LifePundit

How to Increase Writing Productivity

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One reason I've really enjoyed The Biggest Loser is because I'm part of a team and I've made a commitment to show up. Nothing too remarkable about that while you have it and it's working for you. A really big deal, though, when you don't have it and you need it.

So somebody challenged me to use those same principles in my novel writing. Get a team going and make sure that I show up. Believe it or not, I've figured out a way.

Here's how it works: you probably forgot (and maybe I never wrote about) my accountability partner, a freelance writer who lives in the country in circumstances similar to mine out in Oklahoma. For two years this coming January, she and I have e-mailed each other every morning with our plans and goals for the workday, primarily to hold each other accountable in our fiction writing. We've only spoken twice and have never met, yet we know almost everything about each other and have become close friends. I think she has seen my photo but I've never seen hers. 

So we've tried a daring experiment. We have an appointed time every morning, which we call our Sacred Time, when we show up at our desks and do nothing but write fiction. Together. Usually with our cats. Except we've entered a strange new level: we have Skype video calls going while we writ. Yes, she can see me working and I can see her working, and nobody better get up from that chair until our two hours are over. (Though sometimes we have to excuse ourselves to let the cats in and out. That's the only allowed excuse. That and answering the door for people bringing checks, which has only happened once and unfortunately it wasn't for me.)

It felt very awkward at first. We don't talk to each other, we e-mail. So we didn't really know how to carry on a conversation, made worse by the fact that talking on Skype is like talking on a walkie-talkie. We've almost started to end our sentences with radio jargon so the other person will know it's okay to talk, but we don't know radio jargon.

I no longer feel like I'm here working by myself (unless you count the cat). Somebody notices if I goof off or my butt doesn't stay in chair, and I'm really enjoying the silent companionship. At the end of the session we tell how many words we have written and whether it was easy or hard.

Sometimes we'll follow up with an e-mail, which is useful because we now use our regular e-mails to each other as ways to answer our own questions by writing them down. I've learned so much from her and rely on her to help prop me up when I need propping, and I hope I do the same for her.

When You Diet, Your Brain is the First Place to Lose Weight

I'd have blogged more lately but I didn't have enough brain cells left to do it. When you diet, your brain is the first place where you'll lose weight. Mine's now down to the size of a cat's.

The rest of me looks the same, and I figure when the rest of my brain is gone, maybe I'll start to lose weight in visible places. 

The honeymoon with my gym's Biggest Loser competition is over, but I'm still showing up and doing my best. And I'm still feeling very much the winner. 

No matter what my outsides look like, I had a great moment three weeks into this that will keep me going until the end. And maybe even beyond.

Here's what happened: I'd picked up two 50-lb. bags of horse feed and had them in my car for Paul to take to the barn. He forgot to do it so they were still in my car the next morning. It had rained overnight, the horses were hungry and the wheelbarrow was too wet to use (horse feed grows toxins when it gets wet). Groan! How was I going to get the food to the barn?

Horse feed is heavy, there's no where to grab it and if you're not careful it gets out of balance and goes where it wants, usually as I'm struggling to pour it into the feed bin so it goes all over the floor. 

I thought about wrangling a bag into the house and using it from there, but there are many reasons that's not a great idea. So I picked up a bag, not really knowing what I was going to do with it. It wasn't as heavy as I remembered. So I started walking toward the barn. It wasn't really heavy at all, and I easily controlled it. Hot dog! I have super powers! I even dumped it in the feed bin with no trouble.

The horses were happy. And I was even happier. 

So what if I'm too tired to do anything and I hurt all the time? So what if I'm eating eggs whites for breakfast (is there anything less appetizing?). I can do more than I used to do. And that is an awesome new development. 

But don't tell Paul. No reason he shouldn't get a little exercise hauling feed bags around. 

A Master Procrastinator Reveals Her Secrets

There is no one who is better at procrastinating than me. I have some articles that were due last Friday. They are interesting articles I'm writing for one of my favorite clients. But I am stuck. It isn't writer's block. It's .... being a master procrastinator.

I will tell what I did today in hopes that you can learn from me. Writing this post is also one more task to help me achieve my procrastination goals.

Here’s what I’ve done today instead of finishing my articles:

• Vacuumed

• Mopped
• Cleared kitchenette area and cleaned it up (I’m talking moving furniture into the living room until we decide what to do with the old stuff) to make room for when the new table and chairs come tomorrow
• Reorganized part of laundry room (!!!)
• Six loads of laundry (no folding, though; we’ll be clean but wrinkled)
• And get this. Went to Lowe’s and bought stick-down vinyl tile, cut out the damaged part of the laundry room floor, and used a box cutter to cut the stick-down (non-matching) vinyl tile squares into shapes that resembled the part of the floor I cut out (not a very workmanlike fit) and stuck them down. They pretty much look like dooky but at least the old vinyl that was rolled back, tearing, splitting and catching on the laundry room door and breaking off into pieces is gone. Who knows. It looks so bad I might get a new floor out of this (way overdue), if Paul even notices it. However, that was not my intention. I thought I was suddenly a vinyl floor installer. The guy at Lowe’s told me how to do it. (I had to reglue part of the old floor around the edges where I cut the piece out). And even though I had picked up some stick-down tile a few months ago and finally decided which color was the closest, it was discontinued, so I picked out a color on the spot. Uh oh. The existing floor is a golden white; the pieced in squares are a grey-white.
  

Then, I had an appointment with a friend, which I decided not to cancel because that was yet another excuse not to write the articles -- plus she's leaving for Mexico tomorrow so I needed to wish her bon voyage, When I told her what I'd been up to she said that was an awful lot of work for procrastination and probably it would have been easier to just write the articles.  (I love her.)

 She also had some insight into how/why I get myself into this. When something is due, I take a militaristic approach to managing me. I say to myself that I can’t do anything fun until I’ve gotten my work done. She called this taking myself hostage. And, like any good hostage, I resist.

Then the next thing I did was to pick up Lily from school. But she didn't feel well, so I took her to the local

Doc in the Box. Lily is okay – unless she’s coming down with the flu, a virus or has a brain tumor on her pituitary gland. 

How comforting that last is.

There was guy at the doc’s who is one of those skating car hops at Sonic. He had just been run over by an SUV. The manager of Sonic stopped the SUV driver, who was mad that the car hop had “hit” his car. The guy looked pretty good for having been run over by an SUV. He was very chatty, a dreadlocked soul with tattoos who looked like the shock of it all was almost worse than the injuries, though I think he had a broken knee cap and was swaddled from hip to toe on one side with all manner of padded devices. I even overheard that maybe a hip was out of joint. Maybe he was chatty because they had him feeling little pain.

Okay, suppertime. Then I really will write those articles. I always do -- eventually.

Nom de Plume

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Me Mores

A lot of people, including my mother-in-law, have been inspired to write their memoirs. This is a good thing for family history. For instance, if you wanted to see where dysfunctional behavior entered the family tree, a relative's memoir might be a good place to start.

And grudgingly, in my mother-in-law's defense, her memoir is about growing up in war-time England and it is an interesting story that should be preserved though the memoir doesn't need to be spoken about weekly.

Other relatives have interesting stories to tell and I wish that they would tell them. There's so much that doesn't get told in a family, and while these stories wouldn't necessarily be interesting to an outsider, they are treasures to family members.

For example, it wasn't until a couple of Thanksgivings ago that I heard the story of Saintly Brother's daring scuba diving adventures and how he and his friends were almost swept to sea. His own children had never heard the story and we all sat fascinated as he told us how he and his friends had started off their "scuba" adventures by trying to swim underwater and breathe through a hollow reed like they do in the movies (can't be done) and progressed to an elaborate home-made diving rig that used a paint compressor and some hoses to supply air to a modified diving mask. They mainly saw murky water, but they also were nearly swept to sea. None of the parents ever knew. He was a smart kid with a good imagination and access to equipment of all sorts. I wish he'd write a memoir. It would be a good one.

While many of us have interesting life stories, most of us do not. Yet the trend to write one's memoir gets stronger. A friend who just returned from a writer's workshop said that there is a term for this "writing-one's-memoir-even-though-one-hasn't-done-anything-interesting": these are not called memoirs, but "Me Mores."

Just doing my job to keep you informed.

Good Economic News

Yes, there is some good economic news. It barely squeaks by as good news, but I'll take whatever good news I can get. Fiction sales were up ever so slightly, with adult fiction sales up by 0.4 percent. Juvenile fiction (at my house that would be the Twilight series) had a 6.2 percent increase.

I heard at the Myrtle Beach Writer's Conference that the publishing industry slips into recession at a slower rate than other industries because people can't afford to do other things so they turn to reading.

Bad times can bring out good things. Reading, kindness to each other, simpler food, time together and prayer.

Then there's anxiety, depression, worry, foreclosures, skipped medical treatments....

Forget all that and go read a good book. It beats the news any day.

The Treadmill Desk

Here's my new desk. It's the brownish-tannish board clamped down on the arms of my Christmas present from Paul (I asked for it: one should not receive a piece of exercise equipment unless one asks for it). He really struggled building this desk. I can write with no trouble at 2 mph, but it's difficult to use the mouse because my hand is moving. For a while I was having trouble getting a little bit seasick while I walk because apparently there's a little bit of waddle thrown in with the walk. If you notice on the left wall there's a small calendar there. I get a gold star for every day I walk. It's called an Honesty Calendar, and I've found I'll do anything for a gold star. No, rather, I'll do anything to have a calendar filled with gold stars and no voids. Or few voids.

Here's a better photo of the desk part. The colored fabric (blue) covering the clamps so as not to scratch the treadmill arms is VetWrap (also called CoFlex), which is used to bandage horses. You can't very well use sticky tape on a hairy leg. The desk can be removed so other people can use the treadmill. I find that I while I can write creatively and sometimes answer e-mails and talk on the phone on the treadmill, I'm not so good at blogging, so blogging has been light.
I'll try to add that to my treadmilling skills, but forgive me in advance for the typos. Can't walk, chew gum and spell right at the same time.

I feel better and I'm getting a lot of writing done. But the poor dog isn't getting to go on as many walks. Better go take him now before it gets down to 10 degrees or whatever awful thing it's supposed to do tonight. He and Tiger get to sleep inside. Izzie, the indoor cat, won't like that. Ah me. It's kind of like the Middle East, only I'm in charge and I say that the dog and outdoor cat get to stay. So there.

Off to walk outdoors. What a concept!

Is it Procrastination or Preparation?

It's good to be missed. Thank you, Nancy. What am I doing? Procrastinating! And I've found a better way to procrastinate than blogging: cleaning up and making plans for 2009.

Sort of like planning your New Year's resolutions early, only without actually having to start them for a month.

I've also been driving. Soon I'll be a Teamster, just from hauling Lily around where she needs to go. Minimum of 60 miles per day. More than that if she actually goes anywhere other than school.

So what's going to be different in 2009?

I'm going to be walking while working. I've got a new treadmill and Paul is going to build me a desk (right Paul?) as soon as he's finished renovating his new office and moving in (scheduled for this weekend. The toilet is out of our den!). Right now I'm using a piece of pink Styrofoam for my treadmill desk but it's not very stable. Walking while working is supposed to improve your health, your sleep, burn calories and annoy the cat. A Mayo Clinic researcher says that you can lose 67 pounds a year simply by slowly walking while you work. I don't want to lose 67 pounds (but I might after Christmas candy). To see a video about the concept, click here.

I'm going to do JaNoWriMo. I didn't "win" NaNoWriMo, but was very pleased with how much more I wrote so I've signed up for a similar but less technically spectacular (the web site, I mean) event where you do the same thing: write 50,000 words in a month, only the month is January. I'm going to write a romance that you will never, ever see with my name on it. Frissons everywhere!

Then there are other goals that I'd like to keep to myself. Such as not seeing my MiL at all in 2009.

How about you?

Getting Faster but Not Better

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Later I'll have to do a post about how I cut 1020 words in 11 hours of editing, but for now, Go Me! See previous post here. This is hilarious. And yes, I'm really writing words on my novel. Not quality words but words are being written in sentences that follow one another in some reasonable fashion that passes for basic English, though not good fiction.

Write or Die -- This is a Hoot!

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Here's something for you other NaNoWriMo-ers out there. Write or Die.You set your word count and time goals and start typing in their little text box. Then you decide what mode you want to write in, gentle, normal or kamikaze.

If you pause too long to think, get some medicinal chocolate or check out the latest LOLcat, the screen will start to flash. In normal mode if that doesn't get you back to work, truly obnoxious music will play. In kamikaze mode, it will start erasing what you've written one word at a time.

Dr. Wicked, where have you been all my life?

I'll have to say I was productive. Only about once sentence in the 1002 words I wrote is actually salvagable, but who has time to worry about that when if you stop to think it will start erasing!

Off now to write or die. (And it's free, though he likes donations.)

Oops! I'm geting slower. Here are the results of my second attempt.

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