provides many insights about why writers don't write (block) and clear paths for overcoming blocking. Although his text cannot be replicated here, one of the most helpful techniques he discusses is controlling writing environment stimuli. He provides these specific suggestions (p 76-78) for stimulus control (this is a direct quotation):

Rearranging the Writing Environment

1. Establish one or a few regular places in which you will do all serious writing. If possible, make these locations (e.g. a desk in your study) places where you do nothing but serious writing; other writing (e.g., correspondence) would be carried out elsewhere.
2. Regular writing sites must also be sacred in the sense that no other temptations such as magazines, newspapers, novels can be on site. Thus, non-essential reading would be done elsewhere.
3. Similarly, the temptation of cleaning up one's writing site should not be allowed to distract. Instead, clean the writing area only at the completion of each session.
4. Limit social interruptions during writing times by: a) closing the door to your office, den, or whatever; b) posting a writing schedule on your closed door that requests visitors to limit interruptions to brief (e.g., 10 seconds), essential messages; c) unplugging the phone; and d) enlisting significant others and colleagues as enforcers by asking them to help head off potential disruptions (including, of course, themselves).
5. Enlist another writer to share part of your writing schedule by joining you for mutually quiet periods of work.
6. Make your writing site comfortable. I, for example, work best in a recliner chair because it reduces fatigue, especially neck and arm strain. Experiment to see what works best for you.

Rearranging Writing Habits

1. With the aid of the PriorityPrinciple, make writing a daily activity, regardless of mood, regardless of readiness to write. Make a more regular, recurrent activity (e.g. phone calls to friends) contingent on writing for a minimum period of time first.
2. If you feel you have no time for regular writing, begin by charting your daily activities for a week or two in half-hour blocks. You may discover that you're `wasting' time on non-essential activities. For example, I've worked with teachers who, even with courses they had taught before, set aside an hour or two to reprepare each lecture. By limiting preparations to 30 minutes, they discovered that they went into class less overprepared, less rushed to cover the masses of material that would otherwise have been added, and more inclined to slow down and let students be more involved in the class. Results: higher student ratings and more time for writing.
3. Write while you're fresh. Schedule other, less mentally demanding tasks for times of the day when you're less alert and energetic. If evenings are a time when you're often tired, carry out other, less demanding tasks like correspondence and bill-keeping then.
4. Avoid writing in binges. Abandon the notion that writing is best done in large, undisrupted blocks of time. Waiting for such times does more than reinforce procrastination; it demands excessive warm-up times and it encourages you to write until you are fatigued.
5. Write in small, regular amounts. If you're writing regularly, 30-minute sessions may be adequately productive. Resist the temptation to extend normal sessions into binges that leave you feeling burned out on writing.
6. Schedule writing tasks so that you plan to work on specific, finishable units of writing in each session. For example, plan to complete a two-page conceptual outline or two pages of generative writing in a session. Some of the advantages of specifying writing tasks for each session are: a) you'll work with a clear sense of direction, and b) you'll be able to finish the session knowing that you've done enough for the day. In my experience, writers who work without this task specification often `dawdle' aimlessly (e.g., the keep reworking an introduction beyond the point of diminishing returns). Equally important, the same writers often feel that unless an entire manuscript is finished, they haven't done enough. No wonder, then, that writing without breaking the task into specifiable units can overwhelm writers.
7. Keep daily charts. Graph at least three things: a) time spent writing, b) page equivalents finished, and c) percent of planned task completed. Use the charts as a prod to activity, as feedback about the effectiveness of your stimulus control procedures, as feedback about the practicality of your daily goals, and as a visible reward for working. These charts work best, in my experience, when displayed publicly.
8. Plan beyond daily goals. Schedule the stages of a manuscript in terms of weeks, again with specifiable and measurable goals so that you'll feel clear about where you're headed and about knowing when you've done enough. As plans grow larger, they necessarily involve more uncertainty; you'll need to proceed, sometimes, before achieving closure and comfort about whether you'll meet the schedule. If anything, experience will probably show you that you're allotting too much time for preliminary stages. It is often best to put limits on generative stages (.e.g, working with a conceptual outline produced in one session whether you feel ready or not) and on rough drafts.
9. Share your writing with supportive, constructive friends before you feel ready to go public. If other readers know that they're being asked to appraise writing in its formative stages, they'll feel less judgmental and more inclined to offer advice for changes. If, in contrast, they're asked to read a finished draft, they may suspect that you don't really want to make substantial changes. to get beyond the vague comments typically produced by friends (e.g., `interesting'), give your reader specific questions, especially about parts of the paper you suspect need improvement. Going public with your formative work accelerates and improves most writing.
10. Try to work on two or three writing projects concurrently. Alternatives reduce the tedium that can emerge in working on the same project too regularly. Often, the alternative projects produce cross-fertilization of ideas.

end excerpt

General Tips

Aside from stimulus control, here is some general advice about productive writing. Some of it comes from Professors as Writers, some of it from other sources. It's not a replacement for reading the books, but it may help you start unblocking and get you interested in learning more. Please add to and revise this list.

• Writing is an important job. No one thinks it strange if a doctor must leave a party or movie to attend to a medical emergency. Similarly, no one should treat your need to spend time writing with disrespect. Don't let people tell you otherwise, even in subtle ways. Feel confident that writing is a worthwhile pursuit that requires time and effort that you cannot spare.
• Try to write without concern for the final product when you are starting. In the early stages of writing, it is often more important to get your ideas into concrete words than it is for those words to be perfect. You can go back and revise later (in fact, this is where all that Singularity Writing Advice comes in handy), even if it means cutting everything you wrote and starting over.
• Show your writing to your peers early and often. This doesn't mean publishing it before it's done, but showing it to a supportive friend or colleague gives you useful feedback on your ideas and approach. Even better, find a fellow writer to work with and schedule a time every week when you will meet to review each others work. Not only is this more fun, but other writers are generally more receptive to writing difficulties and can even provide help by referring you to their own experiences. It also creates a social expectation for writing (think how your writing buddy will feel if he shows up with 10 pages and you show up with none) that increases motivation to write.
• In joy still felt, the second volume of his autobiography, Isaac Asimov says regarding blocking: "What if you get a writer's block?" (That's a favorite question.) I say, "I don't ever get one precisely because I switch from one task to another at will. If I'm tired of one project, I just switch to something else which, at the moment, interests me more."

--Gordon Worley