How I Doubled My Productivity in 2020
Making full use of the pandemic emotions to keep your stories coming now and in the future
In 2020, as the pandemic hit the world and changed our lives, I managed to write four books. This felt amazing considering my usual output was one or two books a year. Despite my spiralling mental health, the tears, the constant fear, I was rather pleased with myself by the end of 2020. I thought 2021 would be much of the same and created an optimistic writing schedule based on my 2020 productivity. That was a stupid thing to do.
The media and social media are awash with how novelists are struggling to find the words. Last year this just wasn’t something I could relate to. My head was filled, brimming, with ideas and the stories fell out of me.
Now, however, I get it.
In 2020, I was flying high on pandemic anxiety and now I can barely move through the pandemic fatigue we’re all fighting against.
Fatigue or anxiety shouldn’t stop you being a writer and there’s no way I’m giving up on my new found productivity levels. So, just how can you work with these difficult emotions to produce good stories?
Feeling anxious?
All humans suffer with anxiety. It’s a natural chemical reaction built into our nervous systems to keep us safe. But of course, some of us suffer more than others.
I spent 2020 washing my hands so much my dog now races me to the sink, thinking that every time I go up the stairs, it’s to head into the bathroom. These days, my husband prefaces me opening my mouth with, ‘Yes, I’m about to wash my hands!’.
Along with the hand washing, there have been tears, heart palpitations and the same thoughts whirring round and round in a vicious cycle.
Anxiety is a fizzing in the blood, an inability for the mind to stay still.
While many will tell you to manage your anxiety with deep breathing, meditation and attempts at relaxing (all of which can work wonders), whatever happened to the old advice of escapism?
I honestly believe that the only reason I managed to write four books in 2020 was because I needed to escape. Sitting in front of the TV wasn’t enough, it was too easy for my mind to wander. Plus, I had energy, the anxiety making my fingers twitch as the voices in my head grew louder and louder.
If you’re feeling the same way, I recommend vanishing into your own worlds.
Take that energy and concentrate it somewhere else. On other places, other times, new characters, old characters, new situations. Go to a place where there’s no need for masks and no virus sweeping the earth.
Immerse yourself in your characters’ relationships. Throw new obstacles at them and see how they react. You don’t have to write a novel or even a fully-fledged story, just have fun with it. Have fun with them. Let them take you on an adventure.
And if that’s too difficult right now, then just have a chat with them. Write out a dialogue. Don’t talk about you or yourself or this world, but instead ask them how they are. What’s going on in their world, what’s new with them, and follow them down that rabbit hole.
But what if even that is too much?
When the words won’t come
There are plenty of reasons why writing during a pandemic is hard.
Perhaps you’re too busy home schooling or caring for your family, or sitting still just isn’t an option in your anxious state. Perhaps the ideas just aren’t there or perhaps you’re just too tired of it all.
2021 has seen the rise of pandemic fatigue. Everyone’s tired. The rapid rise of quick-fire conversation has slowed and dulled. It feels like we’re on a go-slow. I don’t know about you, but my eyes are sore every day, getting heavier earlier and earlier.
It doesn’t make for good writing.
If this is the case for you, then allow me to remind you; being a writer is more than just writing. Thinking, daydreaming, talking, sleeping, watching TV, exercising, cleaning, DIY, listening to podcasts…everything is writing.
You can lie on the sofa in front of the TV, immerse yourself in someone else’s story or learn while watching a documentary, and ideas will come to you.
You can read books and pick up on other authors’ voices and sentence structures.
You can put up shelves and paint a room, and your mind will start working on a new idea without any aid from you.
You can listen to podcasts that make you think or laugh and suddenly an idea is brewing.
You can sit. Just sit. Staring at a wall. Lost in your own thoughts. Out of those thoughts will eventually come a nugget of gold.
A few times now, my dreams have handed me a full story idea that I just need to write out.
And I know I’m not the only one who gets in the shower and immediately comes up with a great plot idea or piece of dialogue when there’s no way of writing it down.
Taking those lessons from pandemic writing
These are strange times (anyone else sick of hearing that?) but these times will also pass. If you can’t write now, don’t worry. The words will be spilling out of you soon enough.
If you can write now, then write with everything you’ve got. Make full use of this energy, because anxious energy is completely unsustainable if you wish to stay healthy, so you might as well get everything good out of it while you can.
Listen to what your body needs, on a day to day basis, and trust that the ideas and words are still there, waiting for you.
As we wait for things to return to normal (and the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter), take note of what’s working for you. I might not be able to keep up this frantic energy the pandemic has given me, but I now have a new process and writing schedule worked out that I can bend a little so it’s more manageable.
In the meantime, I’m making lists and lists of ideas, so that when things have calmed down or if I ever struggle with a blank page, my pandemic anxiety mind workings will be there to keep me going, long after this pandemic is over.
Write when you need to, rest when you can, and make copious notes. We’re going to make it through this, readers need your words, and when we’re on the other side, there will be stories to be told.
