Summary

The web content provides guidance on increasing writing productivity by avoiding burnout, focusing on intrinsic motivation, leveraging social relationships, establishing daily and weekly writing habits, and organizing one's writing process.

Abstract

The article discusses four strategies for authors to enhance their writing productivity without succumbing to burnout. It emphasizes the importance of intrinsic motivation, suggesting that writing about topics of genuine interest can sustain enthusiasm during challenging times. The author also highlights the role of social relationships in maintaining motivation, advocating for engagement with readers and participation in author communities. Establishing consistent daily and weekly writing habits is recommended as a means to achieve balance and prevent overexertion, likening a writing career to a marathon rather than a sprint. Finally, the article advises on organizing writing endeavors, using tools like Scrivener to track word counts and set realistic, sustainable goals for increased output and efficiency.

Opinions

Burnout is a serious risk for authors, characterized by exhaustion, inefficiency, and negative feelings towards work.
Writing about personally fascinating topics can make the act of writing feel like a hobby rather than an obligation.
External rewards such as book deals or high rankings are insufficient for long-term motivation; a deep passion for the work is crucial.
Social interactions, including those with readers and fellow authors, are key motivators and can enhance the writing experience.
Consistent writing habits contribute to a sustainable writing career, with the analogy that writing is a marathon, not a sprint, underscoring the need for pacing.
Keeping track of writing progress, such as word counts, helps authors understand their capabilities and set achievable goals, leading to incremental productivity improvements.
Authors should focus on their individual productivity patterns rather than comparing themselves to others, as productivity can vary greatly among individuals.

AUTHOR TIPS

Four Ways to Increase Your Writing Productivity.

How to boost your daily output by finding a sustainable writing pace.

I was recently speaking to a fellow author who produced over ten novels in a year. After that, she felt so burned out that she didn’t produce anything the year after…

Nobody wants to suffer burnout — a condition that has three main aspects:

Feeling exhausted
Slowing down and becoming inefficient
Bitterness or negativity about your work

In short, you could find your writing grinding to a halt, along with a really negative mindset developing. If you find that new feelings of “what’s the point?” regularly spring to mind, perhaps you are close to burnout.

You probably need a break.

But besides the harm to your wellbeing, feeling burned out also makes you very inefficient. As with my fellow author, it’s not a sustainable way to approach a writing career.

Instead, you need to develop writing habits that allow you to keep going for the long haul.

Incredible Word Counts

Prolific fantasy author J. F. Danskin explains the techniques behind writing hundreds of thousands of words.

medium.com

Across the dozen years since I wrote my first novel-length draft, I have established a range of ways of keeping going and producing high word counts without burning out.

So let’s dive in.

1. Tap into intrinsic motivation

It’s so much easier to keep going when you have a deep passion for what you are doing.

It’s easy enough to sustain enthusiasm for something outside of your interests for a short while… perhaps in the hope of an external reward. Getting a great book deal, or suddenly taking off in the rankings, for example.

But finding things that really fascinate you, so that motivation persists even when things are tough — that depends on writing about things that you love.

When you do, writing starts to feel like a fun hobby rather than a burden. So look for those topics that really spark your interest, and are truly your kind of thing.

And be wary of writing about things just because they are currently popular.

2. Draw on social relationships to remind yourself what matters

Another key aspect of what keeps us going over the long term is that we don’t just do things for ourselves — we also do them to connect with other people.

In fact, some researchers have suggested that along with a sense of freedom and competence, this is one of the three most important factors that motivates us.

And this makes sense — you only need to reflect on experience.

Think how much more motivating it is to do a hobby if you are part of a group, for example. And about how much more you get out of watching a movie or TV show if you can discuss it with other people, whether irl or on the internet.

So connect with your readers, even if there are only a few of them at first. And get involved in author communities if you can, too.

3. Get into daily and weekly habits

Balance.

Easy to say, harder to achieve, right?

But clearly, if we overdo things, we come to a point where we have pushed ourselves too hard for a little bit too long.

That’s when we hit burnout.

Ultimately, it’s better to do a bit less and do it for a longer period of time than to exhaust yourself. A potent metaphor is to see your writing career as more of a marathon than a sprint. You need to pace yourself.

For that reason, while I do think it’s worth exploring ways to increase your writing output, it’s best done gradually, taking a moment to reflect each time you ‘level up’.

There are no prizes for getting crazy-high word count totals this week if you can’t manage something similar next week, or the one after.

Take breaks, and make sure it’s sustainable.

For your own sake.

4. Organise your writing

In order to achieve that balanced, sustainable output, you’re going to need to find ways of keeping track of what you do.

For this reason, I really recommend keeping track of your word counts and other outputs.

Scrivener is the writing software I use most often, and it has built in word counts for the whole document, meaning that you can keep track even if you are working on multiple scenes or projects.

Alternatively, just use a spreadsheet… or create one to share with fellow writers (see the second point above!).

When you know what you can do — what you can realistically achieve in a single day or a single hour — then you can begin to get those modest but sustainable increases in output. And some real efficiency savings, too.

And try not to get distracted by when other people are having a more productive time of it than you are.

It happens.

Remember — this is all about working out what works for you.

Thanks for reading! You can find my fiction and poetry here, including lots of stand-alone fantasy stories, and my articles about creativity writing and author skills right here.

Are you writing dialogue? Here are the basics.

Author J. F. Danskin explains how to correctly format and punctuate reported speech in your writing

medium.com