I’ve been thinking a lot about the writing I accomplished in the past few semesters. In some ways, I worry that I’ve become a lot more disorganized and a lot less productive than I was a year ago.
Back in winter ’08, I took a couple of really difficult classes, got up early each morning to work in the BYU Bookstore stockroom, wrote a handful of very difficult research papers…and still managed to write about 120,000 words. Oh, and I wrote on this blog almost daily. I finished my first novel, started my second, read a dozen other novels, wrote reviews of them all…
I accomplished quite a lot.
In fall ’08, however, my workload was much lighter, my classes were ridiculously easy, I didn’t have to get up early to work…and yet I only wrote about 70,000 words, didn’t hardly write for this blog, only read a couple of books, etc etc. Much less productive.
Though, I guess you could say that I made up in other areas. I started working for the FHSS Writing Lab, and that took a lot of my time and mental energy. Also, I think the quality of my writing improved quite a bit, and I experimented a lot with things that I hadn’t tried previously. Right now, I feel that Genesis Earth, my second novel, is a much better work than The Phoenix of Nova Terra.
So maybe all of this “oh my goodness where did my productivity go” is just me worrying for no reason. It’s hard not to worry about it, though.
I know for certain that I could be much more productive with my time. I come home tired, with less than an hour before dinner, and I usually squander the time on the internet or with video game emulators. I tend to put off homework, and only do the stuff that will get me in trouble if I don’t do it (though some would say that that’s a life skill…hmmm…). On any given day, the last two hours before I go to bed is filled purely with time wasting activity. I could use an extra two hours of sleep…
Meh. I guess it’s always a struggle. A year from now, I’ll probably be saying “I can’t believe how productive I was back in winter ’09!” That, and “holy cow, what am I going to do after I graduate??”
A thought: you could be writing less since you also have a better idea on how to construct better sentences. In the beginning, you may have wrote whatever came to mind with no care on how nice it sounded. But now your inner critique is smarter and it takes more thought to write than before.
So, this may or may not conclude that though you’re writing less, you may also be writing better quality which means less editing and less time wasted. Thus you’re doing good! 😉
That is an interesting possibility. Thank you.
Ya welcome 🙂