avatarIngrid L. Williams

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The Benevolent Dictator Every Writer Should Have on Their Desk

Surrender to the regime and write with discipline that spikes your output

Photo by Ben Rosett on Unsplash

When it is time to write, you can sit looking at the screen or out of the window for an awfully long time. With no words getting done. Even when you pretty much know what you need to write or exactly what direction the words need to take.

You may rise from the chair two or three hours later having written only a few lines or so. Meanwhile, many (and especially novice) writers complain that they never seem to have enough time to get their writing done. I think there is something important to consider in this equation. Consider that the issue is not lack of time, but rather the misuse of time. When you become more conscious of how you use any precious resource, it enables you to get more out of what you have been given. Raising your awareness of time itself opens the door to greater productivity.

Does not involve shaving your head or coughing up thousands of dollars

If you are serious about upping your writing production, the answer is not in eliminating some imagined spiritual, moral, or motivational shortcoming standing in the way of your progress. Nope. And it is not about purchasing a program to supposedly unleash some fabled, pent-up writing superpower that has been long suppressed within you somehow.

The answer is as simple as it is old-fashioned: Buy an alarm clock.

Like this one.

Photo by insung Yoon on Unsplash

Spend ten or fifteen bucks on a proper old-school, tick-tick-ticking alarm clock with a sweep hand. Yes, I know you have an alarm on your smartphone, but your phone won’t be in the room with you when you write. Phones are a distraction -the very thing the alarm clock does an excellent job of eliminating. See? Just like that, the danged phone has been pushed out of the room already.

Distractions eliminated, report for duty

Once you have installed the clock in its proper place (somewhere on the writing surface and within arms-reach), you decide upon a single writing goal that you want to achieve within the space of an hour. Maybe your target is to outline a full article. Perhaps it is completing an edit. It could be finishing off the last few pages of a chapter or writing a complete blog post.

Identify what you reasonably expect to be able to complete within that space of time and then set the alarm for exactly one hour and one minute. The extra minute is for you to adjust your chair, yank on your lucky socks or just to plain old get in the mood.

As you tap away at the keyboard, glance up at the clock at intervals so that you have an awareness of the pace and progression of your work. The first few times you try this regime, you may find you have underestimated the reasonable amount of time required for you to complete your task. However, it may also be that you allowed yourself to slack off on a perfectly achievable pace. There is no absolute way to measure this highly-subjective process. So make a judgment call, then make adjustments.

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

The clock is not your friend, but it may become a great ally

With a clock presiding, time becomes granular. The sweep hand is a brutal beast with no mercy. The hour and minute hands plodding along seem a lot more sympathetic, but in the end, they submissively follow the lead of the sweep hand. So their relatively sedate pace is merely a pretense, as you will discover when your hour is up. They are, after all, part of the same conspiracy.

Pretty quickly, you will notice that just the discipline of having to estimate how much time is needed to complete a writing task is beneficial for gaining better control of your production. Also, do not underestimate the power of the conditioning and reinforcement that comes from writing habitually in this way — you may just build up a whole new set of writing muscles. But the real benefits begin to emerge as you discover the power of producing within limited compartments of time. Time will have made its fleeting presence and limited nature more visible to you.

Like most dictators, the clock is both loved and hated

Be aware that your relationship with the ticking dictator on your desk will go through various phases: At first, you will hate it. Slowly, you will submit to it. Inevitably, you will depend upon it.

At some point, your clock will become your “precious” and you will be nearly as frantic as Gollum if it inexplicably disappears from its usual spot on your desk (well-meaning cleaners and fascinated children are the usual suspects). You will hunt it down and get it back.

Firmly allied you and your alarm clock will enter a mutual conspiracy and both of you will resent anyone who makes the blunder of interrupting your shared quest (the phone remains banished during the sacred writing hours). You may begin to take pride in pleasing the clock. It might even seem to slow down when you are really in the flow — as if to encourage you to write on.

Ok. Perhaps not all that. But maybe you will begin to think of the ticking as the soundtrack to your most productive sessions. Which is nearly as good.

The alarm clock as a totem

There is something primal about totems, emblems, and symbols. The ones we adopt reflect who we are or remind us of what we are striving to become.

Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

The alarm clock can serve as a powerful, ever-present reminder of your identity as a productive, efficient writer. Even when the working day is done, it remains there in the appointed room, awaiting the next session. Each time you enter that space, the ticking encouragement will come: Remember to write! You will find yourself answering that call frequently, and even more importantly, productively.

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