Aug

11

Time and Tasks

August 11, 2008 | 1 Comment

Anyone who has known me for longer then about five minutes knows I’m a lousy housekeeper. Now you’re wondering what that has to do with writing.

I’ve been cleaning house, last week, into this, using a couple of online tools (and pandora), that would be equally useful to the writer.

To me, one of the best tools a writer can have is a simple timer. Feeling unmotivated? Set the timer for ten or fifteen minutes and just write what you can in that time. I’ve found that with writing, ten minutes is a good set for me. I don’t get much more done in fifteen. In nanowrimo we call them word wars, but really you can do them anytime. Like if your stuck on something, or just can’t seem to finish a scene, or are just looking to squeeze some writing into a busy day.

The other useful website I’ve been using is NowDoThis. It’s simple enough. Enter whatever tasks you want to get done, in the order you want to do them. The site gives them back to you, one at a time, with a shiny “Done” button when you are finished with that task. Then it gives you the next one. I’ve realized I’m a bit scatterbrained and I frequently have about five things I want to do at once, which means I’ll forget something or not finish something else. With this I can concentrate on the task at hand and pretend the next one doesn’t exist quite yet. This could be used to as well as a sort of outlining tool.

I know I ended up taking last week off. Promise this week I’ll get back on schedule!


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1 Comment so far

  1. Sonja Foust on August 11, 2008 9:43 am

    Good ideas. I think a lot of people tend to think of writing as this massively creative pursuit, which you can only really accomplish if your muse is bellowing in your ear. I don’t think that’s the case at all. Butt-in-chair time is often even BETTER than a bellowing muse. :)

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