Becoming More Productive

During NaNoWriMo this year, I wasn’t quite as productive as I was last year. Rather than 300k words, I only ended up writing about 286k words. Which doesn’t seem like a whole lot less (and in fact produced an entire extra book) but it’s enough for me to feel like I let myself become less prolific.

Now, I know this isn’t actually true. I have four novels sitting and waiting for my attention. Most of which I’ll probably need to add words to, but I’m alright with that. I just have to figure out where I can add a little bit of action.

Anyway, because I felt less productive during NaNo, now I feel like I need to be more productive when it comes to my editing.

As any of you that regularly read this blog will probably already know, I consider myself to be a slow editor. I’m not saying it takes me years and years to get anything edited, and I probably only think that because I can get through a first draft so quickly, why doesn’t the rest of it go as quickly?

Despite knowing all of that, though, I can’t help but feel like I can go at least a little bit faster. So I’m going to be working at trying to make that happen. There’s going to be a few steps involved:

1. Actually stick to my goals. One of the big problems I have with productivity (and I know I’ve said this before) is that I seem to have a hard time keeping on track with the goals I lay out for myself. So the first step to being more productive is to lay out goals and actually stick to them.
2. Learn how to edit. I’m not saying that I’ve been doing it wrong since I started, but I’ve never really looked in to how other people edit, so I’m looking at getting some books and reading up on the subject. Hopefully I’ll learn some tips and tricks to getting through the process quicker.
3. Don’t give up! In the past when the editing seems to become really bogged down, and I feel like there’s just too much work to do to make it worth it, I give up on the novel. I’m going to try not to do that anymore. While this may not help, necessarily, with the speed of my editing, it will help with how many viable novels I have.

There you have it. My three step process. I’m also going to be changing up what I’m working on. Try to have different projects in different stages. One editing (Okay, I have two: Pandora and Birth), one planning (Malice) and one writing (I don’t have one of these yet, but I do plan to have something ready to start writing for February). That way I can move on to other projects and not spend all of my time obsessed with one.

Hopefully this will help. If not, at least I know I tried something. And it’s not like I’m ever going to give up writing. This is what I want to do with my life, now I just have to actually see it through.

Do you feel like you need to be more productive with your writing? What do you do to keep yourself on track?