Writer Productivity Tip: Healthy Competition

This is a continuation on our series on tips to make the writing process and your writing career more organized, less stressful, and more effective. 

There is a small chance that I might be a little bit competitive.

My husband and I keep a cribbage board on our coffee table so we can continue our complicated, in-depth tournament whenever we have a spare half an hour. I may or may not have resorted to yelling at my sister over a game of Sorry or Apples to Apples. For me, it's just not a cozy family gathering until there are winners and losers and I am collecting my bountiful spoil.

Okay, okay, so I have to plead guilty.

There are a lot of ways in which being a writer and a competitive person is terrible combination. Obviously, there isn't a lot of good that can be done by stalking your critique partners' book reviews, or obsessing over the Amazon rankings of authors in your genre. However, there is still a place for healthy competition in a writer's life. For me, competition comes in three forms: against myself, against a clock, and against a situation I can't control.

To compete against myself, I keep a writing journal. Before I begin the day's work, I write down what I want to accomplish, what I've been struggling with, and how I think I'll fix certain problems. At the end of the day, I write down what I actually accomplished. End-of-day Me has to report to beginning-of-day Me and be held accountable for her actions. On good days, this means I write "I wanted to write 750 words today and get to the end of the scene with the Cheetos. I got to the end of the Cheetos scene at 600 words, but I kept writing and got 1,000 words today!" I like writing that a lot more than I like writing "I got distracted watching Property Brothers and, um, I thought about my plot a lot... does that count?"

When I am writing a first draft, I write best in short bursts. Give me a half an hour timer or an active sprinting hashtag on Twitter and I can churn out 1,000 words in half an hour. Just don't ask me to do it again for a while. It isn't a pace I can keep up, but slow and steady doesn't work for me during rough drafts. Fast and sporadic keeps me excited about the story, and my fast writing pace helps keep the plot moving forward as well.

My last method of competition is sort of a mix of the other two and is driven out of necessity. My husband and I will agree to watch an episode of Friends after he finishes the dishes. I'll put my daughter down for her nap on a Saturday afternoon. I have a limited, but uncertain, amount of time to finish what I need to write. This sense of urgency, combined with the uncertainty of not knowing when the dishes will be done or when my daughter will wake up, keeps me on task and focused.

For me, immersion in my world and characters doesn't come until I'm editing on paper. I need to get the story out before I concentrate on setting and whether my voice is consistent (confession: it probably isn't).

Do you work better with no distractions for hours and complete immersion, or in short bursts, working quickly? Does it vary depending on what part of the writing process you're in?

Figuring Out Your Writing Style

Courtesy of typofi

One of the most important things a writer can learn is what type of writer they are and how they work best.

Writers, like any artist, have their own way of doing things. One way is not *better* than another, just different.

We all have the same tools, but learning how to apply them--and which ones we work best with--can make all the difference.

There really is no One Right Way to do it.

Think of all the water colorists, photographers, or sculptors we'd be missing out on if we insisted that 'real' art or paintings that are worth anything can only be done in oils. Or pastels. Or pencils.

Some writers know how they work from the start, while others have to move around a bit to get a feel for each different technique. The key is to keep learning and trying new things until you find what works best for you. (And even then, it never hurts to try something new, just in case. :))

The following are different techniques for how and when to get the writing done, and are by no means an exhaustive list.

The two groups of writers most often discussed are the outliners and the pansters. There are many shades and subgroups for each type, but for simplicity's sake, I'll be referring to each in their most general role.

Outliner
Outlining can be strict and detailed or light and loose or anything in between. It can be plotting out a scene, a chapter, a novel, or the entire series. It can be a few sentences to give a flavor or create a mood, or it can catch all the fine details and turnings of the stories. It can even be a work of art in its own right.

Outliners thrive in knowing what comes next. It helps them shape each part of the story if they can see what the overall design is supposed to look like. Seeing the beginning through to the end can also keep the writer from making unnecessary detours or wrong turns. On the other hand, adhering to a plan when the characters and story have grown in a different direction can stifle the spark of magic in the story.

Panster
A panster can have a loose plan or a vague idea of where they want to end up, or they can have a blank piece of paper that's just waiting for them to populate a new world. Sometimes they know how the story is going to end, and sometimes they just wing it.

Pansters thrive in getting to know their characters and world as they go along. It's not about the destination so much as it's about the journey. Letting your characters map the story can lead to new and exciting discoveries. On the other hand, allowing your characters to exist without purpose can damage the structure and meaning of your story over all.

Like anything else, it's all about finding the right balance, for both outliners and pansters.

Another useful thing to know about yourself is if you're a day writer or a night writer or a snatch-the-time-whenever-I-can writer.

My right brain is my writing brain, and my left brain is my editing brain. I've found that I write better at night and edit better during the day. Once I figured this out, I had a lot less frustration, because I could plan my writing and editing around when the different parts of my brain are most alert. My writing and editing flow smoother when I do them at my peak times instead of trying to force my brain to accommodate my to-do list.

When we consider what type of writer we are, sometimes we get so caught up in the outliner/panster debate, that we forget there is another subset type: sprinters and marathon writers.

Sprinter
A sprinter does short bursts of writing at a time. They can do a number of repetitions--say, writing 100-500 words at a time or in ten minute increments--but the actual writing time is in small, contained phases.

When I'm tired or just not feeling the writing fire in my veins, I do sprints. Timing myself stresses me out and blocks the words, so I do my sprints in 500-word increments. (Or 250 if I'm *really* distracted.) After I reach 500 words, I get to check my email, a few forums, and anything else I want for about five minutes. Then I go back and do another round. Rinse and repeat until I hit the word count for the day I was aiming for.

Marthon Writer
These are the writers that can sit down and write for as long as they're able. The people that can do 5,000 or 10,000 or 15,000 words in one day. People who can finish novels in a week or so.

Pacing yourself, being well rested, and minimizing your distractions can help. Some marathon writers do short marathons (5k) on a regular basis, while others go for the bigger word counts a little less frequently.

And then there's a whole world in between sprinting and writing by marathon method. The key here is knowing what your limits are and stretching yourself without breaking your brain. For example, right now I can write at least 2k a day, 6 days a week. When I first started writing professionally, I struggled to get down 500 words a day. My goal is to one day be able to do 4k a day, but it's something I'm having to work toward.

Like any muscle, your creative endurance can grow if you work it out regularly within a range that will challenge you without burning yourself out.

Another way to determine how you work as a writer is to examine how your brain works in your creative process. How you get your ideas and how they connect to each other.

Flypaper
Some people have minds like flypaper. Their brains are sticky and have no trouble catching every idea that comes near them. These are the writers that have more ideas than they'll ever be able to write, because there just aren't enough hours in the day.

The problem with this is that it can lead to a lack of focus. A thousand novel beginnings without any middles or ends. Something you can do to combat this is keep an idea journal. When a new idea comes, write it down in as much detail as you have and then go back to the novel you're working on. This allows you to keep all your ideas without distracting you from finishing what you're working on, because you can always come back to it later.

Fisher
Other writers are more like fishers. Ideas might be harder to come by and/or require more patience to suss out.

This can lead to frustration if you're a fisher, but surrounded by writers who have flypaper brains. The important thing to remember is that it doesn't matter whether you have one idea or a hundred. What matters is what you end up with in the end, and a polished, professional-grade novel requires hard work no matter how you get your ideas. Knowing that it takes you a little longer to find that perfect idea can lessen your frustration with yourself and your story.

Because that's what matters most in the end: the story. Knowing how *you* best get from 'Once upon a time' to 'And they all lived happily ever after' can only deepen the joy of the process.

What kind of writer are you? Any I missed?

Danyelle Leafty| @danyelleleafty writes YA and MG fantasy. She is the author of The Fairy Godmother Dilemma series (Catspell, Firespell, andApplespell) and can be found on her blog.

The Writing Process

Courtesy of piovasco

One of the things that interests me the most in writing, is how different and individual each writer's process is. Talk to enough people, and similar groupings and patters emerge, but I haven't yet met any writers that write a novel exactly the same way.

Some of the different approaches include:

• plotting vs pantsing (or free writing or writing from the hip)
• writing linearly vs writing scenes out of order and patching them together
• writing by word count vs a certain amount of time
• using a word processor vs writing software
• writing on a set schedule vs writing whenever lightning strikes
• needing music or sound vs needing silence

And a whole host of other things, most of them small, and many unique to that particular writer.

But one of the most fascinating things, to me, is the difference in the "What comes first--the character or the plot?"

While most of my writing process happens in my sub-conscious (meaning I have no idea how things happen--only that they do), I have learned certain things. Immutable laws (for me), if you will.

1) I am not a plotter. I believe there is much good in trying out different ways of writing. One of the greatest benefits to experimenting is discovering something that clicks perfectly with how your brain processes Story. I've tried a lot of things, and it's been very educational--whether or not they work for me--because doing so allows me to peel back another layer to see Story from a slightly different perspective. 

I have learned that I can loosely plot a series, but if I try to plot a novel, my sub-conscious can, and will, lie to me. That's right. I can come up with some pretty awesome stuff that invariably ends up not working with the story or the characters. At all.

2) No character, no story.

It's the second one that I've been thinking a lot about right now. I've found that, for me personally, I can't sit down and write a story without having a character tackle me first. Because, for me, there is no Story without the characters.

Does that mean I write character-driven novels?

Not necessarily.

For me, character and plot aren't completely separate entities. Rather, they are two points on a continuum. Some stories will lean closer to the character side, while others will lean nearer to the plot end.

But they all start out the same way: a character looks at me from the back of my brain. Most of the time I get a sense of what the character looks like, but not always. Some are also a lot more talkative and easier to work with than others.

But they all have a problem. Sometimes that problem is on a bigger scale, driven by outside forces. And sometimes the Story happens *because* of something the character did. Or said. Or stole. And they want me to help them fix it. (Or, at the very least, escape. :p)

So, for me, the plot rises out of the characters every single time.

But I know there are people for whom this works, only in the reverse. They come up with an interesting premise that might have been sparked by a question or an idea. Only after they have the foundation laid out, are they able to people the plot.

Does that mean they write plot-driven novels?

Not necessarily.

In fact, there have been a number times I've been surprised to learn that a character-driven story had not only been plotted out, but that the plot came first.

Which opens up all kinds of delicious things to speculate both about characters and plot and how they ultimately (in the finished product) connect to the Story and each other.

How do they connect for you? Are you a character first type of writer, or can you only find the Story if you have a plot laid out. Or are you somewhere in between?

Danyelle Leafty| @danyelleleafty writes YA and MG fantasy. From March 12th-31st, she will be donating royalties from both paper and digital copies of THE FAIRY GODMOTHER DILEMMA: CATSPELL to purchase Kindle Fires for a pediatric unit in a local hospital. Click here if you'd like to learn more.