[Michael A. Wright is mentor, life coach, entrepreneur, curriculum specialist, and Owner/President of MAWMedia Group. His interests span behavioral health, family systems, and wealth creation. Follow @MAWMedia ]
Your desire to write is frustrated by 3 fallacies. Read on to reset these and create productive habits.
Fallacy #1: If I am going to write, what I write has to be long enough to be good.
Release your requirement to write according to length. Even a paragraph can provide a beginning that continually expands your outline and eventually completes your work. Consider that a single paragraph a day amounts to 7 paragraphs per week.
Fallacy #2: Drafts are not important and are for people without well-formed thoughts.
Realize the power of drafts. Effective writing involves multiple drafts and revisions. Why not approach each paragraph as a contribution to a draft of the larger project. Working from your outline, write your paragraph per day within the topic or chapter area identified by your outline. You can always update, revise or re-order the paragraphs. But, for now, enjoy the ease of each paragraph. When you sit down to write the full chapter, you will have an expanded outline–a draft–to build from. Expand those paragraphs. Add an introduction to the beginning. Add a summary at the end, and you have a chapter completed.
Fallacy #3: I must work on one project continually until it is finished before moving to another project.
Working on multiple projects is not about attempting to be more productive. It is about allowing yourself to have variety, which may motivate you to continue productively. I suggest that you have three projects going at a time: One non-fiction with you as expert, one non-fiction with you as researcher, and one fiction/creative project.
Fit 20 minutes each day into producing a paragraph for each of the three projects. I like the idea of posting them as blogs in order to emphasize audience and center your writing tone and style. The added variety will keep you energized and result in increased productivity.
