Link of the Week: The Pomodoro Technique

This week's link is for the Wikipedia page about the Pomodoro Technique. It sounds fancy, but "Pomodoro" is simply the Italian word for "tomato" and this technique takes its name for a tomato-shaped kitchen timer that the technique creator originally used.

The basic concept is simple. Commit to a task, set a timer for 25 minutes, and work on the task until the timer stops. If an interruption arises, either defer the interruption until the end of your 25 minute interval (itself called a "pomodoro") or abandon the pomodoro if the interruption can't wait. Once you've completed your pomodoro, if you intend to keep at your task, take a five minute break before diving in for another 25 minutes. If you complete four sets (two hours, in total, with the breaks) then take a longer break. The Wikipedia page provides some additional information and some of the rationale behind the approach.

I haven't personally used this technique but know multiple people who swear by it for both writing and software development. There's a company out there which sells official timers, a book, etc. but for experimenting with this technique, I would suspect that the bare bones as described on the Wikipedia page are sufficient.

Have you used Pomodoros in your work? If so, what's your experience been with them?

Link of the Week: Printable Calendars

This week's Link of the Week is for the site where I go to get my printable calendars. Yes, I probably could whip something up in Excel for this, but I like the ease of just going out to the My Boat Club site once a month and printing the current month's calendar.

I always print mine out landscape to have the biggest boxes available for use. Here's the link to the calendar for September, if you want to try printing one out for next month.

Once you've been using the calendars and checking off boxes for a while, you might end up having something that looks sort of like this:

The site is free, though they ask for a small donation via Paypal if you use the site regularly but it is -- as the site says -- strictly an on-your-honor thing. There's no registration, etc.

Link of the Week: Five Golden Rules for Successful Goal Setting

Every Saturday I highlight a link that I think is worth checking out for writers, particularly those who are working on developing a daily writing routine. This week's link is "Five Golden Rules for Successful Goal Setting."

I set goals for myself every month and then go back at the end of the month and track how I did at accomplishing them. (I also typically do a "status check" on my goals at least once mid-month.) My goals are always around things that are, for all intents and purposes, completely within my control. So I wouldn't list "sell two stories" as a goal because I can't control whether editors buy my stories. All I can do is send them out and wait for the reply. But I could list "write two new stories and get them both submitted for the first time" as a goal because that's something which is on me to either do or do not. (There is, after all, no try.)

The post I'm linking to this week does a great job of talking about best practices for goal setting. I hope that it provides some useful insights to you!

Link of the Week: L. Lambert Lawson on Writing Every Day "Our Honor Becomes Greater Than Our Moods"

Every Saturday I highlight a link that I think is worth checking out for writers, particularly those who are working on developing a daily writing routine. As soon as I read L. Lambert Lawson's great post "Writing Every Day: Our Honor Becomes Greater Than Our Moods" last night, I knew it had to be this week's featured link.

I'm featuring this not because he starts out by mentioning "Write Every Day." (Well, okay, that certainly didn't do anything to discourage me from liking the piece...) What I really loved about it, though, was how he synthesized multiple different pieces of advice and inspiration here. He draws from not just what I've written, but from behavioral psychologists and Stephen Covey, who is the source for the title of his post.

Historically, I've been quite good (or, rather, poor) at letting my moods and whims take hold of my direction in some aspects of life. I've written quite a few times about how I had written frequently as a child but then spent hardly any time as an adult writing up until this past year. But once I committed to writing every day and got a bit of momentum, having that commitment has gotten me through many, many days when I truly didn't feel like writing. Those might not always have been my best writing days though I think that in general once I get in a groove for a writing session, my original mood is largely irrelevant. So that quote from Covey really rings true for me and is a nice crystallization of how I feel about that very topic.

In fact, I'm finally making some progress with using the same core concepts behind the Daily Writing Chain in another area of my life. My wife and I have had a small side business for years which has started to languish in the past several years for a variety of reasons. I committed to putting a small amount of effort into it every day starting July 1st. So far, I've met that commitment every day and even met a small stretch goal which I had set for myself for the month of July as a whole.

We've talked some here recently about how writing every day doesn't work for everyone -- people for whom it doesn't work shouldn't feel any less good about their own routine. But for me, and for quite a few other writers, it's been a very fruitful technique.

Thanks to L. Lambert Lawson for his insightful post.

Link of the Week: Writing Digest Creative Writing Prompts

Every Saturday I highlight a link that I think is worth checking out for writers, particularly those who are working on developing a daily writing routine. Writers' Digest is a well-known publication and on their website they have a list of creative writing prompts. They tend to be very specific scenarios rather than the more general prompts which I run here a couple of times a week, so if you're looking for something that gives you an explicit starting spot, I think their archives of prompts might be very useful. And when I say "archives", I mean it -- it looks to me like there are well over 100 such prompts there.

One thing I would note -- the site suggests replying directly to the prompt on their site with up to 500 words. Personally, I would not do that for a variety of reasons. But there's no reason not to check out their prompts and see if something sparks your imagination.

Link of the Week: "How to Survive NaNoWriMo: Planning"

This week's Link is to a blog post about planning for NaNoWriMo. On the one hand, it does seem kind of early to be talking about November's event. On the other hand, this is about the time last year when I came up with the idea for the novel that I ended up writing a first draft of during November 2011. I think that the pre-planning I did for my writing was key to successfully writing nearly 60,000 words in those 30 days.

The post is:  How to Survive NaNoWriMo: Planning by Jason LaPier and while I'd done a decent job of planning the plot for my story before I started writing last fall, I wish I had seen this and the other things he had suggested planning out, especially in terms of character details, since I was rather vague on all of those beyond the things that were on the surface due to the plot I had constructed.

In Write Every Day, I talk about the pros and cons of using NaNoWriMo as a way of jumping into developing a Daily Writing Chain. In brief, there's a lot of great community support for the activity, but if you focus too much on "winning" NaNoWriMo while trying to also develop a daily writing routine, you might feel some stress. If you do decide to tackle NaNoWriMo, posts like Jason's will likely be a big help to you.

Link of the Week: K. M. Weiland Blog Post on Routines

This week's Link is to a blog post from earlier this year by K. M. Weiland. She talks about the pros and cons of having a routine for your writing.

"Can you name one thing that could harm your writing if you do it—and if you don’t? Writing "routines" might not be the first answer to pop to mind. But nothing affects our writing more than the routine (or lack of one) with which we implement our writing into our day. Unfortunately, if we don’t approach routines with just the right mindset, they can cause more harm than good." 

The post is:  How Routines Save (and Ruin) Your Writing by K. M. Weiland and I think it does a great job of looking at the benefits and risks to both options. Obviously, I'm a big fan of having a routine for my own writing and I think that for many writers having a routine can help them achieve greater productivity. But there are some people who work better in other ways, and K. M.'s post may help you figure out more about your own work style.

Link of the Week: Rahul Kanakia

Every Saturday, I'll be highlighting one link -- it could be a blog post, a book, a website, or anything else -- and explaining why I think that link is useful for writers trying to develop and maintain a daily writing routine. Unlike my Sunday Links posts on my general writing blog, I won't restrict myself to brand new links. Whatever I find that I think is worth sharing will be fair game.

When I came across this blog post earlier today I knew that it had to be my link for the week. Rahul Kanakia is a science fiction writer whose stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and many other notable publications. As of today, he's "gone one full year without missing a day of writing." Some of his approaches are slightly different than the ones I use, but it's obvious that they are working phenomenally well for him.

There are lots of great, inspirational comments I could pick out of the post but, really, the best thing I can do is urge you to go read it. If you want a model of how to write every day, Rahul may have just what you're looking for!

Link of the Week: Online Etymology Dictionary

Friday's windstorm knocked me offline for about 15 hours, including when I would have normally been composing this post. Sorry that it's going up late. (And, yes, I did manage to write yesterday evening despite the power outage. My netbook was charged, so I was able to write on it, sitting by myself in the dark!)

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Every Saturday, I'll be highlighting one link -- it could be a blog post, a book, a website, or anything else -- and explaining why I think that link is useful for writers trying to develop and maintain a daily writing routine. Unlike my Sunday Links posts on my general writing blog, I won't restrict myself to brand new links. Whatever I find that I think is worth sharing will be fair game.

This week's link is the Online Etymology Dictionary. This site has tens of thousands of entries about the history of various words and phrases. It's useful for understanding where certain terms come from and also the general time they came into usage. The latter is especially helpful if you're writing something set in the past and want to ensure you're not creating anachronisms in your work.

As far as it helping people write every day, I also view this site as being a source of possible writing prompts. For example, the entry for "jubilee" reads in part: "The original notion was of a year of emancipation of slaves and restoration of lands, to be celebrated every 50th year..." That concept seems ripe for a science-fictional (or fantasy) story where that original meaning of jubilee is revisited in an alien (or fantastical) society.

It's a fascinating site and a fantastic resource. If you haven't checked it out, I'd encourage you to do so. Just try not to get lost browsing it!

Link of the Week: "Breaking the Success Barrier"

Every Saturday, I'll be highlighting one link -- it could be a blog post, a book, a website, or anything else -- and explaining why I think that link is useful for writers trying to develop and maintain a daily writing routine. Unlike my Sunday Links posts on my general writing blog, I won't restrict myself to brand new links. Whatever I find that I think is worth sharing will be fair game.

This week's Link is "Breaking the Success Barrier" by Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold, originally published in The Internet Review of Science Fiction in 2006.

The concept of the "success barrier" is that writers start out with limited command of their craft (competence) and significant confidence in their abilities. While they're on their learning curve, competence increases but leads to awareness of the flaws in their own work, decreasing confidence. If external boosts to confidence don't arrive soon enough, the temptation is strong for many writers to decide they aren't good enough and give up.

This article has some fantastic suggestions about managing that "success barrier" and it is well worth reading.

I know there were times early this year where I was running headlong into that barrier. But I had built up a daily writing chain stretching over several months and I didn't want to let that go. In fact, the way that I dealt with being a bit burned out on writing fiction due to the barrier was to switch my focus temporarily and write the first draft of "Write Every Day."

Being committed to a daily writing routine can help you push through some of the rough times in your career. It keeps you focused on producing new work which can help take some of the sting out of rejections from older work, particularly if you are also able to see the clear indications of improvement in your work.

Stop back next Saturday for a new Link of the Week!