I saw this on social media – posted by a writing tool.
It’s important to find ways to make your writing workflow more efficient. You want to ensure that you’re spending the majority of your time being productive.
As I said, this was posted by a writing tool. Their motive is clear – the apparent need for productivity drives possible customers. They’re a business, I get that. This isn’t really about them, but the concept of productivity and creativity together.
Speaking on broader terms… WHY is it important?
This is not a rhetorical question. Why does your writing need to be efficient? Why do I need to tweak my writing workflow? Why do you need to spend time being “productive”? What is “productive” writing? Is it only words on the digital page? What about the time spent thinking and marinating? Is time mulling considered productive? Especially in contexts like fiction world building? Is that “unproductive”?
I’m not convinced you have to apply productivity to creativity. HAVE TO being key here. You can choose to apply productivity to creativity.
People are conditioned to think productivity is only good, and don’t consider downsides or risks. Do you need to be productive in your writing? What’s the worst that will happen if you aren’t? If you increase your productivity, what may you be missing out on?
Productivity is only important if you want it to be important.
What are your thoughts on productivity applying to creativity?
I agree that applying productivity to creativity is a personal choice and not a necessity. It’s important to consider that productivity doesn’t always equate to being creative or successful in writing.
I think that’s a really good point – especially in creative fields, success is made up of so many variables that productivity may barely be a contributing factor.
I find this a really interesting topic. My writing, such as it is, is not at all productive. I tend to spend more time thinking about it, and planning in my head. The writing process then comes fairly easily to me.
I was chatting to a friend last night about the planner vs pantser fiction writing and where we sit on the lines between it – and ultimately our process is just our process, no matter how long it takes.
Very interesting topic to ponder. Just thinking about my blogging – it’s a hobby so I don’t want to fritter away all my time on it and not get “important” things done, but it’s a creative outlet so I want to do good work. I think I do a lot of it in my head as I’m doing other things, in hopes that when I sit down to write – umm – type, I can be more productive. That’s what I hope anyway. Visiting from WWandP today
That’s a good point, we do need some kind of container around hobbies so that we get things needed in life done 🙂
I’d rather quality over quantity – and I think when you’re writing as a hobby or for a blog, you can dabble in and out without it being a problem. For authors and professional writers, it might be a bit different because they have deadlines to meet and word counts to maintain. I’m grateful my writing is for fun and not for profit – I don’t think I could maintain the pace!
I don’t think I’ll ever stop writing books, but such is the state of the world that I don’t ever see them becoming income (I get a few dollars a year lol). So they sit in an odd in-between space for me.
Gosh, the last thing I think about in my creative world is productivity. It’s the place where I slow down and am much more mindful…as is blogging these days. I say “do what feels right” for you!
So good to see your post this week for Wednesday’s Words and Pics Link Up on Denyse Whelan Blogs. I look forward to you joining us next week too! Denyse.
Doing what’s right for you is why I rarely hang out in writerly spaces these days, I find so many of them are overly obsessed with rules, which I find so odd for creativity.
For me productivity is only relevant in my day job where I’m paid to be productive and provide someone (government and taxpayers at the moment) value for money.
But writing in general can be so much more than its end result. x
I think the writing being more than the end result is also something the tech bros and claiming LLMs are AI are missing. Going through the process adds to the outcome in a way that skipping the process doesn’t.