I have a large bookshelf of books on writing by other authors -- rarely by academics who tend to analyze the life out of anything they get their hands on --but mostly because I am interested in other writers insights on the process. This past month, however, the reverse was true. I picked up an ebook on how to go from 2,000 words a day to 10,000. While my own answer to this is simple -- sit down and type -- there was one very useful piece of advice in the book. Track your productivity through the hours of the day to discover which hours you are most productive. So -- in my CDO way -- I put together a spreadsheet, which I have continually tweaked (and to which I intend to add a few more functions) which revealed that I do 41% of my work between the hours of 9pm and 2am, averaging 9% of my daily output during each of those hours. During the other hours of the day, I write between 3.7% and 6.9%, averaging 4.2% per hour for the hours between noon and 9pm. This is interesting information. It tells me when Im most productive. Possibly, its because my mind is most active in those hours. But it could also be thats when there are the least distractions. Whatever the case, I now have 130 days of evidence. Thats enough to be certain. However, while that one piece of advice was worth the cost of the book, the rest of the work was pretentiously shallow, almost to the extent of beeing embarrassingly fannish. The advice within might be useful to a third-grader, but even the most naive wannabe already knows most of this stuff. The self-congratulatory tone of the author didnt help either. (When I did my book on writing, Worlds Of Wonder, I was careful to give credit to all the authors I had learned the most from.) But -- on the other side of the coin -- I found a book that is very academic, called The Elements Of Eloquence which I would wholeheartedly recommend to any author, beginner or master. Its a very academic tome, but written in clearly readable language with enough contemporary references to demonstrate that whoever this fellow is, he gets out enough to know theres a real world out there. I havent even finished the book and already Im enthralled by the authors demonstrations of the many ways to master the English language. This is one of the best books on how to write more effectively that I have ever seen. (I almost didnt want to praise it here because I had the selfish thought that if I kept this stuff secret, Id look like a grandmaster -- but then I realized if I shared it, I would have a lot better books and stories to read from those who took the time to apply these lessons.) Anyway, I heartily recommend The Elements Of Eloquence. The other one, Im not even going to mention by name. amazon/Elements-Eloquence-Secrets-Perfect-Phrase-ebook/dp/B00INIXG4I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416514739&sr=8-1&keywords=the+elements+of+eloquence
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 20:46:35 +0000