Ten Year Writer

3: Timing

When you've determined how much you want to write to complete an entire book, time of day to write, how often to write, and how long to write per session, you need to consider your productivity process. That's easy to say but difficult to put into practice. Some people don't know how and when to start a project. Productivity is not intuitive. It takes many people a long time to place habits and complete things on time. 

I'm a productivity junkie but I still have a problem. For some people being organized and productive is a blessing and for other's it's a curse. I'm still trying to find a happy medium. I've self-diagnosed as suffering from ADHD. How do I know? Many reasons, but one is that I hyper focus. Hyper focus is a period of time when a person will work on a project without taking proper care of eating, hydrating, chores, bills, or completing any responsibilities. Hyper focus can be a day or a few weeks or months. When I'm writing a book or a story, I'm typically on hyper focus. I've had to learn to pace myself. And when you're ADHD, it takes an extra amount of planning to balance all the things you must complete.

Over a decade ago, when I was working full time out of the house, I needed a system in place to get things done. Sometimes, I only had a minimal amount of time to do chores or take a shower or make lunches. My colleague told me to study Pomodoro Method. For each task I needed to complete, I had to set a timer for 25 minutes. After the 25 min, you're allowed to take a 5 min break. The 5 min break could be anything you need to do. If you're ever distracted for those 25 min, you're required to jot it done on a notepad and continue with your work, but that's specifically for focused work, such as writing, studying, coding, etc. If you're just able to devote 25 min to folding laundry but you're aimlessly doing other chores, then you should also take the notepad and keep a note about the distraction, listing the other things you need to do so you can focus and complete your Pomodoro task.

I became more serious about using Pomodoro Method, which I call POM while sprinting during my writing sessions. My twenty-five minute sprints allowed me to track my distractions, track my word count so I can determine the average amount of words I write within 25 min, and reduce the amount of time I spend writing per day, going from four hours of distracted writing to ninety minutes of focused writing. 

The day I realized that I was able to achieve my daily word count goal within 90 to 120 minutes per day, I took my writing sessions more seriously so I wouldn't spend 240 minutes on unproductive writing. I was no longer allowing myself to have films or tv shows stream in the background. I would only use my 5 min break to scroll through social media or make plans for the rest of my session. I live by an actual tomato-shaped, kitchen timer that I set to complete a POM. 

When I tracked my average word count during NaNoWriMo one year, I learned that I can average between 620 to 730 words per 25 minutes. Of course, this is on a good day. Some days are so hard to get the words out. But if I've left myself a little note or summary of what I want to write the next day, I accomplish so much in 25 min sprints. One tip, offered by Ernest Hemingway is to stop your writing in the middle of a sentence and pick it up the next day. In my case, when doing a POM, I stop when the timer rings, even if I'm mid-sentence or mid-paragraph. I promise that both of these tips used together really helps with your writing the next session. 

If my goal is 2,000 words per day, I will usually complete the goal within 4 POMs. 

I keep track of these word goals per book or story on Post It notes. https://www.instagram.com/p/CW6czLGP26A/?igshid=NzNkNDdiOGI=

As you can see, it's as simple as drawing three checkboxes, naming each POM 1, POM 2, POM 3, with a line underneath to place my word count for that session. As I've written before, writing takes math too. When you know you're numbers, you can organize yourself and work on your writing times.

I've also kept track of word count on a graph called a habit tracker—more math: https://www.instagram.com/p/COVdryxDZLx/?igshid=NzNkNDdiOGI=

When you say that you don't have time to write each day, consider if you have 25 min to write something in your novel, short story, essay. Study your favorite authors and how they managed their time and productivity. If you have to get up at 5 a.m. and join John Grisham before he had to go to his law office or in a closet after placing the kids to bed at 9 p.m., you can work toward completing your novel.