Do Less to Do More: FightWrite™
Three years ago, I was interviewed by Novel Marketing Podcast, a show that teaches writers how to better market not only their work but themselves as authors. The host, Thomas Umstattd, interviewed me regarding an award my blog had won. It meant a lot that Thomas would be interviewing me about the award as his advice helped me win it. He is also partially responsible for why I am now more productive as a writer than I have ever been. It wasn’t so much his advice that increased my productivity as it was simple math. He let numbers do the talking. With a spreadsheet, he showed me that I had to do less to do more.
(Physical Cues of Violence: FightWrite™)
I met Thomas at a writers’ conference where he was teaching. When he learned what I did, he interviewed me regarding fight scenes for another podcast he hosted. After the show, we chatted a bit. He had seen my blog and told me to get my act together on it in the most genteel yet direct way possible. At that point, FightWrite wasn’t its own site. It was a free site with the platform attached to the web address. He told me that for folks to take me seriously as a professional, I needed my own site.
There is a term that I have coined for people like me, and that is tech Amish. I know only enough about technology to surmise that it’s evil magic and well beyond my understanding. I bought floppy discs at Radio Shack in the 80s and have been in arrested development ever since. That established, I had no idea what Thomas even meant by having my own site. I did have my own site, I told him. When I put the words in the blank bar thingy at the top of my computer screen, there was the site. I mean, come on, who was the crazy one there?
Thomas laughed and explained the situation to me. He told me that I needed to look “legit” and that he thought FightWrite would take off if I followed just a few of his suggestions. I did just that, even though it cost me money, heaven forbid. I posted to the blog weekly and created focused SEOs, per his recommendation. (That’s the techiest thing I have ever written.) I even went above and beyond by starting a podcast and did videos for the blog and social media as well. I applied for a trademark. Heck, I started work on a second FightWrite book, too. I did all the things. And a year later, the blog was winning an award.
After the second interview, regarding the success of the blog, Thomas and I talked. We caught each other up on our families and then talked about writing. He asked how it was going and I said that it wasn’t. I told him that every time I sat down to write, my thoughts went viscous. They were in my head, I could think them, but I couldn’t put one on paper. I was posting less to the podcast and not really doing videos, either. I didn’t tell him that bit.
He asked me to hold on a minute for him to get some paper and then started asking me questions about projects that I had in the works. I was to rate each endeavor, 1–10, in the areas of revenue, easiness, and joy. In under five minutes, he told me that I had burn-out and which projects to release. When I balked at letting go of anything, he said all I was doing just didn’t “add up.” That wasn’t an opinion, it was math. He then forwarded me a spreadsheet to fill in for myself. Here’s how it looked. A red score is bad, yellow neutral, green good.
Thomas was right, and I couldn’t disagree. I loathe math for the most part but, I have to say, it doesn’t lie. And the truth was that I wasn’t enjoying much at all. It was a sobering moment. Whether I didn’t enjoy what I was doing because I had burn-out or if burn-out kept me from enjoying what I was doing wasn’t clear. And honestly, it didn’t matter. Either way, I wasn’t productive. It didn’t make sense for me to continue pouring energy into elective activities if that meant I had nothing left over to work on what was working for me, i.e., the blog.
So, I decided to release the items in red. They weren’t bringing much revenue outright and costing me time, mental and physical energy, and just plain happiness. Notice that I say “release,” not “quit.” For me, the word release implied that I could pick it back up if and when it was best.
With just the decision, I felt the weight that I had been carrying. Sometimes you don’t know how heavy something is until you drop it. That bit of liberation made me go a step further with the spreadsheet by changing the column categories to simply love and loves me back. I then filled the rows with hobbies, activity groups, social media, and people. Yes, people.
I didn’t look so much at the sum of the two columns as much as the disparity between them. I imagined the scores to be water and myself as a big Mason jar— yes, I am that Southern. I circled the items that left my jar more empty than full. That said, I did not expect any person listed to fill my jar. Rather, the number I assigned them represented how full I felt after interacting with them. And, them leaving me drained didn’t mean I cut ties with them. It meant that I had to be mindful of how I behaved around them because when I am drained, I’m not at my best.
After making the decision to let some things on both spreadsheets go, I didn’t follow through immediately. I didn’t force anything except making myself take a more honest look at the personal cost of each item. I accepted how much energy each was taking, and how full or not each left me feeling. I then considered all the things I didn’t list that were stressors. You know, life stuff, which were significant. My brother was in hospice, my mother was ill, and I didn’t live close enough to either. Add that to raising teens on the spectrum and I was honestly holding together with a thin thread. I saw why, with good reason, I was as my grandma used to said, “burnt-slap-out.”
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The irony of being burned-out is that you are left with only enough glow to feel stressed out about the fact. And, stress is as deleterious to creativity as the lack of mental energy is to writing. For me to be productive as a writer, and person, I had to release the professional and personal things that were keeping my wick low. And, I had to not feel bad about it because my goal was ultimately to do not just do more, but more of my best work. To do more I had to do less.
Within a few weeks, I released all my writing activities. I only submitted to Writer’s Digest and generally used that article for my blog a week after. I left a gym that wasn’t working for me, distanced myself from some people, quit competing in jiujitsu, and gave myself permission to just be for a while. I also quit feeling guilty about not writing. A writer is still a writer when they aren’t writing as much as a bird is still a bird when it’s not flying. I’m not sure why I had, for years, felt the need to justify calling myself a writer. Nobody was keeping up with it but me.
Fast forward to today, as of this writing. I post to my blog when I post to it. That’s as committed as I get. I don’t do social media much or videos unless a writer requests it. I use that time to read instead. And, yes, my book sales have gone down a little. But, my professional productivity is the best it has ever been. I use almost all of my writing time on an item that I had once released: another FightWrite book. And, I’m teaching more this year than I ever have. I’ve even been named a keynote speaker at a conference.
Writers a tired body will betray a tireless mind. When you find yourself “burnt-slap-out” and unable to write, it might be time for the spreadsheet. I will put the link here. It requires your email. But you can create your own. List your projects, activities etc. Rank each according to revenue generated, easiness and lastly, joy. Those that score high are likely keepers. Those that score low may need to be adjusted, re-examined or culled altogether. Not because those low scorers are bad for you. They may just be weight you can’t carry with for now. Maybe releasing them will allow you to better grasp what you truly want. Because what you truly want isn’t just more, it’s more of your best work. And, sometimes, you have to do less to do more of your best.
Until the next round with FightWrite™ on the WD Blog.
Struggling to choose a fighting style for your character? The struggle is over. The way your character does battle isn’t up to you. It’s up to the story. The time and place of the work, the society in which your character lives, their inherent and fostered traits and the needs of the story will determine how your character responds to aggression.