A great quote from Stephenson’s “Why I am a Bad Correspondent” — why writing is hard work requiring long, uninterrupted spans of time:
Writing novels is hard, and requires vast, unbroken slabs of time. Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken four. If I know that I am going to be interrupted, I can’t concentrate, and if I suspect that …

Using a timer for writing? I’m not sure if it will boost productivity, but at least you can use it to track yourself and measure your progress.
With the introduction of a $10 countdown timer that one can purchase in any housewares department, we can create our own artificial deadlines that create that sense of urgency for us. By setting the timer for 15 minutes to allow us to complete a task, it seems easy to focus and weed out the unimportant. When I use this technique, I get much more …

Hot off the presses from Lifehacker headquarters LA (i.e., just discovered this morning in my dining room-cum-office) comes my favorite new keyboard shortcut, Control-Backspace (Windows)/Option-Delete (Mac).

If you’re like me, you find yourself working on multiple computers, and lugging a USB stick around can be a pain (what if you forget it?). Moreover, what if you lose your ISB stick?
Answer: use Box.net to store your writing documents and have them accessible from any PC or Mac.
This article shows how to connect to Box.net via the Mac Finder, giving you desktop access to a free, mountable 1 Gig online storage account. In a nutshell:
1) Get a box.net account.
2) In the Mac Finder select the GO menu then …

Here is an interesting page-turner technique. James Patterson (www.jamespatterson.com), author of numerous best-selling books, has released the latest installment of the Young Adult series.
In this book (titled School’s Out Forever) there are 142 chapters (yes, 142!). There are only 406 pages. Some chapters are three or five pages; others are only a paragraph or two.
Each scene gets a chapter break. You end up with a lot of white space, but I think this is on purpose. My theory is that by having each scene be a mini-cliff-hanger, and requiring …

Reading Shrunk’s Elements of Style will quickly showcase how concise writing leads to easier reading. This Plain English Campaign link has a list of words to avoid, including:

consequently (so)
ensure (make sure)
forward (send)
in accordance with (under, keeping to)
in excess of (more than)

And remember, 2nd Draft=1st Draft - 10%!
Read full list at Plain English Campaign: How to write in plain English

Full screen text editing seems to be all the rage for NaNoWriMo writers.
In preparation for NaNoWriMo, as well as connected to my recent explorations of emacs and general Terminal goodness, I’ve done some investigating of what options are available for creating a full screen writing environment.
The author reviews the freeware options, then moves on to newer solutions:
So much for the free options. The rest of the candidates are newer writing programs such as MacJournal, CopyWrite, Jer’s Novel Writer, and Ulysses. These are $29.95, $29.99, free (until version 1.x), and ~$120 …

Looking at submission guidelines from a variety of CBA publishers at the Faith, Hope & Love website, it looks like 90,000 words is a good all-around target for a novel length. But you have to write more than 90k words to get 90k words.
I like Steven King’s axiom for 1st draft versus 2nd draft word counts:
2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%
So, to target 90,000 final draft words, write 100,000 words!

A great summary of how every novel should begin:
As far as beginning the novel in general, I think the surest formula (regardless of genre) goes something like this:
1. Grabber first sentence
2. Provocative first paragraph. This can range all the way from high action to quiet narrative, but it should (A) impart pieces of compelling knowledge while (B) giving rise to multiple intriguing questions.
3. First pages of continued high interest in present story (not jumping to a backstory scene), leading to
4. Inciting incident at end of chapter, with final
5. Hook
Full article …

A great resource including printable template:
One of the oldest tools in the arsenal of writers is the modest and unassuming index card. It’s used for jotting notes, sharing phone numbers, creating bibliographies, capturing ideas, making lists, and –heck– even making indices. (Who would have thought?) But one of its primary uses, especially for people structuring stories, is in creating a plot outline. A pen, a table top, and a small stack of cards are all that’s needed to turn a mish-mash of incongruent or half-baked ideas into a plot that’s …