Quality, Not Quantity

 Some writers are all about how many words they got written in a day. For a very long time, I was all about what sort of things I managed to get done in a day.

 

If I had a chapter to write that day and I wrote it, then that’s a success.

 

Same with spending an hour editing a manuscript, writing an article and getting a book review done.

 

Then I switched gears and used something else to judge whether or not I had a good writing day: Lines. Specifically, the number of lines I could fill on my dayplanner!

 

I don’t plan out my writing day; I already have it in my head what I need to get done. So after I complete something, I write it down in my planner to show what I did. I started doing this after too many busy days meant I could not get done ALL of the things I had written down on my planner. It started to be a huge downer. Then I noticed how my oldest wrote down everything he got done in HIS planner.

 

That inspired me to give this method a try. It has worked out very well, too; I have been able to keep track of everything I get done.

 

Then I started to obsess over filling up those boxes, trying to cram as much stuff into my day as I could so I could write completed tasks on as many lines as possible.

 

That has changed.

 

Because I have deadlines every week and month, I have had to shift my focus on working on those deadlines as much as possible. (A funny thing; one person I had planned to interview for an article asked me if I had sent her the interview questions yet. I checked and discovered I hadn’t! So much for focus.) Sometimes, working on these deadlines can take hours. Which means there’s not too much room for other things, like pitching articles, writing blog posts or learning scriptwriting. And any free time I have left in my day goes towards writing short stories to submit or working on my books!

 

This week, I had a day where I only worked on three things: The newsletter, a book review deadline, and a short story to revise. (Yes, the short story revisions were important because I had ideas for story revisions that I needed to write before I forgot them!)

 

  

And you know what? I was totally okay with this. Those things are timely. I plan to send out the newsletter this weekend and that short story is for an anthology call. Both of those things took a lot of my time to work on, and since I also spent time on the book review deadline, I considered it a good writing day.

 

Sure, it was only three lines I wrote on in my planner, but those three things ARE important and they required a lot of time on that day. So instead of using how much I get done in a day to decide whether or not it was productive, I have decided that I will instead focus on what exactly I got done in my day. If it was the important stuff I managed to tackle, and even if it was just three things, then I will consider it a good day.

 

EDIT: You know what? The day after I wrote this article, I managed to fill an entire box with tasks I got done in my day! I think it helped that, in the three hours I had to myself on Thursday morning, I got a good head start on my day! I got all of this done:

 

 

Then I ended up filling the rest of my day with these other things, filling up that whole box:

 

 That was pretty awesome! (And, yes, I got confused with which book review I wrote!)

 

And, today, I had the same result! I filled a whole box:

 

So, I consider both of those things a good day. I’m glad I was able to make the adjustment to when I’ve only managed to get a few things done. At least I tackle the important things!