The only thing that a writer’s room needs, according to Stephen King (2000), is “a door which you are willing to shut” (Location 103)
Writing productively is about actions that you aren’t doing but could easily do: making a writing schedule, setting clear goals, keeping track of your work, rewarding yourself, and building good habits. (Location 116)
How to Write a Lot views writing as a set of concrete behaviors, such as (a) scheduling time to write; (b) sitting on a chair, bench, stool, ottoman, toilet, or patch of grass during the scheduled time; and (c) slapping your flippers against the keyboard to generate paragraphs. Let everyone else procrastinate, daydream, and complain—spend your time sitting down and flapping your flippers. (Location 169)
Instead of finding time to write, allot time to write. (Location 216)
People who write a lot make a writing schedule and stick to it. (Location 217)
The key is the habit—the week-in, week-out regularity—not the number of days, the number of hours, or the time of day. (Location 226)
Binge writers spend more time feeling guilty about not writing than schedule-followers spend writing. (Location 247)
The bad habits that keep them from getting down to writing also keep them from doing the prewriting (Kellogg, 1994)—the reading, outlining, organizing, brainstorming, planning, and number-crunching necessary for typing words. (Location 272)
Writing is more than typing words. For me, writing’s endpoint is sending an article to a journal, a book to a publisher, or a grant proposal to a funding agency. Any activity that gets me closer to that goal counts as writing. (Location 279)
People who wrote “when they felt like it” were barely more productive than people told not to write at all—inspiration is overrated. (Location 350)
academics should schedule time for writing much like we schedule time for teaching and tackle writing’s many tasks during that time. (Location 404)
Self-monitoring—keeping tabs on your own behavior—is one of the oldest and best ways of changing behavior (Location 517)
