Month: September 2020

Sprint Writing

Neera 1 Comment

I recently came across a writing exercise that I found very benefiting.

Chris Fox talks about it in his book “5000 Words Per Hour.” He calls it writing sprints.

A writing sprint is a pre-defined length of time when you do nothing but write. It has a start-time and an end-time. And while you are writing you will do nothing else but write. No answering the phone, no research on the web, no checking the mail. Not even going to the bathroom. All those things need to happen before you sit down to start the sprint.

Once the sprint has started your fingers should fly across the keyboard. You can’t stop until the time is over. You do not go back and edit or even correct the spelling. You keep going until the buzzer goes off.

The goal of the sprint is to get into the flow state where brain naturally starts focusing on writing and exclude everything else. It is like silencing the left brain (the logical brain) and letting the right brain to take over. For most people, these sudden bursts of flow are unpredictable and elusive.

Writing sprint help get into a flow state on command.

It allows cranking more words than we think is possible.

The way to get started on writing sprint is with micro-sprints. Just five minutes.

Just focus on writing a small article. Or one scene.

It is like training for a marathon but starting running for just five minutes.

Five minutes is the most important. You are not going to stop writing before the five minutes are over. You are not going to correct spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. You are just going to type out the small article or the scene for five minutes.

Why?

Because the goal is quantity, not quality. You need to train yourself to generate a massive volume to test without editing it. You start with five minutes and then build it up to half an hour to forty-five minutes.

There are several advantages of this exercise.

  1. You learn to complete projects. A vast majority of writers don’t even finish a short story, let alone a novel or a book. Writing sprint propels you to the end of your project.
  2. You start seeing the common problems with your writing over and over again. You start correcting them mentally and your future drafts start getting better.
  3. You learn to structure your article or scene on the fly. Rather than starting clueless you give your piece a beginning, middle and end.

I wrote this article using this technique. Wrote it in five minutes and then spent another ten to correct the spelling mistakes and other errors. Not bad outcome for fifteen minutes.

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

A simple repeatable system to write

Neera 2 Comments

Writing is an awfully hard vocation to stay committed to. Most new writers feel exhausted after a productive spell and leave it for too long. That makes getting back to writing very hard.

What we need is a simple, reliable, repeatable system to follow on daily basis.

Yesterday I was listening to Austin Kleon’s interview with Joanna Penn, and I liked his system of consistently producing art.

I carry around this pocket notebook with me all day and I just write down all my stupid ideas in there. And I draw things. And I’m just writing in this notebook all day. And then when the morning comes around after we get the kids to school and that kind of thing, I sit down and I have a diary that I work in.

I usually do something visual, so I’ll either do a collage, or I’ll do a drawing, or a comic, or something. And then I’ll fill three more pages of writing.

And that’s the time where I’m looking back on yesterday, but I’m also working on what I’m thinking and that kind of thing. And then after the diary is done for the day, usually there’s something in the diary that I want to turn into a blog post or I’ll think of a good blog post or something that I want to share on my blog.

And then I go over and I do the blog post. And that can be anything from like, ‘Oh, here’s this interesting book I read,’ or, ‘Here’s this interesting quote,’ or, ‘Here’s something I drew,’ or, ‘Here’s something I made,’ or, ‘Here’s a really long post about parenting,’ or something, whatever it is.

And then once I make the blog post for the day, I’m done in a sense, creatively, as far as the baseline. That’s the work that has to get done for the day. And I work that way every morning.

And then for the rest of the day, it really depends on what’s on the docket. Today I went for a walk and we’re doing this interview, and this afternoon I’ll probably do some stuff, and I have to pick up my kid blah, blah, blah.

But that’s the thing for me that Keep Going did was it helped me establish a repetitive, repeatable daily system for producing work. Because that for me has been the thing that I was really missing in my life was some sort of method to making work all the time.

Simple. And repeatable. Yet varied enough.

He got his system from David Sedaris. David Sedaris carries a notebook around all day, scribbling in it all day long. Even when he is picking up rubbish in the streets of his village near London (he does that five to six hours a day, every day). Then at the end of the day, he sits down and writes about whatever is interesting in the notebook in his diary.

And then when he does a show, he shares some of that diary writing, sees how people react to it, makes little marks in the margin on stuff. And then he turns those pieces into essays that become books.

So it’s this iterative process of generating material, putting it out in the world, seeing how people respond to it, and then repackaging it and then putting it back out. 

Simple and elegant.

Seth Godin writes a blog post everyday. He has been doing that for twenty years now and has more than 7000 uninterrupted posts. Most of his posts are small, and all of them are without any pictures. His books, too, come from his blog.

This is a scenario where quantity trumps the quality.

There’s a great story in Art & Fear that book by Ted Orland and David Bayles. There’s an example in there where there’s a pottery class and half the class is told to just make the best pot they can. And half the class is told just make as many pots as you can. And the people in the group who were told to make as many as they could, they ended up producing more better pots or better pots than the ones who were told to make the best pot.

A simple system will produce more work and better work overtime than no system and occasional good quality work.

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

The final solution to the perpetual loop of “to be, or not to be.”

Neera 1 Comment

After being stuck in the house for seven months, we made an effort to go to the coast on the weekend with a couple of friends. Even that little break from the monotonous routine was enough to clear my head and have a new perspective on old problems.

I forever seem to be faced with one dilemma or another. A perpetual loop of the famous Shakespearean conundrum “to be, or not to be.” It keeps taking different forms. To do this or that. To continue with this or to start something new. To follow the routine or to be spontaneous. The questions appear mammothal in the four walls of the house, but as soon as you get out in the open, they become trivial and futile.

But the best advice to make decisions came from Oliver Burkeman’s last column for The Guardian:

When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness. I’m indebted to the Jungian therapist James Hollis for the insight that major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” We’re terrible at predicting what will make us happy: the question swiftly gets bogged down in our narrow preferences for security and control. But the enlargement question elicits a deeper, intuitive response. You tend to just know whether, say, leaving or remaining in a relationship or a job, though it might bring short-term comfort, would mean cheating yourself of growth. (Relatedly, don’t worry about burning bridges: irreversible decisions tend to be more satisfying, because now there’s only one direction to travel – forward into whatever choice you made.)

Oliver Burkeman in The eight secrets to fairly fulfilled life

I wish I had known this a few years ago. It would have saved a lot of agonies. Not that I have chosen happiness over enlargement in the past, but I would have had the framework and that would have made the decision-making process less painful.

Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

Putting things into perspective

Neera

I am reading The Lightkeeper’s Wife, a novel by a Canberra author Karen Viggers. A gripping story, beautifully written. I am reading it slowly, savoring every bit of it. But the problem is that the book belongs to the public library and is due back this week. I can’t even renew it because eleven people have reserved it after me. I could have easily finished the book in four weeks had it not for the countless other distractions.

This week I came to the realisation that I am doing everything else except what I want to do. I am reading everything else except what I want to read. I am writing everything else except what I want to write.

Neil Gaiman writes in Make Good Art:

“There was a day when I looked up and realised that I had become someone who professionally replied to an email, and who wrote as a hobby. I started answering fewer emails, and was relieved to find I was writing much more.”

I can either be on top of social media or read good books. I can either write long well-researched articles or finish my novel. I can’t do both, that is for sure. For a long time, I foolishly believed that I was that superwoman who can do both. But my energy doesn’t come from kryptonite. I am a mere mortal whose eyes get extremely tired after a few hours on the computer. I need to make sure I invest those hours wisely into things that matter most.

We writers need to protect our writing time fiercely. Unless we are living alone in country property, we will struggle to find time to write.

On Monday, I spent two hours editing the first five chapters of the non-fiction book I am writing. It felt terrific. I set myself a goal of finishing the edit by Friday and sending it to a professional editor and proofreader. I am on target to do that.

Also, this week I spent “15 Radical Minutes” with another Medium writer, Matt Inman. It is great to know other writers and what is driving them. I have invited two other authors and waiting for their response.

His week, I managed to write two articles – How new writers should use Quora, and Goal Setting With WOOP. I also managed to published Three Principles of Personal Storytelling in Medium. I have been invited by two more magazines in Medium to write for them.

That is it from me this week folks.

I will write to you again next Friday.

Until then take care.

Goal Setting With WOOP

Neera 1 Comment

I used to be a “compulsive goal-setter.” You know the kind who set goals on the first of January. While other people stop right there, a “compulsive goal-setter” will continue all through the year.

I would set quarterly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, and of course, daily goals. No wonder when you set so many goals, you start losing track of them. This year I got so sick of goal-setting that I decided not to set any goals. Instead, inspired by James Altucher, I set a theme for the year. My theme for 2020 is – FOCUS. I am to stop spreading myself thin and focus on a few things at a time.

But like a compulsive gambler, I kept on setting myself goals. Setting goals very exhilarating but fulfilling them, especially that longer one which needs daily commitment, is hard.

That is when I found WOOP.

WOOP is not a gadget but is a science-based mental strategy that can be used to achieve goals.

Gabriele Oettingen, a German psychologist who has been studying how people think about the future, and its impact on cognition, emotion, and behavior, designed it based on her 20 years of research.

Gabriele Oettingen’s research noticed the typical goal-setting didn’t work nearly as well as we’re told. In goal setting, we are told, for goals to work, we need to think positively and rid off of harmful negative self-talk. But, her research showed that positive thinking didn’t work.

The more students positively envision themselves getting a job; the fewer job offers they received.

The more college students envision successfully starting a romantic relationship, the less likely they got together with their crush.

The more hip replacement surgery patients imagined themselves having a smooth recovery, the less they were able to move their new joint.

And the more positive overweight people’s fantasies about their success and losing weight was the fewer pounds they lost over 20 years.

Just dreaming about a positive outcome is not enough.

According to Gabriele Oettingen, we can perform better if we combine positive visioning of the desired future with additional steps.

Those additional steps are – acknowledging the obstacles and planning how to overcome them.

She designed a system to be able to do that and called it WOOP. It is an acronym of four words – Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, and Plan.

Wish – Choose a goal you would like to accomplish. It should be challenging, compelling, and realistic.

Outcome – What’s the best possible outcome that would result from accomplishing your goal? How would you feel? Visualize this outcome in your mind.

Obstacle – What are the personal obstacles that prevent you from achieving your goal? What’s standing in the way between you and your goal? Visualize this obstacle in your mind.

Plan – Make a plan for overcoming your obstacle. What action would help you when your obstacle shows up? Create an if/then plan and visualize it in your mind.

If / When _________ (obstacle), then I will __________ (action to overcome obstacle).

Identifying the obstacles forces you to do contingency planning. It is a great too for behavior modification too.

What is the science behind WOOP?

WOOP basically is the combination of two tools called mental contrasting and implementation intentions.

The “Wish”, “Outcome”, and “Obstacle” part of the technique comes from mental contrasting and the “Plan” part comes from implementation intentions.

WOOP = Mental Contrasting (WOO_) + Implementation Intentions (___P)

Both of these tools alone are already highly effective.

They’ve both been proven in many scientific studies to have a medium to large impact on actual behavior and significantly increase the likelihood of people achieving their goals.

I decided to test the system for my goals.

I downloaded its free app on my iPhone. Here are the two goals I am working on at the moment.

Here are the WOOP statements the app turned out for me.

WOOP website, WOOP MY LIFE claims that the women who tired WOOP ate more fruits and vegetables than those who didn’t use the system. Students who used this method got better grades.

I think the reason WOOP works is that by automating cognition, emotion, and behavior, it triggers you to become motivationally intelligent.

Having it on the mobile phone is handy.

You might want to give it a go.

How new writers should use Quora

Neera

Last week I checked Quora seriously for the first time. Those of you who don’t know, Quora is a knowledge-sharing site where you can ask any question and let people provide advice and expert tips.

I had dismissed the platform, thinking it is for the gossipers and bored people who had nothing better to do. Imagine my surprise when I dug in and read a few responses on the topic I was researching at the moment.

Quora has come a long way since its inception in June 2010. Three hundred million unique people visit Quora each month. They ask questions; provide answers to the ones they could, and follow either the people or the topics they are interested in. They also help edit answers either factually or in the form of opinions making the experience more like a lively and exciting discussion between like-minded people.

Why should new writers consider Quora?

Unlike the specialised sites where experts write articles on topics they select, Quora is driven by seekers who want their queries answered. The responses are direct and mostly by those who have some knowledge and experience in the field.

Take, for example, the question: How do I make my fantasy novel less clunky? Click on the link, and you will find 29 responses: some short, some very detailed. The response by Jennifer Quail has received 750 upvotes. Upvotes are the way the readers rank the quality of the answer earning the writer a reputation.

Benefits of writing on Quora

Although you will not get paid to write, Quora could be an excellent platform for new writers. Here are five ways new writers can benefit from Quora.

1. To practice as a new writer

If you are new to writing and don’t know where to start, Quora is an easy platform. Even before you blogging or begin writing articles on online magazines, you should start writing on Quora and build your writing muscle. You can do shorter pieces to start with, and can eventually launch into long-form articles.

Just start with anything. When you write regularly, your grammar and spellings will begin to improve. If you ask specifically, many people will edit your piece and even help you with your grammar. 

2. To be a part of a big writing community

I believe the most significant benefit of Quora is to be able to make acquaintance with other writers which ultimately might lead to a lasting friendship.

Unlike other places where writers hang out, such as Medium, Goodreads, Facebook communities, etc., Quora allows you to connect with other writers and learn from them directly. You can ask direct questions and get specific solutions to the particular issue you are facing, whether it is bringing traffic to your blog or how to make the antagonist of your novel a three-dimensional character.

3. To stay up-to-date with the writing industry

There is so much going on with the writing industry at the moment that it is hard to keep up-to-date. What is happening with traditional publishing since the COVID crisis? Should or should you not consider publishing on Kindle? What are your options for self-publishing? How to market your book yourself? Any questions you want to be answered, rather than searching on Google, try asking at Quora, and chances are you will find genuine people with first-hand experience responding to your query. You not only save time searching the answer on the internet but also get to know how other writers like you are doing.

4. To build a reputation and personal brand

If you are writing, chances are you want to be known as a writer. Quora is the best place for new writers to build a name for themselves. You can do so by responding to the questions people are asking. It will take much less time to respond to a problem than writing a blog post or a whole article. Write good, helpful, and well-thought answers from your own experiences, and you will get noticed. Over time you will build up a following as well as a name for yourself on a platform that is much informal and easy to use.

5. To drive traffic to your website or blog

Once you’ve built up your reputation, you can use your answers to direct traffic straight to your website. Quora allows you to link your website when you are answering a question. If your answers get noticed, you will mark a rapid change in your traffic.

Quora is an excellent platform for all off-page SEOs (search engine optimisation). When you will create links to your website you will drive organic traffic to it. This is one of the most popular features which most of the experienced Quora users use.

Initially, read everything you are interested in Quora. Once you get the hang of the platform, start asking questions. If you find an item you can answer, respond to it. It doesn’t matter your responses initially are bit awkward or short. You will get good eventually. You will find that you can write an article-length response to some questions, which will not only help the person who asked the question but many others who will read it.

But eventually the person who will benefit most from your article length response is you, yourself.

Photo by Duy Pham on Unsplash