Thoughts on effective writing routine

When you get entangled in the subtleties of the creative process, looking up suitable advice can often be distracting and time-consuming, especially for the budding writer. Your bookcase might be brimming with books on writing but which one to dip into? Which pages and highlighted passages to consult? This is where a purpose-built reference guide - I call mine Encyclopaedia Writannica - can come to the rescue.

1. Go digital. The days of the little colorful sticky tabs and how-to publications piled high on the writer’s desk are numbered. Software-based Writannica makes your writing routine less disjointed and saves you time in the long run: it facilitates quick search, seamless updates, easy switching between summary and detail (via hyperlinks or outlines), and offers a convenient gateway to additional resources on the Internet. Once you load it onto a laptop, rewriting on the sofa, in cafes and hotel lobbies suddenly becomes as effective as behind the desk in your study.

2. Design a flexible template. Create a new document in your favourite text editor (MS Word, OpenOffice) or in Wikipedia, and then organize it into sections and subsections that encompass all key aspects of writing: writer’s routine and development, craft, grammar, new vocabulary, publishing business, resources, motivational thoughts, you name it. Next, format the headings, lists, indexes, outlines, and paragraph styles to suit your preferences.

3. Transcribe useful information. As you read about writing you come across fresh insights that you may want to exploit in your future work or writing routine. Transcribe them to the corresponding Writannica sections and, as time goes by, continue to expand, update and restructure the file. With persistence, the initial entry will evolve into a comprehensive reference guide tailor-made to your unique developmental needs.

4. Flatten the learning curve. The transcription method accelerates your growth in three important directions: first, by retyping word-for-word a piece of advice you’re memorizing it; second, by appending new content into the existing Writannica sections you’re refreshing previously acquired knowledge; and third, by consolidating expertise from various sources under a single Encyclopaedia entry you’re painting the complete picture of a given topic. The upshot of all this is that, either consciously or subconsciously, you will apply the lessons learned in your next article or story.

5. View it side-by-side. Whether you’re outlining, revising, polishing, or preparing a query letter, keep Writannica open alongside your current project to boost the effectiveness of the creative process. Invest into a widescreen monitor or second monitor (and use the ‘Extend desktop’ feature in MS Windows) so you can arrange the two documents side-by-side without compromising their size on the screen. Add an on-line thesaurus and dictionary if you still have pixels to spare.

6. Listen to the audio edition. Squeeze extra mileage out of your day by converting Writannica entries into mp3 files, and then listen to them on your iPod en-route to work or while performing household chores. Applications such as TextAloud compile two pages of text into audio in a minute, their only downside being the somewhat android voice that, admittedly, takes some getting used to. But that’s fine as far as your main objective is to learn and not to be entertained. To optimize the experience, replace the default MS Windows voice engine with one you can live with – Natural Voices by AT&T is a popular choice.

I started my own Encyclopaedia Writannica a couple of years ago; today, every one of its hundred and forty pages fast-tracks my progress as a writer. It could play a pivotal role in your development, too.