Have you seen an increase in your productivity after changing the way you write?
August has been a busy month for me outside of work. I spent a week in London visiting family during the second week of the month, followed by a long weekend with friends an hour’s drive away last weekend and then this weekend we’re heading back down to London for 4 days.
All in all, I’ve had around 18 available working days, including weekends.
And then there’s the point that mid way through the month one of my regular clients increased their order. Great stuff in general, but I really could have done with it waiting until September.
So, due to the fact I had a month’s worth of work to do in under 3 weeks, I started thinking about how efficient my writing process was and if there was anyway I could improve my productivity.
Traditionally, I would receive a request from a client, have a quick look through it and put it to one side for a few days until I had completed the project that I was working on.
When the time would come to work on the next project, I’d open up a Word document, write down a few sentences that I thought I could use or which could come in useful, carry out some research or look for quotes / statistics, write the piece and then proof and edit it straight away.
And to be honest, it seemed pretty efficient.
However, I’m a big believer that there is always room for improvement and so I made 3 changes to my writing process.
- Firstly, when I received a new order through, I’d spend 10 minutes jotting down some notes that could help me write the piece. I’d also check out some websites I use regularly for statistics and quotes to see if there was anything immediately obvious that could be of use,
- Secondly, I decided I would leave the editing to the end of the whole project. I wondered whether going from writing to proofing to editing and then back to writing was lowering my productivity and was interested to see whether it would increase if I carried out all of the writing first, followed by all of the proofing and editing,
- Finally, I wanted to try something that I haven’t done before, which was to complete a project in one sitting. Usually, I look at how many words are going to be needed approximately overall, look at how long I’ve got to the deadline and divide them up so that I write a small amount each day. This time, however, I was going to complete it all in one go.
Did it work?
Well, yes and no.
On the first point, I found that this is possibly the best thing I could do.
When I used to get an order of, for example, 20 articles, I would treat each one separately, not looking at the next until I’d finished one. This month, I discovered that if I jotted down ideas for each (or at least most) of them first, there was no time spent at the start of each article thinking what I was going to write about. Things just flowed a lot better.
Unfortunately, the second point is arguably the worst thing I’ve ever done. In fact, it was so bad I only did it for one project.
When I proof and edit each piece as I go along, it does mean that I spend extra time on it, but once it’s proofed and edited, it’s completed and out of the way completely.
I nearly cried when I realised I’d just finished the twentieth 500 word article but still had all 10,000 words to proof and edit.
My reaction to the third point is mixed. I experimented on it first with a 22 article project and completed over 11,000 words in around 12 hours. It was pretty intense and the words weren’t as free flowing after around 7,000, but it felt great when I woke up the next morning and could start a completely new piece of writing.
Considering this month has been pretty hectic, I’ve actually learnt a lot about my writing. I’ve realised that I’m not as efficient as I thought I was; that proofing and editing in one go really isn’t a good idea and that when I want to be, I can be a writing machine!
Do you have a writing process that you always stick to? Is it efficient? Have you ever tried changing it around to see if you can increase your productivity?
Article by Dan Smith
Dan Smith is freelance writer and small business consultant. Specialising in business development, he has a strong background in Search Engine Optimisation and has a distinct (dis)ability of not being able to say no.
Dan has written 81 awesome articles for us at Get Paid to Write Online
{ 11 comments }
Dan,
Thanks for sharing the results of your efficiency experiment! Since efficiency is not my strong suit and I definitely need to improve in this area, it’s helpful to know what worked for you and what didn’t.
I think it’s worthwhile keeping in mind that although everyone will be able to improve their efficiency levels at least marginally, you’re likely to be more efficient than you think.
I went into this month thinking I was relatively efficient but found that I could increase be more so with a few tweaks.
However, I also discovered that I was actually more efficient in some areas than I realised.
The only reason I’m saying this is that it can be somewhat of a determination killer if you think you’re mega inefficient, as it can be tempting to review everything – more often than not, it’s just a matter of making a few changes to individual processes.
Excellent points, Dan! Thanks for the amplification of the ideas expressed in your post!
Twitter: butterflycopy
August 25, 2010 at 18:22
The first point is what I always did for essay questions in exams at school and university. I’d choose which questions to answer, then spend 15 minutes at the start writing little brainstorms for each question. By the time I got to start writing them, I’d subconsciously been working on it anyway and I found I was able to just sit and write. It was much better than having to re-focus my mind on each question and start from scratch each time.
I don’t do much article writing these days and don’t normally have multiple ones on the go, but since I’m just about to start a project that is just that this is probably a timely reminder of best practice
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Hi Dan,
Great piece! I thought for sure the editing after writing was going to help with your efficiency. But, as it turned out, it didn’t. You learned through trial and error that it just doesn’t work for you. I think that’s the most important way to learn. You’re ultimately finding out for yourself what works best while you write.
Though, it seems to me like you edited after all 20 or so articles were completed. If this is the case, maybe try another experiment where you edit after each written article? Unless this is what you were already doing previously. I was just confused when you mentioned that you would edit after writing a bit, then you’d write some more. It seemed to me like you were pausing in the middle of each copy to edit, and then you’d finish writing the copy after. Maybe I read into it wrong.
I’ll try to do some experiments of my own. Thanks for the good read!
Christina
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Apologies for the confusion – generally, I edit after finishing each piece. By saying I would write, edit and then write some more, I was referring to an overall project and would write, for instance, one article, proof and edit it and then write another.
Strangely, though, I did try out editing mid-way through a piece, but I didn’t find any particular benefit to this over editing at the end of a piece (in fact, I think it actually slowed me down, as my writing doesn’t tend to flow as easy and I end up going back and forth between the piece).
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Twitter: GeorgeAngus
August 26, 2010 at 16:11
Hey Dan,
Yeah point #2 is a beaut. I *have* to edit as I go. I kill those red squiggly lines as soon as they show their face. I can’t help it. Me thinks my OCD is not just related to shelving library books…
George
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I scan through my project and let ti stew at least a day. By the next day I have a fresh perspective and lot’s of creative ideas. I have exactly the idea where I’m gonna get resources etc. from and write the article pretty easily. I am very slow though, so writing 22 articles in 12 hours is a little out of my range at the moment. Any tips how I could better that? Lastly, I edit in the next stage. So, yeah, it’s probably a long process.
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I think the one piece of advice I would give to writers who are struggling to get up to speed is to concentrate on their typing.
I’ve found time and time again that the ideas flow pretty freely for writers, but their typing speed lets them down.
I was pretty lucky in the way that the internet was going through its first major boom when I was growing up, so a lot of my evenings were spent talking to friends online and searching the ever developing amount of websites, so my typing speed got up to speed pretty quickly.
When I was started to writing professionally, however, I taught myself to touch type to increase my typing speed and proficiency further and although it took a while to get to grips with, it’s without doubt made things easier.
You could also look at investing in a microphone and software that automatically converts what you say to text. I know several writers who use this setup, but the amount of amendments I make as I’m going along wouldn’t make it a viable option for me!
Then there’s Optical Character Recognition, where you write something by hand, scan it in to your computer and it converts it into text. Again, I haven’t used this myself, but I’m sure it would be a good option for some.
Just have a play about, Ivin and see what works for you. There’s no right or wrong way to write – just the way that works best for you.
Efficiency is not really one of my talents. I’m just trying to get started in my career and trying to strike a balance between looking for writing jobs, writing stuff with the intention of pitching it somewhere and getting on with my regular part time job. I know I need to be disciplined and efficient with what I’m doing, so all advice is useful. Thank you.
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Seems like it always helps to take notes or create some kind of outline first. Then the structure dictates the direction of the copy.
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