Writing Productivity Style: Planner

You can be a highly proficient writer with an understanding of how to break a project down into smaller pieces and complete the project.

Your conscientious, organized, and detail-oriented strengths help you move projects along. Planners may be more productive when their desk is clear of items not directly related to the task at hand. You enjoy organization with shiny office supplies and /or spreadsheets of accomplishment. You respond better to a written plan than just an idea of what you’d like to accomplish.

Writing Productivity Style; Planner and Potential Blind Spots

You may be too attached to a specific outcome, which could limit creative impulses for your writing project.

You may be hesitant to consider critiques of others. While others often are not the best ones to tell you how to improve your writing project, You may need feedback.  When others are making a point about a specific issue or place in your manuscript, you probably need to schedule some writing time to explore the point in question. Remember if there are no surprises for the writer, there are often no surprises for the reader. When something isn’t working or hanging up some of your critique partners, your tendency may be rigidity. Your strength is understanding your project; your challenge is to consider the comments of others before weighing their application to your writing.

Writing Productivity Style: Planner/ Success Tips

Planners work best with organized systems in place. Have a project plan in place and break that project down into calendar tasks. Include daily writing goals, marketing plan, reading list, and editing work in your plan depending on where you are in the process. Consider using our free writer worksheets.

Planners enjoy color-coded folders, sticky notes, and highlighters to organize and plan a project.  You may enjoy a writing program like Scriveners, yet it’s not necessary to learn a new program for your writing project.  Writers who are Planners may, however, enjoy the organizational features of this program.

Other considerations:

• Use a checklist on your calendars.
• Reassess due dates; making changes to allow for the occasional creative side trips is okay.
• Since you may have a tendency to rush to finish, be sure to schedule a weekly journaling activity to answer the following questions:

1. Is my project on track?
2. Are there creative impulses that I need to be open to?
3. Have I capitalized on surprises found while writing? Have I found metaphors, images, or thematic connections that I need to nourish?
4. How do my calendar and goal setting need adjustment to both meet deadlines and explore creative urges or feedback.?

Thank You for taking the quiz on writing productivity. Work with us at AmyLouJenkins.com and JackWalkerPress.com to write memoir, essay, and more.

Start exploring your memoir story with our free guided workbook.