Writing is a skill, and a creative art. Often people are attracted to writing as a career, because it satisfies the something deep in their soul called creativity.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of accomplishment when reading your writing and seeing the impact your writing has made on another human being. It doesn’t have to be the next literary prizewinner. It could be a great landing or sales page that brings in lots of customers, a fabulous blog post, or a poem or heartfelt words on a loved one’s birthday card.

And like all creative arts, writing doesn’t just happen. We still need to work actively at our craft.

The writers’ rule should always be activity rather than passivity.

Passive people are those who simply wait for the creative genius to light up their mind and are quite content to write only when they feel in the mood for it. However, active people will still work at their writing craft, even if the light of genius is not presently burning.

Active Voice In Writing

Good writers know that writing in active voice is easier to read, concise, and less subject to misunderstanding. Using active voice is the best technique we have to make our writing concise. It ensures the action is clear and focuses on the person completing the action.

In the same way, we should in ourselves be active, and work consistently to complete the action of writing.

Activity In Writing

Being active in your writing is more about actually writing, rather than spending time in non-productive ways. It is too easy for writers to say that the genius light is not burning today and then accomplish nothing. Even when you are having a bad day, you can still write.

Taking action includes having time to write, using that time productively, and ensuring that methods of procrastination do not take over the writing time. Good writers will also be active in their daily habits.

Obviously, you will tend to be more creative when you are feeling fresh and energetic. However, use the times when you are less energetic to still actively achieve your writing work. Creativity is not the only requirement for a good writer; hard work is a necessity for success.

Ways to Get More Active

Here are some ways writers can become more active rather than passive in their writing:

Set Goals, Tasks and Deadlines

• Giving yourself some goals and tasks to complete each working day will help you to keep focused.  When you work to a deadline you find that you are most productive in the final few hours of the time, rather than in the first. This is because the deadline itself acts as a motivator.

• If you are working on a long project, the deadline can seem too far away, and you can convince yourself you have time to procrastinate. However, if you break up the project into smaller tasks and give yourself daily or even hourly deadlines with specific tasks to achieve, you can be more productive in your writing every day.

Be Disciplined

• Have a routine and stick to it as much as possible.  Get up at the same time each day, and start your writing at the same time. Give yourself regular breaks but be disciplined. Creative writing does not just magically happen, much as though we wish it would.

• Disciplined writers will make themselves sit down and start writing, even if they are not in the mood. Disciplined writers will work to practice and improve their art, even when no deadline is looming.

Make a Start

• This is one of the most important things you can do to get active in your writing. Do not spend time going around in circles staring at a blank computer screen.
• WRITE! Write anything. Give yourself a draft outline of what you are going to write, with a key phrase or word for each paragraph. Then fill in each paragraph.
• You may find that starting in the middle is easier than writing an introduction. You can always come back to a particular paragraph that is proving difficult later on. Make a start and you will often find that the creative genius lights up and the words will start to flow.

Be active in your writing and TAKE ACTION! Make a start, keep going and be disciplined about your writing and your precious time.

This is the last in the A=Action habit (for the time being) in the CREATIVE HABITS series. I hope it’s given you some things to think about and action..

You know what you need to do. You’ve planned your time to sit down and write and then nothing happens. You end up sitting in front of the computer for several hours, and feel like you haven’t achieved anything at the end of the day.

Don’t worry, every creative infopreneur experiences days like this. However, one of the main reasons writers fail is they fail to simply take action. You know once you actually start writing, the ideas will come and the words start to flow.

It happens all the time. Yet just starting to write is the often the hardest part.  This is where discipline comes in and helps you to start to take action and put fingers to keyboard or pen to paper.

Here are some of the most common reasons writers will fail to take action. If you recognize any of the behaviors or excuses below, you need to change your habits so you take action sooner.

Start in the middle of an article and come back to the introduction at the end, if you need to. Just get started!

Reason 1 – Procrastination

I talked about this in my last post but it’s worth mentioning again. Procrastination is a complex term for putting a task aside and doing ANYTHING else.  Playing word games on the computer instead of actually writing is a form of procrastination. You need to limit the time you spend procrastinating and sit down in a disciplined way to write!

Reason 2 – Perfectionism

Entrepreneurs, infopreneurs, writers (whatever we want to call ourselves) are by nature perfectionists. However, searching for two hours for exactly the right word, and re-writing the starting paragraph six times, are terrific ways to avoid writing. It’s better to write the whole story, and then edit, rather than trying to refine each sentence as you first write it.

Remember a first draft is not meant to be perfect. Editing is helpful, but doesn’t get the actual writing done. Don’t get caught up in perfectionism that prevents you from writing.

Reason 3 – Inner Critic and Mind Chatter

We can get distracted by many things, but one of the hardest to combat is the inner voice, which criticizes what you are doing, and mind chatter. Mind chatter is thoughts which do not add anything to your writing, except to effectively distract your mind.

To get over this and take action, deliberately clear your mind and then focus. Start writing, anything, to get your mind focused on the process of writing. Make a pact with yourself that you will write first and edit later, as a way of silencing the distracting inner critic.

Reason 4 – Indecisiveness

This is, I must confess, something I’m very good at. Dithering around, wondering what to write will not help you to achieve your goals. Indecisiveness can be a great way of avoiding action. Make your decisions quickly. You may not make the right decision every single time, but then you can learn from your mistakes and move forward. Indecisiveness kills action and wastes time.

Reason 5 – Fear Of Failure

If fear of failure is the reason you do not want to commit to writing, you are probably in the wrong business. Realistically, every writer faces rejection and editing processes from publishers at some point in their careers. You won’t know what you can achieve until you try, and you won’t try if you just sit there worrying about failing. The only writers who really fail are those who do not write anything!

Reason 6 – Waiting For The Right Moment

This is one of the worst excuses for not writing. If you wait until the right mood or the right moment to write something, you’ll never achieve anything. As creative infopreneurs and writers we need discipline to be successful. Take action by starting to write and you’ll find that you get into the right mood within a few minutes, as your mind focuses on the task.

Don’t let these reasons and excuses keep you from a successful career as a infopreneur and writer.  Take action today!

This post is part of A=Action habit and is the first ‘A’ in the CREATIVE HABITS series.

A = Action

This post is the first article on A=Action, take action on your ideas, in the CREATIVE HABITS series. Today, I’ll be pondering on something that happens to us all at some time.

Procrastination. Dithering.. Avoiding.. Umming and Ahhing… Going around in circles…

It’s time to take action to avoid procrastination!

As infopreneurs we become very good at finding ways of procrastinating, especially when the deadline seems far away and you think you have plenty of time. However, serious infopreneurs will know that taking action is far better than finding ways of convincing yourself that it’s ok to put off the task.

Here are three ways you can encourage yourself to take action and start writing. Avoid the excuses you make to yourself and start writing today.

1 – Change The Deadline

The word deadline comes from the medical world where the heart machine will show a single line when the heart stops, instead of the peaks of heartbeats. When you have a deadline, that is the amount of time you have until the work is no longer valid and becomes useless or ‘dead’.

Journalists, in particular, work to tight deadlines and if they are unable to meet the deadline, someone else’s story will be used to fill the gap in the newspaper.

If you have a long project to write with a long-term deadline, set yourself some smaller goals and mini-deadlines. Take these deadlines as seriously. Set a goal a day or for every week, so that you can continue the writing.

Meeting a deadline, even if it is self-imposed, gives you the encouragement to keep going, and ensures the project is completed on time for the client.

If you set yourself deadlines each day, with tasks you want to achieve by the end of that day, you stop procrastination by putting the pressure on to complete the task that day.

2 – Break the WheelSpin

Whenever you find your mind going around in circles, find ways of stopping the ‘wheelspin’. This is a real time waster and many writers will use this as an excuse to continue procrastination and putting off the writing. Instead of sitting staring at the computer and wondering what to write, take definite action.

You may like to start by typing some key phrases on the page, in the paragraphs spaces you were about to write. This gives you a structure for your writing and helps to break the “oh no, where do I start” syndrome.

If you are stuck on a particular paragraph, and can’t find the exact right words for it, leave it and go on to the next one. You can always come back to the first paragraph later.

In fact, it is often easier to start writing in the middle, and complete the introduction at the end. Start to write, wherever you need to, to take action and stop the mind going around in circles. Often when you come back to the part you were stuck on, after a break and writing something else, you find the words flow again.

3 – Timeline The Tasks

At the start of each day, when you have decided on the deadlines you are going to meet, break up the tasks required to meet the deadlines. Plan your day so that each hour has its own task to be completed. You may like to consider planning specific breaks, including exercise, eating and housework mental breaks to keep the writing fresh. However, plan to give yourself a separate task for most hours.

As you complete each ‘task’ tick it off on the to do list. This gives you a feeling of accomplishment and encourages you to keep going. Giving yourself hourly tasks, such as writing two or three pages, structuring a chapter or brainstorming and researching for the next chapter, book, article, whatever, will help you to keep your focus and stop procrastinating. Give yourself a variety of tasks to do each day, so that boredom does not take over and allow further procrastination.

Basically, this gives you several mini-deadlines each day, and enables you to feel like you are achieving something when you tick off the task for the hour.

Keep a timer near you, and set an alarm for every hour. This is a great motivator and helps to stop procrastination. Even if you procrastinate for the first few minutes of the hour, very soon, the timer will remind you to get back into it and take action.

Don’t let the beast of procrastination take over your writing time. Your time is precious and you don’t want to waste it. Setting deadlines, taking action to break the wheelspin, and giving yourself specific times to complete certain tasks will help you to write more productively.

What do you do to try and avoid or break the procrastination cycle? Let us know what works for you.