Motivational Tools

I have recently realized that I need to motivate myself better for work. For me, writing is work of a sorts, since I’m publishing regularly and really selling my stuff. Writing isn’t just a hobby any longer, so I need to take things seriously.

While I’m a discovery writer on the whole, I’ve started doing some more detailed notes about my chapters recently, just a short description about what is supposed to happen in the chapter. It’s not always working out quite as expected, but I have been successful writing stories from those outlines myself, so it’s something I’m going to keep for the time being.

That alone, however, didn’t really help with my output. When I started writing novels, I was able to put out the first two in one and a half months (I didn’t quite reach that rate again afterwards, admittedly). After the changes to my personal life, I have been working off my pile of stories written before mostly and I’m down to two more releases in the pipeline (“Alex Dorsey” and “John Stanton Vol. 2” which will be out next month). I do have enough stuff lined up, but getting to write the stories has proven much more difficult with my new daily schedule, which isn’t as free as it used to be.

Clearly, I now need motivation to write more and I found it in some more unlikely places. I’ve been doing a bullet journal (see this site for more details on the principle) for a couple of years now. I started in September 2014. It’s mostly been a way for me to keep an eye on my word count already, but also helped me keep an eye on my cycle and a few other things. After watching far too many bullet journal videos on YouTube, I decided to overhaul my own, adding a word tracker, changing the calendar style, having some more habit trackers running (I need to get out for walks more and then there’s the cleaning - not a big fan and lazy with it sometimes). I’m also changing to the new bullets (point instead of square).

Having a tracker where I put in my daily word count will definitely be a motivational thing  for me. I’ll also do a tracker for chapters done on release months (so four times a year). I’m also going to set myself a monthly goal of twenty chapters. They don’t all have to be from the same story - when I’m writing novellas, they definitely won’t be -, but I need to get twenty chapters in. That will help me remember that I do have a quota, even if it’s set by me, myself, and I. Twenty chapters will also not be too high a goal - with around thirty days a month that leaves me several days a month on which I don’t have to write, but can work on other things, such as new story ideas which need fleshing out in One-Note.

The bullet journal is completely customizable, since you merely work with a standard notebook and add whatever you need: trackers, calendars, monthly, weekly, and daily task lists. You can make it beautiful or just work with a pen and a notebook to keep track of your stuff. It has ways of keeping long-term tasks penned down (so your mind is free), can help you plan and pull through with projects, and offer you a space for notes. It’s not expensive to set up (I use a simple 3€ notebook and a fountain pen I’ve owned since my teens) and can be customized at any time (I’m changing in the middle of a notebook here).

The bullet journal is one side and helps a lot with the motivation to work on things, but I still could be sitting on a chapter, on and off, all day and still not get it done in the end, even though I know what’s happening (basic outline). It was another thing I tried out which proved extremely helpful there: the Pomodoro method.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it so far, the Pomodoro method is a way of balancing out time for concentrated work with breaks in between. The usual ‘Pomodoro’ (and I have no idea what tomatoes have to do with it) is 25 minutes of work followed by a 5-minute break. The app I have actually lets you set the times for work, long break (after 4 Pomodoros instead of a short one), and short break. The regular settings are 25 minutes of work, 15 minutes of long break, and 5 minutes of short break.

I tried it out on a Sunday, just thinking I might get one chapter of a story I’d almost finished (my big weakness, I have to fight hard to finish up) done that afternoon. After the first Pomodoro, I had written almost half the chapter. After the second one, I was missing a couple of hundred words, not much. So I decided to go on and in five Pomodoros I wrote the last two chapters of the story and finished it off. I’ve never written a chapter at that speed, but with the break looming, putting 25 minutes of typing in isn’t hard for me. And with the preparation of knowing where the chapter is going, it’s easy enough to write it out.

The day after, I went back to a story I started writing (the second one of my Benjamin Farrens trilogy), but didn’t get anywhere with after chapter one and put in three chapters in one day. That’s an extremely big word count for me (over 7,500 words) and I still had the evening off, which usually doesn’t happen when I write more than one chapter.

I’m definitely going to stick with the Pomodoro method for the foreseeable future, at least for days on which I’m not super-motivated, but know what I can work on.

The Pomodoro method might be something for you or not, but I can only urge you to try it out if you need a way to keep more focused during a specific task. Give it an hour or so, which would be two Pomodoros, just to see if it works for you. Also take a look at the bullet journal if you need to get more organized. It’s customizable and you can do whatever suits you best. Make it pretty (some journals on YouTube are real art) or just functional, whatever is helpful for you.