Okay, Writing Power Writers’ Circle members, I’ve given us all some time in May to finish our April goals.  (Sometimes you need just one more weekend, right?)  How did you do?  Let us know in the comments.  We’re eager to hear. 

Those of you who haven’t introduced yourselves, please join our intrepid band of writers today!  All you have to do is introduce yourself and set some writing-related goals for the next month.  So far, I have been amazed at how well public accountability works to shore up weakening motivation or to stave off that little procrastinating voice.

I am fairly happy with my progress: I have drafted my article.  (I should note that I did use the weekend of May 2 and 3 to finish up.)  It has since been marinating: I have taken a week or so away from it in order to get perspective.  Now, I have to go back and see whether it’s any good.  Gulp.

I have at least two other versions of this project floating around.  One I completed several years ago for a graduate seminar, and the other is my first attempt at a rewrite.  I am going to mine these drafts for useful bits, but I don’t think they’ll be very helpful at this stage.  Even though they deal with the same topic, neither has the argumentative goal that my current draft has. 

I don’t regard these two failed attempts as wasted work at all, by the way.  Sometimes you can’t see a project clearly without going down a couple of promising paths that end up in dead ends.  They help clarify where you need to go.  Who knows, though: maybe I’ll find a usable sub-point.  That’d be like finding ten dollars in an old jacket pocket.  I don’t expect it, but you never know.

Over the next two weeks, I’ll devote some time to revision of this article.  Revision is in many ways the real work of writing.  In order to maximize my time, I am not going to look for large blocks of time to devote to it: it’s just not realistic at the end of the semester.  Instead, I will employ my old dissertation-writing strategy: write a little bit at a designated time every day. 

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, Revision, writing

In my last Writers’ Circle post, I asked our writers to report on whether they achieved their March writing goals and what they had planned for April.  Writers’ Circle member Adam kindly reminded me that I hadn’t updated the group on my own progress.

So here goes.  I have met my goal, but that’s not saying much.  My goal’s phrasing was way too vague to be helpful: it was “refine my argument.”  I will update you on my progress, set a new, more focused goal, and announce some other changes I’ll be making in order to make this goal more of a priority.

As you may remember, I’ve been working on a scholarly article on seventeenth-century English poet John Donne.  I have an academic journal in mind, and I have reviewed some of their recent issues to get a sense of the kind of work being published by that venue. 

One of the challenges of this article is that I’m applying a particular theological concept to one of Donne’s devotional poems.  As you know, I am a literary scholar, not a theologian.  Literary studies as an academic discipline regularly pulls theories from other disciplines to inform our readings of literary texts.  However, it can be daunting to try to understand another discipline well enough to use a certain theory appropriately. 

If you don’t do enough research, you risk misusing your material and constructing a flawed argument.  On the other hand, it’s easy to sink months into reading, reading, reading background material until your mind is so filled with other people’s ideas that your own project becomes more conceptually remote than when you had the initial idea.  In a strange way, too much research can be an academic’s way of procrastinating.

So, I have boned up on some of the theological material that I didn’t feel comfortable with, and I have copies to refer to and citations to find more detailed information.  In short, it’s time to draft.  As drafting goes, I’m a potter, so I’ll probably write three times as much text as I’ll need for the final article (which will be 20-25 pages).  I draft to discover: it’s just the way I work.  So what’s my goal for April? 

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Technorati Tags: goal setting, priorities, writing

Writer’s block.

Two innocuous looking words, responsible for a lot of misery.  What is writer’s block?  In some ways, writer’s block is like procrastination.  You may be reluctant to work on a writing project because of fear:  you are unsure whether the project will succeed, or you are apprehensive about tackling a mountain of intellectual complexity. 

You may also be procrastinating because you don’t feel motivated to write.  I’ll be the first to admit that writing is hard work: it’s natural to wish, sometimes, that you could watch a Bruce Lee marathon instead.  If your writing goals are not dictated by hard deadlines, it may be even harder to work steadily at the task, no matter how important you think it is or how much you enjoy it.  It’s all too easy to defer the things you want to do in the course of the things you have to do (or think you have to do).

In some ways, though, writer’s block is different from other forms of procrastination; staring unproductively at the blank page is different from ignoring that linen closet you should organize.  Many times, a writer wants to write but can’t get the ideas to flow.  Because it’s inherently creative, our writing is imbued with ideas about who we are.  Following the writing process means confronting ourselves, and sometimes that can be a tricky proposition.

So today, I’d like to ask you — the writers — to share your techniques for dealing with and overcoming writer’s block.  What do you do to get those ideas flowing?  What strategies work for you when you have to get it done?  When you want to get it done? 

You all have some amazing ideas: I can’t wait to see what you come up with. 

Cheers!

Technorati Tags: blog writing, writer's block, writing tips

 As most of you know, I currently work full time as a college English professor.  Before that, however, I spent a year as a full time grant writer for an educational nonprofit organization.  The grant writing world is quite different from academia: it’s full of mysterious concepts like targets, milestones, and outcomes. 

To be an effective grant writer, I had to learn a lot about outcomes measurement.  Although I no longer write grants full time, I still dabble in fundraising and development on a freelance basis.  Today, in fact, I was reviewing a grant draft for a college advancement office, and much of my feedback concerned the proposed project’s outcomes.  I started to think about outcomes measurement in general, and it struck me that all writers could benefit from adopting an outcomes-based perspective from time to time.

Outcomes measurement is a widely used, and often misunderstood, methodology in nonprofit development.  Its basic premise is simple: the most important criterion to use in determining a program’s effectiveness is whether (and how) people’s lives were changed as a result of that program.  Funders want to know how their money will help people.  Funders do not want to know what their money will allow an agency to do. 

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, grant writing, outcomes measurement, Revision, writing, writing tips

 As this blog’s regular followers will no doubt have noticed, I try to vary Writing Power’s content in a few ways.  For example, I try to write posts covering all stages of the writing process, from invention to editing.  I also try to place each post on a different point along a continuum that stretches between abstract, how-to-change-the-way-you-think-about-writing posts (like this one) and specific, how-to-use-adverbs posts (like this one). 

Finally, I write posts that apply to an array of writing situations: writing in your personal life, writing in an academic context, and writing at work.  But what if you don’t do a lot of writing at work? 

Well, maybe you should.

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Technorati Tags: professional writing, progress reports, writing, writing tips

 Welcome to Writing Power, the site that aims to help people enrich their lives by improving their writing.  If you like what you read, I hope you’ll become a regular reader by subscribing to Writing Power’s RSS feed.  In addition, please consider sharing your favorite posts through sites like digg, StumbleUpon, or del.icio.us using the “Share This” link below.  Thank you for your support!

So…you’ve been working hard to improve your writing.  You have been establishing a writing process, incorporating invention and planning before you draft.  More importantly, you have committed yourself to the real work of writing - revision.  You are looking at your drafts through your reader’s eyes, adjusting overall organization, word choice, even page design to enhance communication.

Even though your writing passion is focused on personal projects, you find yourself applying your new skills at the office, too.  Your emails have become more focused and efficient, and the professional writing you do exhibits increased purposefulness.

In short, you’ve become known as “the writing maven” at work.  And as soon as your colleagues recognize your skill, they begin to ask your advice.  The problem is, what works for you writing-wise may not work for your colleagues.  Not all good writers are good reviewers, just as not all good writers are good writing teachers.  It’s a different angle.

So what is a newly-crowned writing maven to do?  The following checklist will help you evaluate your colleague’s work systematically and ensure that your feedback is helpful.

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, business writing, professional writing, Revision, writing, writing tips

The idea-gathering stage is a magical place, full of imagination and inspiration.  I haven’t met a writer yet who doesn’t relish the free flowing ease that the term “invention stage” connotes.  Invention is fun.  This attitude may be partly to blame for the planning stage’s bad rap.  As we transition from invention to planning, we think, well, invention was great while it lasted.  Now, the fun’s over.  It’s time to get to work.  Sigh.

But is invention as easy as we like to think?  The purpose of the invention stage is to discover all the things that are available to say about a given topic. 

I suspect that writers think of invention as easy because they stop gathering ideas when they don’t feel like gathering them anymore.  In the other stages, however, you can’t just declare a stage complete.  If you only have half an outline, for example, you can’t say that you are finished with the planning stage.  Similarly, if you don’t have an introduction, body, and conclusion, you’re not finished drafting.  So why should you be able to stop inventing if you get stuck?

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, brainstorming, freewriting, ideas, invention stage, writing, writing process

 One thing I like most about personal productivity/personal development/self improvement blogs is that they try to turn wishes and dreams into plans and actions.  They work to remove the stumbling blocks that keep “someday I want to” from turning into “today I will” or, even better, “yesterday I did.”  In our time-starved culture, where you can be busy from morning to night and still not achieve anything meaningful, stumbling blocks are thick on the ground.

Often, we don’t work on important projects - projects that would benefit our lives on a large scale - because they seem too big, too complex, too much for us to handle.  Despite these projects’ importance, or perhaps because of their importance, they intimidate us.  Although we may not like to admit it, we’re scared. 

Fear is a powerful adversary.  It works to keep us from going after what we want, and many times we don’t even realize that we’re afraid.  It’s easier to say “I’m too busy” or “I’ll get to it after I take care of X and Y.”  But the fear gains power from our unconscious: in order to master it, we must acknowledge it.

Once we define what fears are keeping us from achieving our goals, it’s far easier to find the motivation to push those fears aside.  The idea that we’re letting an often irrational fear dictate our actions is repugnant to many of us.

For me, one of the most powerful ways to go from “someday I want to” to “today I will” and “yesterday I did” is writing.  The following are some simple ways to use writing today in order to conquer those fears and move toward your goals.

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Technorati Tags: freewriting, motivation, Productivity, writing, writing tips

 Some days, you really feel productive: you are crossing things off your to-do list (or “next actions” list for those GTDers among us) left and right.  There’s nothing you can’t do. 

Other days, it seems as though you spend all day taking one step forward only to take two steps back.  Nothing comes as easily as it did the day before, and no project seems to move toward completion. 

Wouldn’t it be great if we could take actions to have more highly productive days and fewer days stuck in the Slough of Despond?  Other blogs that discuss ways to apply productivity principles to your work and personal life often feature ways to engineer those highly productive days we dream of.  See:  15 Tips to Make Today the Day You Finish Your To-Do List, Your Most Productive Week Ever!, Make Every Day Your Most Productive Day, and Purpose Your Day: Most Important Task (MIT).  As these links show, a popular tactic is to prepare for a productive day the day before.

As you know, at Writing Power our mission is to discover productivity principles that will work to improve your writing life.  So, let’s apply this day-before productivity principle to writing.  Here are five ideas that you can do today to make tomorrow an insanely productive writing day.

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, goal setting, goals, Productivity, writing tips

 One reason I love personal productivity/life development/organization blogs is that they provide some great tips for overcoming procrastination.  The blogosphere is full of them, and they’re great fun to read.  (Check out Leo Babuta’s Top 20 Motivation Hacks - An Overview at Zen Habits or Lifehack’s 11 Tips for Nuking Laziness Without Becoming a Workaholic for examples, but this is truly the tip of the iceberg when it comes to productivity how-tos.)

Plus, they’re a great way to feel like I’m doing something productive when I’m really avoiding larger tasks.

…hey…wait a second…

This post is not about overcoming procrastination. It’s about getting a draft started.  I make this distinction at the outset because even if you’re not a chronic procrastinator, it can be challenging to get started drafting.  Whether you’re a potter or a sculptor, writing is hard work.  In fact, it can seem positively Herculean.  This goes double for the procrastinators out there.

Here are some tips that have worked for me, or for writers I know.  More importantly, I have not come across these tips in other personal productivity/writing blogs.  (If you have posted something similar, let me know in the comments section.  I’d be happy to link to it.)  I hope you’ll find something here that you haven’t tried yet.

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, drafting, getting started, procrastination, Productivity, writing tips