Whether you are working is more under your control than whether you succeed. Also, trying to work is likely to make you work, while trying to succeed can make you procrastinate because nothing seems perfect. From this perspective, it makes more sense to reward work than to reward success. Also, work needs to be done every day, success only comes after you have finished.
The obvious objection: if we reward work regardless of success, what if it makes you do a lot of stupid stuff, or just repeat the same wrong thing over and over again? Yes, if measuring hours is literally the only check you apply, this could happen. So, in addition to measuring hours, you also need some way to steer your work toward better outcomes. But this steering is probably easier to do when you are already writing regularly, than making yourself write regularly when you are not.
For me, the problem is consistency of vision. When I start writing, I have a rich colorful picture in my head, I feel awesome about it, and I put words on paper. If I interrupt this work and return to it on another day, the mental picture is gone. Most things I wrote, I wrote during a single session. (That means I never progressed beyond short stories. Only once I wrote a short story in two sessions, and that story has two parts that feel different; luckily, it fit the plot, so it didn’t ruin the story.) Not sure how to keep the vision alive across the sessions.
Have you tried “bookmarking” your thoughts? I sometimes leave myself some comments about what I wanted to write next. I’m also experimenting with outlining.
Session = an hour or two, probably. I haven’t written fiction for years, but I have a similar problem with blogging these days.
Yes, outlines improve the process. By the way, I also use “bookmarking” at work, sometimes it’s like I am writing a diary about my tasks; but it is a great help after being interrupted.
I’m similar—an hour or two is about what I can squeeze out of myself before I get too tired. This also mirrors how long I can program or debug software in one go before needing a longer break.
One blogger that I respect a lot (Venkatesh Rao) once wrote that it took him a long time to train to be able to endure multi-hour writing sessions. I hope that’s the case, but right now I’ll focus on learning to maintain a consistent vision.
Whether you are working is more under your control than whether you succeed. Also, trying to work is likely to make you work, while trying to succeed can make you procrastinate because nothing seems perfect. From this perspective, it makes more sense to reward work than to reward success. Also, work needs to be done every day, success only comes after you have finished.
The obvious objection: if we reward work regardless of success, what if it makes you do a lot of stupid stuff, or just repeat the same wrong thing over and over again? Yes, if measuring hours is literally the only check you apply, this could happen. So, in addition to measuring hours, you also need some way to steer your work toward better outcomes. But this steering is probably easier to do when you are already writing regularly, than making yourself write regularly when you are not.
For me, the problem is consistency of vision. When I start writing, I have a rich colorful picture in my head, I feel awesome about it, and I put words on paper. If I interrupt this work and return to it on another day, the mental picture is gone. Most things I wrote, I wrote during a single session. (That means I never progressed beyond short stories. Only once I wrote a short story in two sessions, and that story has two parts that feel different; luckily, it fit the plot, so it didn’t ruin the story.) Not sure how to keep the vision alive across the sessions.
How long are your writing sessions?
Have you tried “bookmarking” your thoughts? I sometimes leave myself some comments about what I wanted to write next. I’m also experimenting with outlining.
Session = an hour or two, probably. I haven’t written fiction for years, but I have a similar problem with blogging these days.
Yes, outlines improve the process. By the way, I also use “bookmarking” at work, sometimes it’s like I am writing a diary about my tasks; but it is a great help after being interrupted.
I’m similar—an hour or two is about what I can squeeze out of myself before I get too tired. This also mirrors how long I can program or debug software in one go before needing a longer break.
One blogger that I respect a lot (Venkatesh Rao) once wrote that it took him a long time to train to be able to endure multi-hour writing sessions. I hope that’s the case, but right now I’ll focus on learning to maintain a consistent vision.