Memory is a funny thing. If you had asked me, I would have told you that in my daughter’s first two years, I didn’t write anything new—that all I did was edit works that I had completed before she was born.
I looked back through Facebook statuses from those two years, and I found a very different productivity story.
I was, in fact, amazingly prolific in the first two years of my daughter’s life. I took three extended workshops: Revise & Sell (also called Advanced Novel), Act Like A Writer, and the YA Novel In Nine Months. I revised a middle grade novel. And I wrote the first draft of a new novel. I found posts detailing word counts of between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Not to mention I wrote several blog posts a week and was a member of a critique group.
I wrote quite a lot!
Of course, the anxiety-ridden part of me suddenly thought: What happened? I’m not possibly that prolific now. So I stepped back and looked. I write two blog posts a week–one here, one for the Author Chronicles–usually totaling about 1,500 words. In the last 12 months, I have completed the first draft of a new work, as well as done two rounds of edits for my book that comes out this year. I have also done networking and social media work and I continue to attend the Writer’s Coffeehouse every month—and the occasional writing workshop. I’m now editing the first draft I completed earlier this year, and finished editing a short story that I hope to submit next month.
So I am still writing quite a bit! Of course, now my child no longer naps—back when my daughter was an infant, she slept for close to 5 hours a day. Now she is in school for only 2 hours a day, so I actually have less time to work than I did back then.
What’s the takeaway? I want to tell every writer out there that if you are putting in the effort, you are probably much more productive than you think. You feel like you’re not getting anywhere but I bet if you stepped back and looked, you would be surprised.
I sure was.
Are you ever surprised by your productivity?
How to Measure Growth As A Writer
Writing is art and craft. As such, many areas of writing have an unnerving subjectivity to them. Anyone who has tried to submit a manuscript to agents will confirm this—some will like it, some will not. So how do you know if you’re getting any better as a writer?
Really, the only true yardstick you can use is seeing if your writing today is stronger than your writing last year, last month, last week. Comparing yourself to others is a recipe for angst, frustration, and despair. But even you comparing yourself to yourself can be subjective—we are often blind to our own faults and judge ourselves more harshly than a stranger.
Another way is to find people you trust to give you honest feedback. Hopefully, they will be able to point out where you have grown as a writer, and where you still need work. If these are people well-schooled in craft, you can be somewhat reassured that you are moving in the right direction.
I have used the Workbook in my process for my last 3 manuscripts, and I am currently using it to improve my WIP. The first time I used this book, I remember that every exercise made me gasp, “Why didn’t I think of that?” or “Why didn’t I do that? It seems so obvious!” So the revisions that I came away with were extensive—but much needed.
This time through, however, I am finding that some of the exercises are already complete, in that I did it in this manuscript already, without prompting. There’s still a lot I need to do to up my game with this manuscript, but finding those parts I already did made me happy. It means I am incorporating the lessons from Maass (and others) into my subconscious process. Hopefully this will mean stronger first drafts, which will mean fewer revisions, which will mean faster completion times—without sacrificing quality.
So that is one objective way you can measure if you are improving your craft—if you find that the writing books you use are telling you things that you have already done.
How do you measure growth as a writer?