Writing Productivity Tips by Kevin J. Anderson

I don't normally pay too much attention to writing advice. A lot of it comes from people who are not themselves professional writers, and as Orson Scott Card pointed out, you can't learn to be a professional writer from someone else who isn't. But I don't normally read advice even given by professionals. If they are professional editors, I tend to question the logic of such claims as avoiding adverbs or "said-bookisms". If they are professional writers, their advice simply doesn't work for me!

I suffer from adult attention deficit disorder, and that causes two major problems: I cannot work on one project to the exclusion of all others, and I cannot help editing and revising before I'm finished writing. So being told, "Stop whining, put yer butt in the chair, and just WRITE, dammit!!", or words to that effect, doesn't help. I finally learned how to solve the first problem by allowing myself to work on multiple projects guilt-free. That is, I stopped beating myself up every time I got bored with one story, or hit writer's block with it, and decided to start a new story, or go back to an old one whenever I felt renewed inspiration.

That's what allowed me to complete the 50+ stories I am in the process of self-publishing.

The second problem, however, has proved more vexing; in fact, it is the primary reason I get bored or blocked. What happens is, I always reach a point where I can't figure what to say next. I should clarify: I know what's coming next in the story; I just don't know how to EXPRESS it in words. When that happens I automatically go into editing mode, and spend minutes, hours, days even, trying to figure out the "best" way to say it, instead of just writing anything to get past it and continue on. And then I get bored, or blocked, and I switch to another story.

I have, however, found one exception to the "useless advice" phenomenon, and that is the "Writing Productivity Tip" series on Kevin J. Anderson's blog. This is not idle flattery from a leech-like sycophant hoping to latch on to him and suck his vitality dry (however true that might be). Rather, I joined this group because of the series, in particular because I actually agreed with the majority of them! For example, Tip #3 validated my decision to work on multiple projects instead of try to force myself to just do one at a time.

But it was Tip #7 that really convinced me I should pay attention, because it offered a solution to my second major problem. Not so much a how-to as a different perspective. It's the idea that while writing you should just write, and only when the story is finished should you then start to edit. This sentiment is echoed in Tip #4 -- Dare to Bad (at First)...Then Fix It. The idea is not to be concerned about getting "perfect"; just getting it down "on paper".

I mean, it's as if I had been colorblind all my life, and suddenly someone flipped a switch and the world exploded into color, like when Dorothy walks out of her house into the Land of Oz for the first time. The revelation was virtually that dramatic. And it has reaped benefits. Three times now, I've caught myself going into editing-mode, and instead I forced myself to write down anything, no matter how nauseating, just to get past it and move on.

And it's actually worked! Thank you!!

Not that everything's perfect. I have to retrain the way I think on this issue, but it's still progress.

So, if you're a writer, and you haven't read his Tips series, DO IT!

IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE YOUR SANITY!!!