I just returned from teaching at the Speak Up Conference in Grand Rapids. It was a wonderful event, and I hope to be back next year. This conference started as one for speakers, but because speakers often need to write and writers often need to speak, they’ve added a writing …
Identify Your Nonfiction Genre
Before we can start editing our nonfiction, we need to know what kind of nonfiction we’re dealing with so we can meet the expectations of the genre. In fiction editing, we have to keep in mind, for example, the different needs of contemporary women’s fiction compared to futuristic science fiction. …
How to Edit Your Nonfiction Book
I spent nearly a year discussing the Elements of Fiction, with 92 posts altogether on the topic. Those of you who are writing nonfiction may have wondered when I was going to get to you. As it happens, I’m teaching Edit Like a Pro: Elements of Nonfiction at the Speak …
Unusual Uses of Excel for Writers
Regular readers know I’m a little spreadsheet crazy. I’ve offered you a spreadsheet for time and motion studies and another for tracking your productivity. And I’m not the only one, because you’ll notice that Michael Hyatt’s ideal week is plotted on a spreadsheet. When I wrote about tools, I mentioned …
Take Back Your Time
We all have time. Every week contains 168 hours, and they are yours to spend as you chose. The choices you make determine what you accomplish. Your schedule is packed. The question is, with what? Your calendar will reveal what your real priorities are. Making room on your calendar for …
Put Boundaries Around Your Writing Time
When we talked about flow, I mentioned Mark McGuinness’s advice to ring-fence your time. The question then is—how? Actually, your first question might be—as it was for one student who took my time management seminar a few months ago—what does that even mean, “ring-fence your time”? A ring fence is …
Schedule a Day of Rest
Regardless of your religious persuasion, I encourage you to take a sabbath. Give yourself one day off a week. Doesn’t really matter which day. In The Art of War for Writers, James Scott Bell recommends taking one day a week completely off and not writing at all: “Taking a day …
Schedule Activities and Downtime
We talk a lot about scheduling time for writing. But here are some other things to consider building into your schedule so you can save time and increase productivity: Morning devotional or meditation. All my life I have risen regularly at four o’clock and have gone into the woods and …
Review Your Progress at the End of the Day
One time management practice I advocate is this: When you do a thing that wasn’t on your to-do list, write it down anyway and cross it off. This helps you assess what you actually did. Often when we get to the end of the day, we feel as if we …
Choose the Right Time Management Tools
The tricky thing about choosing the “right” time management tools is that the right tool for me may be the wrong tool for you. And the tool for one task may be inappropriate for another. So I’ll give you some options. Test them out and keep looking for others. Cal …