Track Your Writing

Welcome to Writing Week on Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show. The podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Hey everyone. I'm so excited, excited to share this special week of podcasts with you. I've decided to do something different and every day this week I'm going to be sharing a different segment for my writing week challenge. I just created a brand new seven day nonfiction writing challenge and I am so excited about it. You can find it@writingweek.com that's w e e k.com you can sign up for free. And I have not been this excited about something for a really long time. The reason I created this writing challenge for nonfiction authors is I was noticing a trend in my author audience academy members. Some members would come on and be able to get results and get books published and get things done right away. And then there were others that just seemed stuck or stalled and not making progress. I'm all about helping you get your message to more people and I truly, truly do want to see you succeed. And so I started doing some research. I was researching everything I could get my hands on regarding writing writing habits, habits in general, how to increase your writing. And I decided, I think the best thing to do would be to create this writing challenge. Well, I launched it as a beta with my current author audience academy members and the results have been really astounding. Like some of the people who have just been sitting behind the scenes for months are getting the their books done, they're making progress. And it just excites me so much to see people getting results. So if you haven't yet, I strongly encourage you go Sign up@writingweek.com and check it out. You have nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain. So day one in my writing challenge is about tracking your writing. Now, there's a lot of people that talk about this and I did a lot of research and I created a writing week journal that has the different.

The different categories I think you should track when you're writing. Now, I know some people are hesitant to do this because it takes extra time, extra effort. But I want to let you know you don't have to do this forever. You'll do this for, for a period of time, at least for that first seven days when you're doing the challenge and you're doing it so you can see trends, trends of what time of day you write best, what locations you might write best, any mindset issues that are coming up again and again. And I really, really recommend that you try it, at least for a short period of time. So within my members area for writingweek.com, you'll be able to download the Excel spreadsheet, a PDF that you could print off if you prefer to write with pen and paper. Or I also have the Word document. So you can just open the Word document and just type right in there if that's what you prefer as well. So you can download all of those on day one of the challenge. And when you're writing, I recommend that you write in a certain order. It's easy, especially with nonfiction. It's easy to be outlining and researching and writing and editing all at the same time. But what you're gonna find is you'll get the best results and you'll be able to get the most done and be more productive when you do one thing at a time. Now, that's just basic productivity. Focus on one thing until you finish and then move to the next thing. So as you begin to write on day one, I also recommend going in this order. If you have not outlined your book, your blog post, whatever it is you're writing right now, the first step would be to outline and to have that basic plan in place. Now, I know some of you are just fly by the seat of your pants type people, which a lot of times it's called pansters. But, but I still recommend that even if it's a very, very brief outline, when you have an outline, you're going to be able to overcome writer's block and get so much more done so much more easily. So if you haven't done the outline yet, that would be the first step. The second step is to do the research. Because what happens is if you're writing and then you're trying to research, at the same time, it stalls you. So if you do the research all in one chunk of time, before you start writing, you're going to notice that it's going to help you out with that process. And then now you're ready to write. So that's when you can really have those writing sessions that are productive because you already have an outline, whether it's basic or more advanced, you have done some research. Now you're ready to write. Now, while you're writing, this is a little tip. While you're writing, if something else comes up that you need to research, just flag it. So, so either put a little note in there or write a note on a separate piece of paper to go back to that place later and do the rest of the research. Don't get sidetracked at the moment. Just keep writing. And the other thing is, it's really hard. And I know because I struggle with this too, to try not to edit while you write, it is tough. I know because it's easy just to want to go back and reread and see, see the flow of what you're doing and you might do a little bit. But I highly recommend waiting to edit until after you've done the writing. So get the writing done. Get that information from your brain onto paper. You can do this. I'm so excited for you. And I have in my members area for Writing Week. It's a free seven day nonfiction writing challenge at writingweek.com in that members area. You can download my tracking sheets and and I'd love to interact with you and hear from you. So I have the ability for you to post comments on what you accomplished that day, what your aha moments are. And so I just hope that you will take me up on this free challenge and join me@writingweek.com I'm excited to see what results you get.

I want you to hear from some of the actual participants in Writing Week on some of the results they've gotten. So this is Mel Edwards and she's sharing just a little bit on the results she got. And I thought it was interesting because I think each person is different and for her the timer was the initial obstacle, but she was able to overcome that and have incredible results.

Hi, this is Mel Edwards, author of Depression Smackdown and completer of Shelly Hit's Author Audience Academy. I join Writing Week from Shelley because I've never ever measured how much I write in a session. I found out pretty quickly I'm intimidated by the timer. But I start each session now after a whole week of practice by timing myself for seven minutes. And even though I started a new project with very little research done and I jumped in, I went from doing a few words per minute to triple that in just seven days. So what are you waiting for? Give it a whirl. Try Writing Week. You'll be amazed what you learn. Even if you're afraid of the Timer. Mel Edwards. Missmel Edwards.com have a great day.

I would love for you to join us. Come join us at writingweek.com that's W R I T I N G W E-E-K.com it's a seven day challenge. Very doable. All I recommend is that you give me at least 30 minutes and every day a 15 minute writing session at the minimum, and then a little bit of time to track and to interact with us. So 30 minutes a day for seven days. Give it a try and see what kind of results you get. That's writingweek.com I'll see you on the inside. And thank you for joining me for this special edition of Writing Week Day one, tracking your results.

I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.