on The Writers View 2 (TWV2) e-mail group this week, the question asked by a panel member was about productivity for the writer. How do you establish productivity as a routine? What derails your productivity? How do you get it back.

I was interested, given that I’ve just come through a time of pretty good productivity, but anticipate less over the next couple of weeks. Almost all my writing time was spent on my baseball novel, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. With the 850 words I added last night, it now stands at about 37,000 words, on the way to somewhere around 85,000.

When the good productivity began about three weeks ago (or a little less), I worked on it over a weekend, and got 2,000 words written both on Saturday and again on Sunday. It took me a while to get back to it during the week. I was trying to correct something on the Smashwords edition of Documenting America, and it wasn’t working.  Plus just getting it ready for Smashwords took some doing, a couple of weeks before that. That was “writing time”, even though no words got added to paper.

That Wednesday I added at least 2,000 words to FTSP, maybe more. I came up to the end of the part of the book that was clearly planned out. Now the planning was all in my mind. I’m in the part of the book where “strange incidents” begin happening to the protagonist, Ronny Thompson, as the NY Mafia guy tries to distract him from pitching well, thus hoping the Cubs don’t make the playoffs, which means they obviously wouldn’t win the World Series.

I had thought through some of these strange incidents, but had never planned them. Which one of the five would be first? Which second, etc.? How would I lead up to each? How would I make it clear to the reader that something wasn’t quite right about the way things were happening? Then what about the counter-moves by the Chicago Mafia guy? Would he respond to each strange incident, or were his counter-moves actually in the works before the incidents?

Then what about the sports reporter for the Chicago Tribune? How was I going to work him in in response to the strange incidents? I hadn’t really thought about that at all. He was simply going to receive a packet of material at his desk from an anonymous source, material damaging to the Thompson family, and run it in the paper. That didn’t seem quite right, however.

So on Thursday of last week, rather than try to work on the novel by adding words, I worked on it by developing a plan for the last 58,000 words. I listed the strange incidents yet to come and put them in the logical order. I interspersed them with interactions of Ronny and his girlfriend, Ronny on the diamond, the reporter doing some investigative work, the two Mafia guys and their rogue associates, the girlfriend by herself.

Three important things included in this planning were related to Ronny’s girlfriend. was the scene where the readers come to realize (if they haven’t figured it out from the foreshadowing) that Ronny’s girlfriend is a Mafia plant, and not a very nice girl. I planned a chapter of Ronny and Sarah having a quiet, innocent dinner at his apartment, and a chapter of her coming to realize what her life had become, and how it was once better, setting the stage for her character arc by the end of the book. All that I knew I wanted in the book, but hadn’t actually figured out how it was going to happen. Now I know, and the first two of those three events are written.

To each of the chapters I added a number of words I wanted it to be, approximately, with the whole thing adding up to my planned 85,000. I’m not being dogmatic about these chapter lengths, however. I’m just guessing, based on the items in the chapter, how long they’ll be.

So beginning last Friday, through Monday, I had great productivity. Looking at my written plan, which could be called a loose outline, I began writing, not skipping anything. Just knowing what was coming next helped me to prepare. I’m sure in my non-writing hours I thought through the chapter I would write that night. In four days I added more than 10,000 words, then on two weekend days, with distractions and some health issues, I added another 1,400.

I was going to write about the second part of planning to increase productivity, but I’ve run out of noon hour time, and this post is too long already. I’ll add another post soon.

May the productivity continue.