Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

Show Notes

 

Summary:

Episode #41: 5 Steps to Find Time for Writing

This week I planned to record a podcast about managing time and—wouldn't you know it—I had absolutely no time to record it. I’m not 100 percent sure that’s situational irony, but I can tell you it is definitely 100 percent frustrating.

At any rate, I finally snatched some time to record it, and I'm offering five steps to find time for writing.

The steps are:

Figure out what you're doing with your days.

Stop doing some of those things by eliminating, delegating, or pausing anything you can.

Determine if you're in a chaotic season, and if you are, admit it and as much as possible, embrace it.

If you have a predictable schedule, block off time for writing; if you're in a chaotic season, be ready to snatch an opportunity when time opens up.

When you find the time, write.

Soon you'll see how managing our energy and attention fits together with managing our space and time, but we have to find time for writing before we can make the most of it with maximum energy and attention.

Listen for the full podcast.

Resources:

#40: Take Charge of Your Writing Space, Tasks, and Projects

#39: Manage Your Writing Space to Be a More Productive Writer

#38: Manage Your Writing Space, Time, Energy, and Attention

Toggl app to track time

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You can subscribe with iTunes and Stitcher, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. You can also use the feed with any podcast player you use.

Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook, where I'm always sharing ideas to help us be more curious, creative, and productive.

Image by Ann Kroeker, using photo from Pixabay, free for use under Creative Commons CC0.

Show Notes

 

Summary:

Episode #40: Take Charge of Your Writing Space, Tasks, and Projects

Episode 38 introduced four major areas we can manage: our writing space, time, energy, and attention. The next week, in episode 39, I posed a series of questions to help us evaluate our writing spaces in order to create a master "punch list" to work through in the week ahead.

In this episode, I review some progress I made on my own punch list; remind us to add a whimsical, playful element to our workspace; and then dive into another aspect of our space—ways to manage our writing tasks and projects.

Whether you choose an analog or digital solution (or a combination of both), dump everything into one task management or project management system and commit to it. Have your system (journal, notebook, checklist, or app) with you at all times to store any ideas that come to mind.

Finally, before we leave the topic of managing our space and move on to managing our time, I suggest thinking through a system for storing and accessing physical files—printed paperwork. Digitize what you can and store the scanned documents on a hard drive or app like Evernote. For the remaining physical, printed documents that must be archived or at your fingertips for easy access, a simple drawer with file folders may do the trick.

Take charge of your space, tasks, and projects for a more productive (and I predict happier) writing life.

Post your progress on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook using #writingspace, and I'll try to track you down! I'd love to read about (and see) how your space is shaping up.

Listen for the full podcast.

Resources:

The Play Project: A Month of Fun for Anyone (especially writers and other creatives)

Take Your Play History

#29: The Energizing Work of a Playful Writer

#31: Plan a Playful Year

#39: Manage Your Writing Space to Be a More Productive Writer

#38: Manage Your Writing Space, Time, Energy, and Attention

Beyond the To-Do List podcast episode that mentions committing to one project management system

Todoist.com

Bullet Journal overview

Bullet Journal search on Pinterest

Poets & Writers Toolkit: Productivity Apps for Busy Writers (Tweetspeak Poetry)

20 Awesome DIY Office Organization Ideas That Boost Efficiency (via Lifehack) 

* * *

You can subscribe with iTunes and Stitcher, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. You can also use the feed with any podcast player you use.

Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook, where I'm always sharing ideas to help us be more curious, creative, and productive.

Image by Ann Kroeker, using photo from Pixabay, free for use under Creative Commons CC0.

Show Notes

 

Summary:

Episode #39: Manage Your Writing Space to Be a More Productive Writer

In the last episode I introduced four areas we writers can begin to evaluate and inventory in order to increase productivity: our writing space, time, energy, and attention.

My hope is that through this series we see ways to prioritize our writing—and ourselves as writers—so that our decisions reflect that priority. When we manage our writing lives with intentionality, our space, time, energy and attention can be arranged to reduce barriers to productivity.

The first goal is to manage our writing spaces.

Maybe your space is a table at a coffee shop, maybe it’s a desk in the corner of your bedroom, or maybe it’s a dedicated home office. Are you in your writing space right now? If so, look around. If you're not in your writing space, try to visualize your space. Look at the flat surfaces and pause at the papers and any electronics you use. Think about your chair if you sit to work, and what’s at your fingertips. If you stand, what’s at eye level and what’s around you if you turn in a full circle?

What’s working well for you?

What makes you happy?

Can you identify all the things that energize you to work creatively when you’re writing?

Do you have on hand the equipment you need to efficiently plow through administrative tasks—anything from a stapler to a well-designed mouse?

Have you incorporated some decorative items that reflect your personality and make you smile?

How well does the color of your workspace suit you?

Have you included at least one or two things that contribute to your health, like a water bottle, a plant, or an exercise ball you can sit on or use during breaks to stretch and strengthen?

Did your eye land on something that bugged you a little—something that’s stealing some of your energy? Maybe it’s a stack of papers you need to file or a bag of trash that needs to go out. In the corner of my office, I’ve stacked several storage boxes packed with stuff I need to deal with. These nag at me and subtly draw my mind away from the writing I want and need to do.

And how’s the lighting? Could you replace fluorescent with incandescent lights?

Would a whiteboard help you create mind maps for your projects?

Would a long blank wall serve as a place to stick Post-its and map out the plot of your novel? Or could it become an idea wall where you post a collage of images that inspire you to stick with your big picture goals and your crazy writing dreams?

Do you need to save money to upgrade equipment and pay for faster WiFi?

Do you want to try a standing desk for part of the day and see how it affects your energy level and creative process?

Is it time to incorporate a more ergonomic chair despite how well the current one from IKEA matches your decor?

Make a punch list that includes:

things you want to rearrange

things you want to get rid of

items you want to swap out for something better

goodies you want to make or buy new and incorporate into your space

piles or containers you need to deal with soon

Keep that as a master to-do list, so you can work your way through. This coming week, I urge you to do one thing on that list each day. After you check something off, see how your body, mind, attention and energy respond to the change.

And let me leave you with an additional challenge: If your workspace isn’t clear, bump that up in priority. At the end of your work day, as you’re winding down, take a minute to clear your desk and restore the order. 

I actually have that as a recurring item on my digital to-do list, and I check it off each day after I complete it: clean and clear desk.

Show Notes

 

Summary:

Episode #38: Manage Your Space, Time, Energy and Attention

To be a more successful writer, you're probably going to have to be a more productive writer. To be more productive, it's best to learn to manage several things, including the space in which you work, the time you have to work, your energy levels, and your attention, or focus, on any given thing.

I'm going to introduce them in today's episode and dive more deeply into them in successive episodes.

Today, I want you to begin doing an evaluation or inventory of each of these four areas of your writing life:

Space

Time

Energy levels

Attention, or focus

Pull out your favorite way to take notes, whether it's in Evernote or on a piece of paper, and start making lists.

First, look at your space. If it's a mobile office, do you have what you need in the bag you carry with you to the coffee shop or library? If you have dedicated office space, take a look around. What's missing, what's working, what needs to change? Make it a priority to create the kind of space you need, to be a productive writer who gets the work done.

To better manage your time, you'll want to do a time inventory. We'll talk about this in more detail later, but the more information you have, the better. You can use a lot of different tools. The simplest is to use a notebook and pen, and write down start and stop times for various tasks. By doing this, you begin to see the time truly available to you as a writer.

Next is energy levels. Start now tracking energy levels to help determine how to organize your day to take advantage of peak energy. You probably already know whether you're a morning person or evening person, but if you start tracking it, you may find opportunities you might not have realized were there.

There has been a lot of talk about maximizing focus. Minimizing distractions maximizes focus, and that's how we gain productivity, they claim. We're going to evaluate what distracts us and see whether or not managing our attention makes a difference in our productivity.

If we focus on these four areas, I'm convinced we can increase productivity as writers, even if we're working with limited space, limited time, limited energy, and limited focus.

Do what you can in the days ahead to take stock.

Gather up your materials. Take good notes. And tune in next week.

Listen for the full podcast.

* * *

You can subscribe with iTunes and Stitcher, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. You can also use the feed with any podcast player you use.

Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook, where I'm always sharing ideas to help us be more curious, creative, and productive.

Image by Ann Kroeker, using photo by Ryan McGuire via Gratisography, free of copyright restrictions.

Show Notes

 

Summary:

Episode #37: How Good Does My Writing Need to Be Online?

Not long ago, writer, poet and blogger Christina Hubbard asked me, “How polished should a blog post be?”

Shortly after she asked that, I saw a presentation by a successful young online entrepreneur who suggested that blogs can be a little sloppy; people reading online don’t mind an error here or there. Blogging’s casual, he said, so don’t worry about it—the mistakes make you more real.

I couldn’t help but notice a similar message from another young online entrepreneur who trains business owners how to communicate their message more clearly. She urges people to get their message out there. Don’t let perfectionism hold you back, she says. Better to get the message out into the world than to wait forever and never take action because you’re afraid it’s not perfect—or you keep trying to make it perfect.

What do you think? Is the first person right? Do people expect blog posts to be messy?

Maybe some readers don’t mind. But then I think...well, I’m a reader. I'm also a writer, a writing coach, and an editor, but as a reader, I disagree. I spotted many typos in someone’s webinar a few weeks ago, and maybe it’s because of my work—maybe a typical viewer wouldn’t react the same—but that sort of lowered my trust in the presenter’s message.

I advise writers to produce their best work every time they write.

Three Big Reasons to Publish Quality Blog Posts

If you've wondered how good your writing online needs to be, I have three big reasons to give it your best, even if it means publishing less frequently.

1. It’s a first impression to readers. People arrive at your website a lot of different ways: from a link on someone’s blog, from a link in social media, through a search, from a referral. They could arrive at a post you published last year or yesterday, and if this is the first time they encounter you, they’re going to make a quick decision about what kind of writer you are in the first few lines. If it’s riddled with errors, delivers little value, or doesn’t flow well, what impression have you left them with?

Give every article your best effort, because with a good impression, you could convert a casual one-time visitor to a subscriber to wants to read more from you.

2. It’s your online portfolio. You may have a tab on your blog where you present an official portfolio, but everything you publish on your website becomes an unofficial contribution to your portfolio. Not only casual readers who could be converted to fans or followers but also industry influencers could find their way to your home online.

Imagine if the post you churn out without a lot of effort ends up being a publisher’s first encounter with you. If this person is going to recommend you to an acquisitions editor or make a decision about offering you a contract, why give them a reason to hesitate? Show them quality work anywhere they might land on your site.

3. It’s a key element to building your platform. Some of us have been told that our platform depends upon frequent and consistent publishing online, to bulk up our site's content. To pull that off as one lone blogger is asking a lot when we have so many other tasks. In order to stay on schedule and keep up the pace, we might be tempted to push something out before it's ready.

But you want to deliver value to readers and build a reputation as someone who has ideas, answers to questions, solutions to problems, and thoughtful input on a topic or theme. Better to take your time and write fewer posts that will be saved and shared and build your name in association with that field or genre or topic than to spit out a few short posts that didn’t contribute much to the bigger conversation.

Show Notes:

Episode #36: Why Writers Need Five Fat Files

Years ago, I heard about author Elizabeth George’s five fat files.

Her idea is to pick five areas you’d like to grow in and even develop into an expert in, and focus your resources on those five areas. They could be five ideas, topics, themes, or skills, and they are five areas you can live with for a long, long time. Because you’re investing in them in a way that invests in yourself as a writer, and as a person, over time.

Already you might find yourself starting to sort through what you might make your main five files.

To try to figure yours out, I suggest you begin by asking a few questions:

First, where does your curiosity consistently carry you? Last week we talked about following the spark of interest and letting curiosity make us more creative writers. What sparks your interest? Over the years have you seen a trend?

Another obvious question to ask is what do you already know a lot about? And...do you want to go deeper with it?

An article at Path of Life Christian Coaching asks two more profound questions that can take it to the next level. They ask:

What would you like to be known for? 

What would you like your name to be associated with?

These questions can help you sort that through and figure out what your five fat files will be. As we review the questions, answer them in your head:

Where does curiosity tend to lead you?

What do you already know a lot about, and would you like to go deeper with it?

What would you like to be known for?

What would you like your name to be associated with?

With these questions, you can begin homing in on your five main themes, your five favorite topics of interest, your five skills and areas of expertise you’d like to explore.

You don’t have to have five, but it’s an effective number. If you get too many, it’s harder to go deep with any of them. If you have too few, you might get bored.

As soon as you’ve identified one of the five, you can begin the process of gathering material to read, to absorb, to own. You can create physical files or digital files to store them in. Whatever you choose, you want to make it easy to access, easy to organize, easy to keep track of all the citation information so you can go back and figure out your original sources, so set up a simple system that you can tweak as you go.

But most importantly, start learning. Start practicing. Start increasing the depth of your understanding.

Read books and peer-reviewed studies

Attend lectures and seminars and conferences

Meet other experts and talk with them or interview them

Take classes

Visit locations.

Write about the topics, ideas, knowledge, or skills you’re acquiring--and the more you know, the more you’ll be able to write about it.

By focusing on five areas of interest, knowledge or skills, you make decisions more easily. Because you know what you’re focusing on in life and as a writer, you can easily skim an article and realize it isn’t contributing to your bank of knowledge or ability.

Your five files will grow fat over time, and you’ll begin to dive deep. As you continue to let curiosity lead the way, you’re funneling it to these topics. You'll gain information that raises still more questions. When you’ve hit on the five areas that are right for you, you’ll find that the more you know, the more you want to know.

Writers need five fat files to have a boundless supply of ideas and material for the work they're doing, and to grow into an expert people turn to. Five fat files means you aren’t limited to just one thing, so you aren’t necessarily pigeon-holed or typecast.

Show Notes

Summary:

Episode #35: Want to Be a More Creative Writer? Get Curious!

Curiosity can distract us from our work and disrupt our productivity. Curiosity can tempt us to waste time watching Buzzfeed and Upworthy videos, discover our friends' latest Facebook updates, tag trends on Twitter, and obsessively check weather reports.

But curiosity is a powerful force—an energizing force—that can fuel our creativity if we lasso its power and funnel it in the right direction. Curiosity can lead us new ways of looking at the world, new people who can guide and inspire us. Curiosity can lead us to new books, new blogs, new podcasts, new poems, new ideas. Curiosity sends us in search of answers to questions, and solutions to problems. Curiosity is key to creativity.

This month, I hosted the Play Project, where I encouraged people to engage in playful activities, to add fun to their days. Though I haven’t really linked the two ideas during the PlayProject, play and curiosity are complementary concepts. Curiosity leads us to trying new things, exploring new places, meeting new people, creating something artistic—all playful activities.

See how all three of those go together: play, creativity, and curiosity? Writers who integrate these three things into their lives fill their minds with fresh ideas and images and fuel their creative energy. Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, long-form or short, poetry or blog posts, you can lasso curiosity to be a powerful force in your writing life.

Todd Kashdan, author of Curious?, writes, "While intelligence is quite resistant to change, curiosity can be cultivated, and it is available to anyone who desires a fulfilling life" (37).

And Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow, explains:

Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation...and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk. We need both. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement, the second can wilt if it is not cultivated. If too few opportunities for curiosity are available, if too many obstacles are placed in the way of risk and exploration, the motivation to engage in creative behavior is easily extinguished. Sustaining high levels of curiosity is the starting point of creativity...the first step toward a more creative life is the cultivation of curiosity and interest, that is, the allocation of attention to things for their own sake.

We need to cultivate this daily. A playful mindset can shake us out of our predictability and increase curiosity in our everyday lives.

Mihaly says, “When there's nothing specific to do, our thoughts soon return to the most predictable state, which is randomness or confusion. We pay attention and concentrate when we must … But when there is no external force demanding that we concentrate, we lose focus. Our mind falls to the lowest energetic state, where the least amount of effort is required."

Learning to be more curious helps us focus on our work and our ideas with fresh perspective and increased creativity.

Well, I hope you’re convinced that curiosity is worth developing and practicing.

But how do we get there?

Mihaly has some suggestions. To get more curious:

try to be surprised by something every day

try to surprise at least one person everyday

write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others

when something strikes a spark of interest, follow it.

That right there is key to fueling our creativity when we're working on our writing projects. When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it. It lead you to a new project,

Show Notes

Summary:

When you wake up in the morning and dive into your to-do list—maybe you made it the night before, maybe in the morning, or maybe you make it up on the fly—isn't it gratifying to cross things off? It provides a sense of closure—of satisfaction—for getting something done. Then you move on to the next thing. It's a productive approach to make the list and check things off.

But the tendency we can have is to continually look ahead to what we have yet to do, and never really stop, look back, and reflect on the day and say, "Look at all I got done!"

So as writers, as we set out with a goal of writing 500 words or so many pages each day, at the end of that day it's almost like we press restart and look ahead to the next day rather than taking those few minutes to say, "Hey, I actually got that done!"

Today I recommend you come up with a system to reflect at the end of the day on what you got done, so you can celebrate what's done!

Productivity expert Claire Burge recommended to me an app called idonethis. The program sends you an email at the end of the day, and you reply to the email, listing what you did, as a way to document what you completed. You can look at a calendar that shows what you completed on any given day. It's helpful for people who love digital solutions, but you could keep the list just as easily in a journal, notebook or Evernote note. However you go about it, I want you to reflect on what you did, and celebrate what's done.

Even if you don't make it all the way through your to-do list and you have to copy things over to the next day, you can still be satisfied at what you got done, and celebrate what's done.

Listen for the full podcast.

Resources:

idonethis.com

Claire Burge

Evernote

#14: Progress, Not Perfection

All the Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach podcasts since day one

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You can subscribe with iTunes and Stitcher, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. You can also use the feed with any podcast player you use.

Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook, where I'm always sharing ideas to help us be more curious, creative, and productive.

______________________________

It's January ... are you still playing? 

This month I'm encouraging everyone—anyone, especially writers and other creatives—to take time out of every day to play.

Learn more:

#PlayProject Update Week Two

#PlayProject Update Week One

Podcast episode #31: Play a Playful Year

Main Play Project Page (complete with worksheets and inspiring quotes)

Show Notes

 

Summary:

Last week I urged you to write that thing that scares you...and to get started by writing three sentences.

Did you do that? Did you write those three sentences?

I did. I dove straight into the thing that scares me and wrote three sentences. Then three more. Then a whole paragraph. And another. I got going and didn’t stop for two pages. Then, okay, then I stopped because I started to feel a bunch of feelings sloshing around inside me and I was sitting in the library and didn’t want to slosh out a lot of tears in front of the librarian helping a woman search for a biography. So I stopped writing for the day.

The progress reminded me that a few sentences quickly grow to be a paragraph and another and next thing you know, you have a scene or a chapter. Committing to those first three sentences engaged my mind; once engaged, the ideas flowed. I would have continued had I been in a more private location.

Another way of looking at those three sentences is that even if I’d managed only three sentences and no more, I would have made progress.

The only way I won’t make progress is by not writing at all.

If I manage to write three sentences and stop, the piece has begun, ever so slightly, to exist and take shape.

Don’t underestimate the power of those first three sentences to get a project—especially a scary one—in motion. It’s like you’re committing to more if you get three sentences down and return the next day and add three more. In fact, next time, you might add four.

Author and speaker James Clear explores how small habits can change our lives.

In one article, he tells about Dave Brailsford, the General Manager and Performance Director for Great Britain’s professional cycling team, who started to train his team in 2010 using an approach he referred to as the “aggregation of marginal gains” which was “the 1 percent margin for improvement in everything you do.”

The idea was those small gains would add up and you’d meet your goal, over time. Their goal was to win the Tour de France.

They looked for 1 percent improvements in every aspect of these cyclist’s lives, from what they ate to how they slept. Brailsford anticipated they’d win in five years. Surprise! They won it in three years...and then they went on to dominate the 2012 Olympic Games, won the Tour de France again in 2013 with another rider on the team.

How does the Aggregation of Marginal Gains affect us today, as writers, writing three sentences a day?

James Clear says, “Almost every habit that you have — good or bad — is the result of many small decisions over time...And yet, how easily we forget this when we want to make a change.”

He did a “tiny gains” challenge with exercise, adding on a tiny bit of weight to his strength training program and encouraging others to add a tiny bit to whatever their exercise was, whether it’s squats, pushups, or walking.

In other words, tiny gains add up.

Three sentences per day on any project, whether it scares you or not, will add up. Start with three sentences, and to make tiny gains over time, try adding an extra sentence each week. This means you'd write three sentences every day the first week. The following week, you'd write four sentences each day, and so on. If you have a crazy week or day, revert back to the minimum of at least three sentences to ensure you'll make progress.

But think of ways you can make tiny gains, because a few sentences will become a paragraph, a few paragraphs become a chapter. And a few chapters become a book.

Set out to write at least three sentences. And then the following week, try to make a tiny gain, whatever that means for you.

And sentence by sentence,

Show Notes

Summary:

Think of something you’ve really wanted to write...something that feels exciting to try, maybe a little risky to undertake...something you feel is urgent or important.

And you haven’t written it yet because you’re scared.

You could be scared for a lot of reasons:

Maybe you’re a little scared because it’s a new style for you, or a new genre, and you feel you’ve don’t have the skills or experience to pull it off.

Maybe you’re a little scared because it’s a new style, a new genre, and you’re afraid people may laugh at you for trying something other than what you’re known for.

Maybe you’re a little scared because the subject matter is challenging or emotional.

Maybe you’re a little scared because writing it will name other people and you’re afraid of the relational fallout.

Maybe you’re a little scared because you start so many things and never finish them, you’re afraid this will be yet another project to add to the half-done list. You find it easier if you don’t start it at all.

You could be scared for a lot of reasons.

But if you really want to write something and you’re scared...write it. Write it scared.

Take a minute to think about this project...if you go ahead and write it, even though it scares you, and you finish it, will you look back in ten years and be glad?

If you don’t write it, will you look back in ten years and wish you had written it?

In the podcast, I address some of the reasons you may be scared and urge you to leave time in your days for some quiet mental space, some playful distractions, and some easy interactions—things to refuel you emotionally and prepare you to keep writing the next day.

Before you click away from this post or podcast, write the idea, the scene, the working title on a piece of paper or scribble it in your journal—use code if you want to hide it from others for now.

And when you’re sitting at your computer, open a file. Give it a title. And write three lines of that thing you really want to write. Three lines. You can do that. You’ve got the skills, no one needs to know yet.

It’s time to write that thing you really want to write. That thing that scares you.

Write it. Write it scared.

Listen for the full podcast.

Resources:

To ensure you have some down time including playful distractions, check out The Play Project: A Month of Fun for Anyone (especially writers and other creatives), #29: The Energizing Work of a Playful Writer, and Take Your Play History

#30: Action Creates Clarity

Password protect a document (in Word)

* * *

You can subscribe with iTunes and Stitcher, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. You can also use the feed with any podcast player you use.

Connect with me on Twitter and Facebook, where I'm always sharing ideas to help us be more curious, creative, and productive.

Photograph by Ryan McGuire, via Gratisography under Creative Commons Zero terms. Words added by Ann Kroeker.

______________________________

Is your writing life all it can be?

 

Let this book act as your personal coach, to explore the writing life you already have and the writing life you wish for, and close the gap between the two.

"A genial marriage of practice and theory. For writers new and seasoned. This book is a winner."

—Phil Gulley, author of Front Porch Tales