Over the last few months I’ve been trying to figure out ways for me to get writing more productively because I am not where I want to be. Although I will just say that I have a few life things that have knocked me off my pace more than I had realised. In many areas my life is getting to where I want it to be, albeit a little slowly but it’s getting there. In other areas though it’s not and it is very testing at times. These are things that I have no control over, I can’t do anything at all. I NEED to get back into a writing habit though. My lack of productivity is getting painful now and I need to change that. Here’s some of the things that I am going to try to get back into the writing mindset and fine tune my writing process.

• Write: This one is really obvious but its the one I am lacking mostly on. I know editing is still a part of writing but I need to be writing in the purest of forms as well as editing.
• A Paper Draft: This is something that I have mentioned that I ma going to start doing again and I have. When me and Owen wrote Project Phoenix I done all my parts with a pen and paper first. This way when I type it up I edit it as I go and this will eliminate one of the many editing passes i seem to have to do.
• Streamline My Process: This is a big one. I spend far too much time re-reading what I have written and second guessing myself so I need to snap out of these bad habits. The paper draft is one of the ways I am going to try to streamline my work.
• Read More: This is a huge one for me. The act of reading is more important then the actual act of writing in my opinion. We have to know what we like to read and see what others are doing in the literary world. I have set myself a target of reading fifteen books this year, that may not seem a lot but I am a slow reader and I did not want to set myself an unrealistic target.
• Do Proper Research: This I need to do before I start the actual writing of a story. I hate having to go back and squeeze in details. This adds to the editing passes and adds too much time.
• Plan What I Write: NaNoWriMo last year went really well for me, until I got past where I had planned the story out. With no direction I floundered and failed miserably. So, I am going to try to plan out anything that I write which I think will exceed a thousand words.

I’ve written this on the fly so I’ll probably come up with more once I’ve hit that ‘Publish’ button. If anyone has any bits of advice I would be grateful to hear them. I’ve been told I can write, so now I need to actually do it.