The groundhog lied!

Winter hasn’t surrendered in the Washington, DC area. The temperatures drop into the thirties overnight and sometimes barely hit fifties. Then it pops up into the 70s for a few days, followed by high winds and more cold weather. Fortunately, it was gloriously nice on Sunday, though hard to believe after the last two days.

Pondering my thoughts from the last post…

Spending some time connecting to my Intellection side first thing in the morning made a difference. Microsoft OneNote makes a great tool for that. I’d tried this before, some years ago, but it hadn’t worked because I thought I should track everything. This is standard productivity advice, and you hear it everywhere. But Focus, the Clifton Strength that plays well with tracking and goals, is down near the bottom of my list. There isn’t anything I can do to shore that strength up. (I know some people would say I could do it if I applied more discipline. Nope. Does not work.)

So, like my many word count tracking spreadsheets and planners, I stumbled across the entries months later, having done five or ten, and those sporadically.

I sometimes jump into work first, then steer myself to spending the thinking time. Still a work in progress, but I’m not feeling too mentally exhausted to do anything once I get off work.

So I’ve been able to do some Writing. Not as much as I want to, but it’s better than it has been. Considering I have a deadline at the end of the month, I’m hoping it will improve more (especially since it’s a fun story). What I can’t do is power through as I’ve done in the past.

I’m engaging myself by tackling a small skill that I can have fun with. I’m adding words that evoke Multiple Senses to description:

• Snow crusted mountains (touch and sight)
• A sweater the color of crushed strawberries (taste, smell, and sight)
• A screaming red dress (sound and sight)

I’m finding this works best on a cycling pass. It doesn’t come out of my brain during the initial creation. Sometimes I use placeholder brackets to give myself thinking time.

Meanwhile, some fun links:

Immersive writing: These are two-hour videos to aid with writing. I’m working through them, but the train has been the best so far.

Catharine Barrett: When Study Isn’t Fun, Don’t Study! Few writers talk about how to study writing, so writers default to critique. This article inspired me to focus on the small task—playing—by coming up with multiple senses for descriptive words. She also discusses how to improve your vocabulary. She notes traditional methods such as a word-a-day don’t work that well.

Why we prefer doing something to nothing? Action Bias. I’ve been filling my RSS feed with different sites for input. This link came from a Live Science article on vitamins. Action Bias is when we do something because it appears to be better than nothing—even when isn’t helpful. This Action Fallacy shows up in productivity circles in subtle ways, and even in writing fiction. Not selling enough books? More marketing, when marketing may not be the answer. Before taking action, the solution is to think first and decide if this is the best thing to do.

The Conspiracy Test–a site from a university on stretching your critical thinking skills, not necessarily debunking all conspiracies. In fact, they note that there are some conspiracies. The site has a fun interface if you’re a spec fiction fan, and thinking about the logic of conspiracies will help in writing them in fiction. Win-win!