Writing has a reputation for being brutal and unforgiving. A solitary figure hacks away at a laptop keyboard or scribbles furiously in a notebook only to discard all their efforts in frustration. The muse is silent. Words flee from the trap of a blank page. The little that is produced is deemed unworthy. Even the writer who reached that last word and published the book might be plagued with thoughts that no one will be interested.
Our beliefs around writing can lead to writer’s block, unfinished projects, missed deadlines, imposter syndrome. The list goes on. Because of this, productivity in the writer’s world is a contentious beast.
It is a dragon that must be named then slayed, but of course, starting off with using writer lingo: as I mentioned before, writer’s block, etc. It’s as if we have our own type of stumbling blocks that we want to differentiate from what other people are doing. Perhaps because we feel writing is much more of a psychological game than other work: handling a spreadsheet, for example.
Productivity for a writer then seems to be determined by how balanced we are in the projects we embark on. Have we developed a healthy sense of self that will allow us to do the work without getting in our own way? Have we separated ourselves from the work enough to understand that our self-worth doesn’t have to be tied up in it? Have we drawn close enough to ourselves that we are able to entertain our ideas, rejecting the astronomical expectations that could be placed on them?
I feel most productive when I am able to strike these psychological balances. When I minimise the ‘big deal’ of writing and drift along in the process, allowing myself to entertain ideas without judgment. When I go where I had unknowingly forbidden myself to go in order to add layers to an original idea. And when I reject the idea of ‘good writing’ in favour of experimenting until creativity decides what is going to be written. After all, you never know what people will take to. My role is to keep learning how to express the idea and the rest follows as it will. This belief naturally equates to higher productivity as I am no longer mentally getting in my own way.
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