Five ways to increase your writing productivity

Do you write as much as you want?

I can never seem to find as much writing time as I'd like, and I struggle to hit my weekly word count goals regularly.

When I write at all, that is.

There are an abundance of excuses to not write readily available. 

From days jobs, to family commitments, to the need to clean the entire house, reorganize your sock drawer, and find more time for reading, video games, and Netflix (all, you may notice, are not writing), it's easy enough to avoid writing altogether. 

If you want to grow as a writer and build a portfolio of work, no matter what your chosen writing form, you need to put the time in and get the words down.

As an expert at finding reasons not to write, I thought I would share some tried and true ways to help you find the time and increase your word count. 

Whatever sort of writer you want to be, these five tips will increase your word count as soon as you implement them.

1. Get up early.

There's no better time to write than the early morning. 

It's quiet and very few people are up and about, which means the potential interruptions and conflicts are almost nonexistent. Sure, there might be an occasional emergency to deal with, but those should (hopefully) be few and far between. 

You have the most control of your time before the rest of the world has woken up.

You may believe you won't be able to write as soon as you get out of bed. But, with a little practice, you'll soon find the words flowing easily from your fingers onto the screen (or paper, though writing longhand is a great way to derail your productivity. But that's a subject for another day...)

I do some of my best writing well before dawn. 

I've found that waking up at 3 a.m. gives me a couple of uninterrupted hours to write, and that fiction flows especially well before my conscious mind is fully awake. I don't even need coffee! 

And let me tell you, there's no better feeling than getting a couple thousand words down before you start your day and get worn out by work, life, and the general feeling that the world is on fire. (It is jsut a feeling, right?)

Want to curb your anxiety over not finding the time to write today? Get up an hour or two before you have to and get to typing! You'll find a feeling of wellbeing and freedom follows you through the day knowing you've already gotten your word count goal in.

If you do choose to wake up early and write though, it really helps if you...

2. Know what you are going to write about.

This may seem obvious, but it's where a lot of writer's get hung up. Some people call it writer's block, but I've learned it's just poor planning.

Since you've decided to get up early and get in the habit of daily writing, you may as well head into the morning prepared. There's nothing more discouraging for a writer than sitting down to the blank screen and searching for the first word, then giving up and going back to bed. Or worse, getting on an early morning cleaning spree.

The first day will be the toughest, so have a good idea of what you want to write about before you go to bed. When starting a new project, whether it's an article, chapter, or brand new story, I like to set up the document the night before. 

Once you've decided what you'll be writing about, open the blank document you'll be working on and type in the title. It doesn't have to be the perfect title, just the first one that comes to mind. 

Even better if you have an opening line in mind. Type it! That way, when the morning comes and you roll out of bed groggy and wishing you'd slept in, you'll sit down in your writing chair, open the doc, and find the creative energy from last night infusing you with inspiration!

If you are returning to a work in progress, that's easier. 

Use the old trick, oft attributed to Ernest Hemingway, and stop each writing session in the middle of a sentence. It's much easier to pick up where you left off mid-sentence than to start a fresh paragraph or chapter. Just like hot do eating champion Joey Chestnut would tell you, momentum is key. He'd also say you should...

3. Take small bites.

This is crucial. Don't try to write it all in one go, unless it's a very short piece, say 1500 words or less. 

Even then, take frequent breaks. A five minute break every half hour goes a long way to keeping your creative energy high and the words flowing.

Even better, don't try to block out hours of time to write. 

It's hard to find a free hour in our busy days, never mind two or three. I used to sabotage myself by only writing when I had two or more uninterrupted hours to commit. The result was predictable. I barely wrote at all!

Write for fifteen minutes here and there when time allows. Once you get it out of your head that you need hours and start looking for small windows of free time, you'll find that you can write anytime, anywhere. And the quality doesn't suffer.

Once I adopted the mindset that I could write no matter where I was, I found I could get down a paragraph while waiting on line at the grocery store or waiting in the doctor's office. If I have five minutes free, I'll get the next few sentences down. 

I write on my phone almost every day, and while it isn't quite as satisfying as sitting down for a good hour on my laptop, let me assure you, those five and ten minute spurts add up at the end of the week. Get in the habit of writing anywhere and anytime you have five to fifteen minutes and you'll see a few thousand extra words every week. 

And that, my fellow writers, is incredibly satisfying.

4. Forget perfection.

This kind of fits with the last tip, but it's a monster of epic proportions that deserves far more than the time I'll give it here.

We all want to write wonderfully, and I'm not advocating you strive for anything less. 

But I do want to warn you, we writers are the worst judges of our own writing. We are so damn hard on ourselves that it can be tempting to give up writing altogether.

Instead, just do the best you can and trust your creative voice. Your toolbox as a writer will only grow with frequent practice, and even when you gain excellence in the craft, you'll still think most of what you write isn't worth reading.

You're wrong!

I'm not saying to treat everything you write as a masterpiece worthy of unending praise and everflowing acclaim, not to mention monetary compensation. 

What's I'm saying is, the best thing you can do to become a better write is to write. A lot. And an attitude of perfection is the enemy of your growth as a writer.

Instead, let it go. Don't worry about how you feel about your own writing. Heck, don't even read it if you can manage. 

My own process is to get the words down the best I can, and to take frequent breaks. 

When I come back from a break, I'll read what I wrote the last session (this is easy if you keep your sessions short) and edit as I go.

And I rarely look at it again!

That's right. I try to write the best, cleanest copy I can, get it right the first time out, review and tweak every five hundred words or so, and always keep moving forward. This applies to novels, short stories, articles, and even important emails. 

When it's done, it's done.

Chances are, when you go back over and over again, you beat the hell out of some pretty decent writing. 

Often, you'll be taking what makes your writing fun and unique, your voice, and slaughtering it down to the blandest version of itself.

Your an artist, damnit! Let the creative voice do it's job. There are enough critics out there (failed writers, the lot of them!) without you tearing yourself down. 

These four tips will go a long way, but none of them will do you a lick of good if you don't do one specific thing as often as you can stand. Get your...

5. Butt in seat!

There's no better way to produce more words than to spend more time in the writing chair, fingers on the keys, in more or less constant motion. 

Nothing will do you as much good as sitting down and writing the next sentence!

Seriously, sit your butt in the writing chair. Don't wait for the right time, and never, ever wait for inspiration. 

If you're cleaning the house for the third time this week, inspiration is likely to fly over your head and look for someone else, someone with their fingers on the keyboard.

Stories want to be told, and they will find those writers with their butts in the writing chair. 

Seriously, have you ever thought of a great premise for a story or article but not gotten around to writing it? Or finishing it?

And have you then seen a very similar story or article go on to be a huge success?

I've had it happen to me. No one stole my ideas, because I never got them down on paper. But there have been a few times when something I thought about writing turned up as an article, novel, or even major motion picture!

Ideas are alive, and they are out there in the world waiting for someone to capture them and write them down. Don't let you next idea become someone else's Academy Award!

If you only take one of these ways to increase your writing productivity, make it the last one. Nothing else will elevate your word count, not to mention your craft, as much as consistently getting your butt in seat!

Don't forget to follow for more writing advice, tips, and an honest look at a writer going from procrastination to publication.