What Joyful Productivity Looks Like: The “Woodland Trail” Metaphor

Picture your writing (or other work) session as a stroll down a beautiful, sun-dappled woodland path. The path is wide and flat, the air warm and inviting, and on either side of you are banks of friendly plants alive with twittering birds. You’re having a marvelous time, and are moving at a relaxed, yet efficient pace – almost with a bit of a strut.

All of a sudden someone pops up out of the underbrush and joins you on your path: it’s your spouse, full of opinions on your current piece of writing.

You walk on for a bit, your spouse yammering in your ear, not just about the writing, now, but about he/she wishes the house were better maintained and how you two never go out any more. It’s an unpleasant distraction, but you’re still mostly enjoying your walk.

Then, someone else pops up – your parents, who are worried about how your writing will reflect on them.

And then your siblings parachute down onto the path, asking when are you going to get a real job, and aren’t you embarrassed to be driving around in that old car?

Then, an old teacher or boss pops up, reminding you of how, “you really don’t do dialog very well.”

And an editor who, twenty years ago, described a story of yours as “jejune.” (Yes, people do remember cruel comments for decades!)

And the author of a newspaper article you recently read that proclaimed that the market for epic family sagas, like the one you happen to be writing, is “dead.”

Etc.

Soon, you’re walking at the center of a clamorous crowd, none of whom you’ve invited. Naturally, you’ll have a hard time working in the midst of their harping, carping and negativity.

The prolific handle things differently. They decide, with absolute authority (get it? author-ity), who comes on their trail, and how long they can stay. You’re only allowed on if they want you on, and the minute you’re no longer an asset to their process, you’re gone. (I like to imagine that “gone” being either in the form of a vaudeville hook whisking the offender off stage right, or a giant boot sending him into orbit.)

And no free passes: everyone has to pass the “asset” test, including partners, parents, kids, and “important” teachers, editors and the like. And those who fail the test a few times permanently lose their right to apply for entry.

They’re banished, baby.

And so the prolific have a wonderful time strolling peacefully and productivity through the hours, days and years of their work.

Adapted from my book The 7 Secrets of the Prolific. Buy now, and get instant ebook access.
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Michael Chabon on True Novelists versus “Rebel Angels”

From Wikipedia:

In a 2012 interview with Guy Raz of Weekend All Things Considered Chabon said that he writes from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. each day, Sunday through Thursday. He tries to write 1,000 words a day. Commenting on the rigidity of his routine, Chabon said, “There have been plenty of self-destructive rebel-angel novelists over the years, but writing is about getting your work done and getting your work done every day. If you want to write novels, they take a long time, and they’re big, and they have a lot of words in them…. The best environment, at least for me, is a very stable, structured kind of life.”

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Enid Blyton: Prolific Writer

The Guardian reports on a new exhibit on famed British children’s writer Enid Blyton. She produced more than 700 books, mainly for young readers, and was very disciplined both in her writing habits and her bookkeeping and business management:

But grown-up visitors will be intrigued to see how little editing Blyton’s manuscripts needed. She would cross out the odd word, insert an adjective here and there, but what was published was more or less what she battered out with two frantic fingers on the typewriter, also on display in Newcastle.

During a 50-year career, Blyton rattled off an astonishing 700-plus books, as well as 4,500 stories. The exhibition also reveals that she did her own accounts. A pencil-written ledger from 1926 entitled “work paid for” showed Blyton, then 29, earned £189, nine shillings and 11 pence in January alone. “It’s fascinating to see how organised she was,” said Kate Edwards, chief executive of Seven Stories. “She was such a shrewd businesswoman.”

Also on show in Newcastle are diaries Blyton wrote that reveal a woman with a Stakhanovite work ethic before the Russian miner had become the patron saint of grafters the world over. “Worked all day till 4.30,” she notes tersely on 25 October 1927. “Did 6,000 words today, a record for me.” In 1931 she writes: “Did story for my Page [the welcome page she wrote for each edition of her magazine]. Went for long walk with Nurse. Rested till tea. Knitted till bed.” The next day, Seven Stories adds as a postscript, Blyton gave birth to daughter Gillian.

Enid Blyton’s Account Book

If you’re a perfectionist, you might read the above and chastise yourself for not being similarly dedicated, or you might even aspire to match her productivity. It’s okay to dream big, but make sure you understand how she achieved her productivity. She obviously had a flair for spinning prose that didn’t need a lot of editing; at the same time, however, let’s not forget that she wrote children’s books, which tend to be shorter than adult ones, and also efficiently created series in which she re-used the same characters and settings. It also probably helped that there was a robust market for fiction back then–actually getting paid for one’s work is a huge motivator. But Blyton was also pretty monomaniacal about her work:

“Writing trumped all else in her life, relegating world events to a footnote. “Worked all day,” she wrote on 2 September 1939. “Germany invaded Poland today so I suppose we shall be at war tonight.”

Reminds me of something I read once about Mozart, that in all of his hundreds of letters to his father and others–letters that, in some cases, were filled with minutiae about music– he never once mentions his generation’s major upheaval, the French Revolution.

As for Blyton, if you’re not able or willing to duplicate the conditions for her prolificness, then don’t worry if you’re not able to match it. Instead, figure out what you ARE  able to reasonably achieve, and focus on that. Remember that comparisons are frequently misused in a perfectionistic way.
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Jerry Seinfeld to Writers: “No Slack For You” Even on Festivus!

We like to look for one primary secret to the success of the superstars of the world, even though almost always a combination of factors, people, and circumstances were involved. It remains instructive though when a highly successful professional freely offers the big reveal on how they got to the top. As reported in Lifehacker, software developer Brad Isaac has such a story to tell about Jerry Seinfeld, and it’s not “about nothing.”

Isaac knew Seinfeld as a nightclub comic before he hit it big in television, but already it was clear he was on his way up. He asked Jerry what the big secret was, and he got an answer. Productivity is everything in writing. Only through having a mountain of material can you cull out the crap and leave an abundance of actual nuggets of great quality. And the one and only way to attain this level of productivity is to write something every day.

He didn’t mean 364 days a year. You don’t take a day off on the Festivus for the Rest of Us. Writing every day meant just that to Jerry:

“He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.

Mr. Seinfeld’s technique is straightforward. But it is a strategy that sidesteps the inner causes of procrastination. It also never defines how much writing qualifies as the daily minimum. So, maybe there is such a thing as arguing with success. Not that there’s anything wrong with it!

Want some more tips for writers? Click here.
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Franz Kafka’s Writer’s Block

Mason Currey, author of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, writes about three procrastinating writers, Edgar Allen Poe, William James, and Franz Kafka:

• “In 1908, Kafka landed a position at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute in Prague, where he was fortunate to be on the coveted “single shift” system, which meant office hours from 8 or 9 in the morning until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. This was a distinct improvement over his previous job, which required long hours and frequent overtime. So how did Kafka use these newfound hours of freedom? First, lunch; then a four-hour-long nap; then 10 minutes of exercise; then a walk; then dinner with his family; and then, finally, at 10:30 or 11:30 at night, a few hours of writing—although much of this time was spent writing letters or diary entries.

  In his letters, Kafka complained that his day job was holding him back, but as Louis Begley argues in his excellent biographical essay on Kafka, this was really just an excuse. Begley writes, “It is rare that writers of fiction sit behind their desks, actually writing, for more than a few hours a day. Had Kafka been able to use his time efficiently, the work schedule at the Institute would have left him with enough free time for writing. As he recognized, the truth was that he wasted time.” [Highlighting mine-HR]

For the record, never refer to your reasons for not writing as “excuses,” “complaints,” or “whines.” First, because those are negative, moralistic labels that do not add anything to the conversation: they simply shame (and, thus, undermine) you. Second, people’s reasons for underproductivity are always valid. Always! 100%. I’ve been doing this work for more than a decade and I’ve never yet heard an invalid reason.

I don’t know what happened to Kafka. Was he exhausted after his job, was his family life stressful, did he have trouble coping with his lack of public recognition, or was he just afraid to keep visiting the darkness that so often appeared in his writings? According to Wikipedia, “Kafka finished none of his full length novels and burned around 90 per cent of his own work,” which suggests a whopping case of perfectionism.

A sad case, all around. Read more

Writer’s Block is Universal

Sheldon Levine at Sysomos used his company’s social media analytics platform to see how often people mention writer’s block online, and who is mentioning it. He got some interesting results, including:

Of the 100 days I looked at, 54.7% of all the social mentions of writers block that I found came from the United States. People in China seemed to suffer from writers block the second most, but they only accounted for 17.9% of the conversation. Something interesting to point out is that the other countries that had a significant amount of chatter about writers block were also “Westernized” countries like the UK (8.5%), Canada (3.8%) and Australia (3.5%).

He also found women mentioning it more than men:

Pretty fascinating stuff, but even he admits this is nowhere like science. The high proportion of blocked writers in western countries may reflect that people in those countries feel free-er to write. (As opposed to those at risk for jail or worse.) Also, men still tend to seek out help for emotional problems less often than women, and that may account for the gender disparity.

In any case, rest assured that if you’re struggling with a block you’ve got plenty of company. Also rest assured that it’s the best people who suffer from writer’s block: those who care not just about their work, but those around them, society at large, and the planet. Selfish, exploitative, uncaring people tend not to get blocked: they just get the job done, not caring who they stomp on in the process. But it’s much harder to be productive and succeed if you’re trying to do it fairly and honorably, while meeting your more general obligations and responsibilities. So never feel bad about your block: work to eliminate it, but until you do recognize that it’s a symptom of the wonderful, caring, sensitive person you are.

Also, I wonder if the high number of hits in China reflects a preponderance of Tiger Momism. Read more

Artist Sol LeWitt’s Productivity Advice: Create More by Focusing on the Work Itself

This short movie contains many F-bombs but offers valid productivity advice:

The movie’s text is an F-bombed version of a letter from Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse, who struggled with self-doubt:

Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping,…Stop it and just DO!…

Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you – draw & paint your fear and anxiety…

You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO!…

Try to do some BAD work – the worst you can think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell – you are not responsible for the world – you are only responsible for your work – so DO IT. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any preconceived form, idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be…

I know that you (or anyone) can only work so much and the rest of the time you are left with your thoughts. But when you work or before your work you have to empty you [sic] mind and concentrate on what you are doing. After you do something it is done and that’s that. After a while you can see some are better than others but also you can see what direction you are going. I’m sure you know all that. You also must know that you don’t have to justify your work – not even to yourself.

ht Michelle Aldredge at Gwarlingo.

Here’s an excerpt from The 7 Secrets of the Prolific” on the importance of focusing on internal rewards: Read more