Productivity Secrets
I opened an email with the promise of teaching me, for $47.00, a savings of $150.00 on how to be more productive and how to overcome Writer’s block. Now, this is something that I have searched out. I must have clocked in years of time trying to find that elusive beast called productivity while wishing to drop off the saddle of writer’s block. I knew, once I found the secret I would excel at everything.
I don’t have to search out that question anymore.
I can hear you, ‘you found the secret! Quick, what is it! Tell us!”
By the by, you have a squeaky voice belonging to a fairy or gnome. And, not just any fairy or gnome. Mine sits around in a fancy suit drinking Starbucks every day and eating whatever it wants without gaining an ounce, driving a fancy electric car, with its own rechargeable panels so it will never have to stop and waste time at a pump. Meanwhile, the fairy flits around, fixing words, so what needs to be said, will be said, somewhat correctly.
Yes, this is one of those, ‘I have no idea what to write day…’
Truth be told, the only way to overcome any sort of procrastination; veg’ing out, wish this was me-staring out the window thinking-I need to be perfect, and what am I afraid of, it must be someone else’s fault, if only I had a better pen-chair-house-journal-if everyone would stop bugging me or my favorite; I need to clean something to clear my mind.
The real and only way to get rid of procrastination is to just write. Let the phone go to voicemail, don’t look at email, leave all research for later, then just write horrible stuff. Yes write the worst stuff! Because the first thing you write is not wonderful, it is awful crap.
That crap is the start of the editing process. And you just wrote it, time for a … {{HAPPY DANCE}}
Write then edit out the crap. What you write at first needs to be written, from start to finish, and then you fix it. So by the time you have three-four edits under your belt, what you wrote at first is no longer visible.
You just need to get your thoughts out on paper. You will know how you want it to sound. After it is set on paper, in your computer or carved in a pew…well, not carved into anything, you can’t erase it- if it is set in stone or wood.
Don’t delete. Just rewrite.
So the best productivity secrets on this planet are ‘doing what needs to be done.’ Then, double-check and edit it into what you want your words to say.
What I do is write it out.
Then I start reading it
I edit as I read it
Adding what is missing from it
Changing words around it
Adding words to it
Chucking out ridiculous words within it
Fixing paragraphs to form it
Adding whole paragraphs to it
Or, just a sentence or two …to it
Then, I read and do it again, and again. I walk away; have a cup of coffee and clean something. When I come back I read it again, editing as I read. I will do this, three or four times, until I post it. After I post it I will see other things that need to be changed.
So I change them.
Obsess much? Well, yes and no. I allow this type of OCD to take hold after I write out that first draft, that idea.
There is a point where I step away and leave the rest of those glaring errors for others to find.
Let’s reiterate. The best productivity secrets on this planet is to write horrible copy from start to finish, then edit like an obsessed, well-dressed gnome directing a flitting editing fairy.
I used WordArt to create my word art.