So January was the month were I finally got started on doing my writing exercises again after NaNoWriMo, the Christmas holidays, and moving into our new house. It was also was the month were I finally managed to get three hours of deliberate practice pressed into one day. And I did that three days in … Continue reading January Practicing Stats – Now with Graphs
Category: Practice
How to Get More Done – Finding Time to Read and Write With a Packed Schedule
This isn't where I reveal some fake magic recipe for how to get fifty hours' worth of work done in one day with enough time to watch a little Netflix before getting your eight hours of sleep. This isn't that kind of place. Here, realism and hard data rules. This is, however, the place where … Continue reading How to Get More Done – Finding Time to Read and Write With a Packed Schedule
December Stats
All right, so I've been away for while and it's more than due time for another set of writing stats. This time for December, the month where I finally managed to finish of my NaNoWriMo novella, which means all of my writing time was spend on story writing instead of doing exercises. December was also … Continue reading December Stats
NaNoWriMo Stats
It's time for another stat update, this time for November, NaNoWriMo season. So the stats will be covering one month this time plus to additional days just to get coverage all the way back to the last update. Not surprisingly, I didn't get to spent all that much time on writing exercises during NaNoWriMo. Actually, … Continue reading NaNoWriMo Stats
Finishing NaNoWriMo – What I learned
So I won NaNoWriMo. I did my 50.000 words and a little extra in just 29 days. And you know what? It feels great. That being said, the feeling's a bit tainted. I set out planning on finishing the story I'd loosely plotted out within the the 30 days, which required me to go beyond … Continue reading Finishing NaNoWriMo – What I learned
NaNoWriMo Update
So NaNoWriMo started out great. I've been ahead of schedule since day one, and I still technically am -- with 80 words. The weekend has been rough on the writing process though. There's been a company dinner with a subsequent party one day and a football match (that's soccer for the Americans) with friends and … Continue reading NaNoWriMo Update
My Stats
So I've been talking a lot about deliberate practice lately, and I wanted this blog to focus, at least partly, on the way I use deliberate practice to improve my fiction writing. That of course requires that I actually sits down and does some writing. So how much time do I actually manage to practice? … Continue reading My Stats
Perfect Practice
Keeping in line with my earlier post about Deliberate Practice, I found this cool little TEDx talk (see below) about how a high level pianist practices. It illustrates nicely how it's not just the amount of time you spend practicing that counts but also how you practice. Worst case, you could be practicing bad habits, … Continue reading Perfect Practice
Deliberate Practice and the Dan Plan – part 2
Last time I promised a look at how apply deliberate practice to writing fiction, and bit more details about why the Dan Plan failed. So here goes. The often repeated writing advice out there is probably Write a lot. But if you listen to pro writers such as Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, or Dean … Continue reading Deliberate Practice and the Dan Plan – part 2
Deliberate Practice and the Dan Plan – part 1
I've mentioned briefly in previous blog posts how important I think it is to practice the right way if you want to excel at your craft. And that was actually my primary reason for starting this blog. I wanted to use it as a way of documenting my own progress and set-backs and to show … Continue reading Deliberate Practice and the Dan Plan – part 1
Toby Backman 