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Using a Blog to Maximize Writing Productivity by Cindy ChenHi everyone, my name is Cindy and I’m the author of the novel Sounds ofWar. I published the book when I was 17, and I started writing Sounds of War the summer before my senior year for a school project. The project is mandatory for all the seniors in my high school, and I had only two months to complete it. For this project, students may choose to do anything they would like as long as it challenges them--clearly, Sounds was my final product.How was I able to complete and publish a book in a mere two months? There were two main factors:
- Writing was my “full time job” at the time--as a student, I had no other obligations during my summer vacation, so every day, I was able to sit down, focus, and just write.
- I held myself accountable. I keep track of my daily record, took notes on what I did that day (whether it was research, editing, or word count), whether I met my goals, and if i felt discouraged, excited, etc. I even published it online in the form of a blog. It was actually a mandatory component of my school project (every student had to keep a blog to document their progress), but I really liked it. It kept me on track, and it kept me motivated.
I know not every writer can achieve #1, but every writer can achieve #2. For Sounds of War, I had a separate blog other than my main blog, Books and Tea. For that blog alone, I documented what I did, I set goals, and I write down any road blocks, frustrations, and/or successes. I didn’t blog every day, or even every other day, and yes, sometimes I would be productive and not necessarily report it on the blog, but having to blog helped me stay on track and on schedule, for the most part. At the end of the writing and editing process, I retired the blog (I stopped posting to it), but kept it public.During the writing process, this blog was a source of motivation. I felt incredibly motivated every time I looked back at the previous entries. I happened to write down the time spent and the word count every time I blogged, and that kept me going. I would think, “you have already come so far! You can do this!”--and indeed, I would do it.It was also a good way to keep track of your thought process and the writing process in general. After the writing process, I put out a “Behind the Scenes” ebook extra for my readers. The blog posts served as a resource for me and helped me outline this Behind the Scenes book and gave me extra content in the form of formal blog posts on my main blog extra content for my readers. It’s also just a wonderful thing to be able to look back at where you started and where you are now.If you haven’t tried blogging while you write and updating the blog with your writing process while you go, I highly recommend it! Wordpress or Weebly will give you a free and easy platform to do this, and you can have lots of fun doing it too. You will hold yourself accountable by making this blog public, and even if you don’t have a lot of readers on this “side blog”, it can definitely be fuel for your writing endeavors. Not everyone can call writing their full time job (it’s not mine now, either--I’m a full time college student now!), but they *can* maximize their productivity by holding themselves accountable.Good luck! Be sure to check out my blog for more writing tips, and my book, Soundsof War.
Sounds of War
By Cindy Chen
Publisher: Cindy Chen
Release Date: September 19,2014
Genre: YA Historical
Length: 169 Pages
ISBN: 978-1500660031
ASIN: B00OML6M00
Buy Link: Amazon
About the book:
People were
dying. Bodies were lying along the streets. Air raid sirens were about to go
off at any moment. Nobody was shown any mercy. For Anna, life had always been
about music. An aspiring pianist and composer, she studied at the renowned
Leningrad Conservatoire under some of the greatest musicians to ever walk the
face of the Earth. Her studies came to a halt, however, when Nazi troops
surrounded Leningrad in September, 1941, intending to shell and starve the city
into submission. She watched as her oncebeautiful city transformed in front of
her eyes: people became living skeletons, their only food being a mere 125
grams of ration bread a day; buildings were reduced to rubble, pieces of bricks
and broken glass strewn along the streets; cats, dogs, rats, and horses
disappeared as people chose to eat them instead. One by one, the citizens of
Leningrad were losing hope, and Anna was desperately trying to find a reason to
hold on and a way to continue… Sounds of War is a poignant tale about the
strength of human determination and the power of great music.
About the author:
A Taiwan
native, Cindy Chen immigrated to the United States when she was 9 and
lived there ever since. She started writing at age fourteen and started writing
longer works of fiction in 2013 when she first participated in National Novel
Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). At age sixteen, she was awarded second place at the
Georgia PTA Reflections contest in the literature category with her short story
“To Believe,” and at age seventeen, she published her first book titled Sounds
of War as part of her high school senior project. Though currently a student at
Cornell University with the hopes of pursuing a career in the medical field,
she enjoys playing the viola, blogging, and making youtube videos in her spare
time and considers writing one of her greatest passions.
Contact Information
Website: www.books-and-tea.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thecrescendos
Twitter: www.twitter.com/cindykchen
Blog: www.books-and-tea.com
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