Posts tagged productivity
Stay-Home Writing Retreat
Stay-Home Writing Retreat
 
 
 

During August 2024, I invited writers from all over the world to join me for a productive, nurturing 5-day writing retreat at home with twice-daily inspiration and a supportive community of other writers.

This 5-day self-paced writing retreat was designed for any kind of writer, including those who aspire to carve out just an hour or two of daily writing time and those who are looking for a full-on immersive experience.

If you missed this event, you may wish to read some of the excellent tips and tricks shared by writers below. And if you’re keen to try it for yourself, you can conduct your own solo writing retreat for free, any time by registering below.

Here’s WriteSPACE Event Manager Amy Lewis’ personal account of the retreat:

……………

Motivated by the uplifting support of fellow writers, this stay-at-home retreat provided the ideal opportunity to focus on those long-neglected writing goals. Helen’s videos each day posed challenges and taught us frameworks for productivity, such as SAFE goals (Simple, Attainable, Forgiving, and Easy!) and the SPACE rubric for pleasurable writing (Socially balanced, Physically engaging, Aesthetically nourishing, Creatively challenging, Emotionally uplifting). Helen encouraged us to set a new SAFE goal each morning and enhance one part of our writing SPACE before reflecting at the end of the day. These frameworks help us to be present in our mind and body when we sit down to write.

I was grateful to read everyone’s reflections, many of which were filled with useful tips and resources. I’ve compiled a selection of lively links for you to browse through below:

Shake it out during a writing break!

Be carried away by the music!

  • Hans Zimmer's ‘Green Card’ movie soundtrack (not too distracting and keeps a good tempo) and the Bridgerton soundtrack (upbeat and motivating) are two good options.

  • For classical music, consider Cosi fan tutte or the Magic Flute (classics!) or Jordi Savall’s baroque chorale music (nice morning music). If you like sound of the mandolin in the afternoon,  try Chris Thile’s acoustic songs.

  • Helen recommends bringing nature into your writing space by listening to birdsong recordings. Here is a beautiful recording featuring New Zealand native birds (At the beginning you can hear the voice of the Tui bird - my personal favourite - which mimics other birdsong, creating a surprisingly melodic cacophony of caws, trills, guttural splutters)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhvCsYFZ0vQ

    A key takeaway for me was the idea that a chapter or writing breakthrough could be associated with a piece of music. When you hear it again, you can remember that powerful writing moment!

Time your writing sessions!

I’ll end this quick summary with one writer’s reflection about beautiful writing:

My aim has always been to craft a beautiful thesis - in fact, when my supervisors asked for a plan it was in bullet point format and started with 'write 100, 000 beautiful words', then 'obsess over commas (a little too much)' - I said I wanted it to be a page-turner, a good read, but they said that can wait until the thesis is turned into a book. My argument is: why wait? Why forego the pleasure of crafting words that are, as Helen describes, 'aesthetically nourishing' to both me and my readers? I’m so glad I signed up for this week!

I look forward to seeing you at the next WriteSPACE Special Event!

Not a member? Join the WriteSPACE with a free 30 day trial, and access our full Library of videos and other writing resources as part of your membership plan.

 
August 2024Helen Swordproductivity, Writing retreats
Writing? It's a Piece of Cake!
Writing? It's a Piece of Cake!
 
 
 

It’s my birthday today, so I’ve baked a cake!

Okay, so it’s a virtual cake, not a real one. But it still looks pretty delicious, doesn’t it? I started with a dark chocolate base spread with white icing, then added a pile of gleaming red cherries, a wreath of blue macarons, and a golden rose in the center.

Birthday Cake is the latest video in my new Sharing Plates collection, a series of on-demand writing studio sessions that I’ve created exclusively for my WriteSPACE membership community — but because it’s my birthday, I’m sharing this Sharing Plate with the world.

The full 65-minute video includes:

  • a playful, generative writing warmup (“Silk Scarf”);

  • three short writing sprints (aka pomodori) timed with a strawberry, a blue macaron, and a champagne bucket, respectively; and

  • a wordcraft workout on the theme of mixed metaphors (“Mixed Drinks”).

To get the most from this sweet treat, I recommend that you set aside enough time to make your way through the full 65-minute sequence in a single sitting. Afterwards, if I’ve got the recipe right, you’ll feel nourished, inspired, and eager for more.

You can savor this Sharing Plate on your own or in the company of other writers. Either way, I hope that your writing session will feel like a piece of cake!

WriteSPACE and WS Studio members can find this video and other Sharing Plates in their Video library.  

Not a member? Join the WriteSPACE with a free 30 day trial, and access our full Library of videos and other writing resources as part of your membership plan.

 
June 2024Helen Swordproductivity, Community
Sharing Plates for Writers
Sharing Plates for Writers
 
 
 

I’m irrationally excited to announce a new set of resources that I’ll be adding to my WriteSPACE membership area over the next few months: Sharing Plates. The first video in the series, Caprese Salad, is now available in the WriteSPACE Library, and in celebration of its launch I’m posting a free version here. Enjoy!

So what’s a Sharing Plate? Well, you’re probably already familiar with the “Pomodoro Technique,” a time management method that originated in the late 1980s. Writer Francesco Cirillo used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer (“pomodoro” in Italian) to set short writing sprints for the members of his writing group, who would write together in silence for 25 minutes, take a 5-minute stretching break, and then repeat the process a few more times.

Cirillo’s simple “shut up and write” method (or, as I prefer to call it, “show up and write”) proved useful for many writers, so the technique spread far and wide, along with its unusual name. I like the method so much that I’ve stocked the WriteSPACE Library with no fewer than 37 different pomodoro timer videos, ranging from 5 to 40 minutes long. Each one offers a different timer (not just tomatoes!) that you can use to time your own writing sprints: a purple penguin, a blue macaron, a silver champagne bucket, and many more. These playful pomodori won’t magically transform you into a more stylish or productive writer, but at least they can help bring some pleasure to your writing process.

For years, WriteSPACE members have been asking me to make some longer timer videos — and now, at last, I’ve done it! Weaving together existing videos from my YouTube channel with newly-filmed material, I’ve created a series of self-contained, on-demand writing studio sessions.

Each themed 1- to 2-hour Sharing Plate video consists of a brief introduction, a creative or reflective writing warm-up, a sequence of timed writing sprints with short stretching breaks in between, and a Wordcraft Workout — that is, a writing or editing exercise designed to develop your craft as a writer.

Ideally, I hope that you’ll consume these Sharing Plates in the company of other writers, either virtually or “in real life” — but of course you’re also welcome to savor them on your own. Just set aside an hour or two of focused writing time, choose a Sharing Plate from the WriteSPACE Library (more are coming soon!) and start writing.

WriteSPACE and WS Studio members can find this video and other Sharing Plates in their Video library.  

Not a member? Join the WriteSPACE with a free 30 day trial, and access our full Library of videos and other writing resources as part of your membership plan.

 
June 2024Helen Swordproductivity, Community
Seven Secrets of Productive Writers
Seven Secrets of Productive Writers
 
 
 

My new Productivity Catalyst kicked off this weekend, and we are going to have a blast!  

It's not to late for you to register for this action-packed 8-week course.

The "seven secrets of productive writers" that I'll be revealing week by week aren't really secrets at all, of course. They're based on extensive scholarly research and my decades of experience working with academic and professional writers. I'll show you how to:

  1. Take Time
    Identify your personal time traps and acquire a toolbox of powerful techniques for spending time, befriending time, and bending time to your will.

  2. Make Space
    Design a nourishing physical and emotional environment where you can write new words, invite new ideas, and delight in new knowledge.

  3. Find Flow
    Discover the varieties of optimal experience as you try out new rhythms, rituals, and routines for finding and maintaining flow.

  4. Cultivate Craft
    Diagnose your weak points and sharpen your style as we focus on the pleasures, frustrations, and challenges of wordcraft.

  5. Cherish Community
    Identify, establish, and/or revive a supportive community of writers committed to nurturing each other’s writing practice.

  6. Spark Joy
    Infuse your writing with pleasure and passion by reframing your negative emotions about the writing process and reclaiming your positive ones.

  7. Bring Balance
    Integrate these principles into your own everyday writing practice through guided experiments, online interactions, and live small-group coaching.

Each week throughout the course, you'll have opportunities to meet with me and your fellow participants in the WriteSPACE Virtual Writing Studio for a live breakout room discussion. Best of all, WriteSPACE members get a 10% discount!

Come join us in the Productivity Catalyst and find out how to transform your writing habits — and habits of mind — forever.

Subscribe here to Helen’s Word on Substack to access the full Substack archive and receive weekly subscriber-only newsletters (USD $5/month or $50/year).

WriteSPACE members enjoy a complimentary subscription to Helen’s Word as part of their membership plan (USD $15/month or $150/year). Not a member? Join the WriteSPACE now and get your first 30 days free.

 
September 2022Helen SwordSeptember 2022, productivity, catalyst, Productivity Catalyst
Monkeys on Your Back
Monkeys on Your Back

Original collage by Helen Sword

 

Years ago, when I stepped into a university leadership role, a wise colleague gave me some advice.

“Every day,” he told me, “people will walk into your office with monkeys on their back, and they'll want to hand their monkeys over to you. Your job is to help those people as much as you can – but make sure they leave your office with those monkeys still firmly on their own backs rather than on yours.”

These days, most of my monkeys are of my own making: writing projects to push along, YouTube videos to script and film, online workshops and Stylish Writing Intensives to run for other over-committed writers (like you?)

The 800 pound gorilla that had been crushing all the other monkeys on my back until recently – a major book manuscript – has wandered off into the jungle now, though it’s bound to come lumbering back from time to time to be stroked and fed.  Meanwhile, the smaller monkeys keep chattering away.  In fact, I suspect that they're breeding back there.  Every time I shuffle one monkey off my back, it seems that two or three more arrive to take its place.

What writing monkeys are clinging to your back, and how can you carry them more gracefully?

The first step is to acknowledge your monkeys, give them nicknames, maybe even dress them up in a comical clothes.  I learned this trick from Mark Bryan and Julia Cameron's wonderful book The Artist's Way at Work, which contains an exercise called “The Forest Environment”:

  • Describe your business environment. What kind of forest is it? A jungle? A maple forest? . . . . Name the dangerous predators in your forest. Give them animal identities. Any bullying grizzly bears? Cunning sidewinders? Wily faxes? Deadly scorpions? Which are you? . . . . Name and describe the beautiful elements of your forest. Any waterfalls, meadows, bushes heavy with berries?

The next step is to teach your monkeys to ride lightly.  Have you ever carried a toddler in a baby backpack? If yes, you’ll know that children feel much lighter when they’re wide awake, sitting up tall and shifting their weight to match yours; only when they start squirming or fall asleep do they throw you off balance.  It's exactly the same with monkeys. You want them to ride lightly on your back, not to distract you with their antics or hang there like a dead weight.

Monkeys need lots of exercise; they’ll whine and wiggle unless you give them a regular chance to romp.  Try freewriting in a notebook about how all those writing tasks are coming along, or talk about them with a friend over coffee.  Monkeys thrive on fresh air.

Monkeys also need plenty of rest – and so do you.  Do you have a secure play area where you can leave your monkeys while you’re exercising, relaxing, sleeping?  You don’t need to carry them on your back all the time – that’s no good for you and no good for your monkeys!

Writing a weekly newsletter for thousands of subscribers sometimes feels like quite a heavy monkey to carry around.  But it helps for me to picture myself as a leaping leopard or a jaunty parrot parading through the jungle with a well-fed, curious monkey on my back rather than a grumpy, screeching one. 

Isn’t the human imagination a wonderful thing? 

Subscribe here to Helen’s Word on Substack to access the full Substack archive and receive weekly subscriber-only newsletters (USD $5/month or $50/year).

WriteSPACE members enjoy a complimentary subscription to Helen’s Word as part of their membership plan (USD $15/month or $150/year). Not a member? Join the WriteSPACE now and get your first 30 days free.

 
October 2021Helen Swordproductivity, workload, Oct 2021
Out the Door
Out the Door
Original collage by Helen Sword

Original collage by Helen Sword

 

We raise them, we nurture them, and then we let them go.  There's nothing harder -- or more exciting! -- than watching our darlings head out into the big wide world to make their own way. 

Maybe the book that you wrote for an academic audience will get picked up and read by a dog trainer, a preacher, or an engineer.  Maybe your daughter will write home to let you know that he is now your son.  Who knows what will happen next? 

This month, I have let several of my darlings go.  Now I've got that familiar pit-in-the-stomach feeling: How will they fare on their own?  What surprises do they have in store for me?  What will I learn from them? 

  • The book: In early September, I pushed a book manuscript out the door -- a major research and creative project that I've been working on for at least four years, now in the hands of anonymous referees. Optimistically titled Writing with Pleasure, my book aspires to surprise and delight. But have I got the tone and content right? Will my readers hand me brickbats or bouquets? Patience, patience. . . .

  • The artwork: I've started heading up my blog posts with my own handmade paper collages, another scary but exciting prospect. I've long resisted using the kinds of stock images that you find on most writing websites -- laptop computers artfully arranged on improbably uncluttered desks, good-looking people with designer glasses writing in poses of deep concentration -- but can I do better? Watch this space. . . .

  • The website: I'm in the midst of a major website renovation, which means that every minor tweak (or error!) immediately goes public. I hope that you'll like the results of my home improvement, which includes streamlined navigation, this new blog creamed from my newsletter posts, and a calendar that you can use to find the dates and times of events in your own time zone.

What darlings do you have lined up, just waiting for you to gently push them out the door?  It's terrifying -- but it's worth it.   

Subscribe here to Helen’s Word on Substack to access the full Substack archive and receive weekly subscriber-only newsletters (USD $5/month or $50/year).

WriteSPACE members enjoy a complimentary subscription to Helen’s Word as part of their membership plan (USD $15/month or $150/year). Not a member? Join the WriteSPACE now and get your first 30 days free.

 
September 2021Helen Swordproductivity, courage, Sep 2021