What is Prolific, anyway?
Prolific is a derivative of the word ‘Proliferate’.
Proliferate means ‘to increase rapidly in number’.
When something is said to proliferate, it means it is increasing in quantity rapidly. It is commonly used for living cellular organisms, but it can be used in a number of ways.
For now, I will choose to stick to its derivative – ‘Prolific’
The context in which I am going to write about ‘Prolific’, for now, is about Writing.
A prolific writer is one who writes a lot.
Authors like Seth Godin, Stephen King, etc. are called prolific, for they do justice to the essence of the word. They are authors of about 90 books between them. That is a serious number.
While the idea of writing a book is daunting, it is incredibly simple, yet it is not easy.
Let me explain the oxymoronic statement above.
For a usual folk, writing and publishing a book is a daunting task, if not unthinkable. A lot of people want to be an author, yet incredibly few become one. And those who do publish their first book, realize that it wasn’t much of a big deal anyway.
It is about consistency and dedication. Nothing like rocket science about it.
It is very simple, yet it isn’t easy.
It is not easy for a simple fact that writing requires a person to think deeper and wider than usual.
The process of writing can evoke thoughts, ideas, memories, and sometimes emotions that he might have never thought of, normally.
The process of writing a word begins with the generation of a thought.
And the generation of a thought begins with the willingness to go out on an adventure with your thoughts.
That, as trivial as it may seem, is uncomfortable for many.
That is where becoming prolific-with-writing helps.
How to be Prolific?
The very first step is to find your peace time.
This is an important, if not the most important, step to write more.
No two hours of a given day are alike.
One needs to find the hour of the day when his energy and focus are at their peak.
It is at this hour when one has the room to think wide and deep.
Once the peace time has been determined, one needs to sit at his desk with a piece of paper and pen or pencil, everyday, like a ritual.
No mobile phone, no laptop, no computer.
The most primitive and simplest of the tools are often the ones’ truly capable of magic.
This act of discipline is way more powerful than what it may seem capable of.
It is simple to enact, but wonderful with the outcome.
This peace time with a sheet of paper allows you to draw (write) your thoughts.
The ability to transfer thoughts onto the paper is beneficial, multi-folds.
On one front, it allows your right and left parts of the brain to collaborate together and help you create new thoughts and ideas; on the other, it allows you to visualize your thoughts and bring them to life in a vivid way.
This is where writing begins.
Essentially, writing is a nuanced form of communication involving the use of miniature drawings.
When you begin thinking, you begin to move into a state of ‘flow’.
Once you get into the ‘flow’, you just need to put down your thoughts onto the paper.
This is where all the magic lies.
What comes out on paper is essentially an intricate web of recollections, a concoction of thoughts, emotions, ideas, experiences, etc.
You can bring to life anything you can potentially ‘think’ of.
If this is not close to being ‘Green Lantern’, then what is?
But that’s just the beginning!
What needs to follow is a continuous streak of deliberate practice, every day.
It requires a serious commitment to oneself, to follow the plan, and the schedule.
To get to the desk, willing to let go of everything else during the ‘planned’ time; to be able to detach oneself from all the other things for a period of time is not for the faint of heart.
Sometimes, it might feel futile, or pointless.
Sometimes, it would feel wiser to do something else and be more ‘productive’.
Yet you show up to your desk when it is planned, and get down into the flow.
The great thing about this is you only need to focus on being disciplined, and get to the desk on time, the rest just follows, once you get into the zone.
You will never need to push yourself into any thought, it would just happen, and while you’re thinking wider and deeper, you simply need to put them on the paper, as text or drawings.
The Hardest Part
The hardest part is to be willing to get uncomfortable, to show up every day, without fail.
Getting down to write, and then beginning to write is a lot like cycling up a hill, catching breath for a moment and getting a broader perspective of the world, and then cycling back down.
Repeat the process day in, day out, consistently for a few years, and you can be almost certain that you would have a book’s worth of content ready with you to publish.
Being prolific with writing is not a sudden event, it is a continuous process.
It requires one to go through the highs and lows of the process, with no effect on the discipline and enthusiasm.
Needless to say, it is unimaginably rewarding in the end.
That is how you start writing.
That is great for motivation to get ready and begin.
You’re at the desk, ready with the tools to start writing.
But the pen does not meet the paper.
It just refuses to.
In no time, you start wondering about what to write.
Whether what you’re about to write will make any sense.
And even if it manages to, will it be received well by the readers.
What will they say? Etc. etc.
You come out of the stream of thoughts only to realize that 15 minutes have passed by, yet the paper is as blank as it can be.
The pen hasn’t managed to touch base with the paper yet.
How ironic is it that you just had a river of words flowing in your thoughts, yet none of them could come to life on the canvas.
If only you could, for once, let the river of thoughts flow onto the white sheet, would you find yourself with a stack of pages full of mini stories from your daily life.
Let the river flow, you simply have to set its course.
The more it flows, the more it flows.
That is how writing works.
You spend some time doing this and you would astound yourself with how much you can write.
It is not about how large a bank of knowledge or great ideas one has.
It is about asking the right questions.
Ask the right questions.
A question like, “What should I write about?”, when replaced by “What’s in my mind?”, can have a phenomenal effect on one’s ability to write.
“If you’ve survived adolescence, you have enough to write about for the rest of your life.” – Flannery O’Connor.
Prolific writers do not think about what to write about.
They allow themselves the room to think deeper and wider, and then rely on the discipline of writing everything about that, every single day.
Spend a few days writing regularly, and you would see that it isn’t as arduous as it feels, initially.
It is about letting go of the words in your head, without worrying about editing them and making sense out of them.
If you’ve had some thoughts and you can write them, they make sense, at least some, definitely.
Worry not about editing them while you write.
Respect the act of writing, just as you would respect the editing.
Write and write.
Let the thoughts pour.
Do not turn the pages to read again, in parts or in full.
Forward is the way.
Only when you run out of novel thoughts, you stop.
And that is a long way to go.
But once you’ve stopped, do not begin editing.
I am sure you wouldn’t.
Most of the time you wouldn’t be willing to revisit your work at all.
At least for some time.
I know, I’ve been there.
So, now that you’re done writing, what would you do?
Wait, detach and move away.
Do anything that has nothing to do with what you just did.
Take a break (in simple words).
How long?
As long as you’d like to.
You come back to your work, only when you really want to.
Or, maybe, start working on another piece, if you can or if you have to.
Write without Fear, Edit without Mercy
It is commonly advised to get your work edited by somebody other than yourself.
And, I agree to the idea to a large extent.
However, I believe in the importance of a self-edit session before handing over the work to someone for a critical edit (line editing, or copy editing).
This self-edit, after a considerable break, helps you look at your writing from a different perspective.
It allows you to see the areas where your sentences can be rephrased, chopped, or eliminated.
It lets you see where the areas of connections are and those that aren’t.
This reading can help you spot the areas where you went verbose or too abstract.
That is the purpose of editing.
If you have to edit your work, an effective way is to imagine you’re reading somebody else’s piece.
Edit it, ruthlessly.
Rewrite it, if you may; but do not show mercy to any sentence.
Anything that can be removed, should be removed.
The only reason for a sentence to remain in the final piece is if it conveys something that hasn’t already been conveyed by the previous sentences.
Editing is fun, if you do it enough.
Perhaps more than writing itself.
“To write is human, to edit is divine.”
– Stephen King
Once you see the fruits of editing in the finished product, there is no turning back.
After editing, each word holds a key place in a sentence.
The sentences become more powerful, suddenly.
They convey more than they read.
It is a strange feeling I cannot describe.
You’ve to do it, to feel it.
I enjoy editing thoroughly.
Overtime, it becomes a habit.
It will feel intuitive..
Editing may feel weird though.
At least, initially.
A 2000 word write-up can sometimes turn into a 750 words long piece.
At first, I agree it may feel a little awkward to see your work reduced to less than half of its original length.
But, that is where the beauty lies.
The more you edit, the more you would tend to reject or rephrase.
The more you work on removing the non-essentials, the less you have to work on keeping the essentials
Edit once, or edit twice, just remember to do it nice.
A thoroughly edited piece of work is its own reward.
This is because editing is an art.
An analogy I like to use to explain the significance of editing is that of polishing raw diamonds.
If your words are like uncut, raw diamonds amongst the variety of thoughts (coal), editing is like digging up the mine and polishing the raw diamonds into their most awe-striking forms.
Chances are the piece that you’ll end up with, a thorough edit, is less than half the original piece.
But it is 10x better.
That is a fact!
So, you’ve managed to make your way from procrastination to the final ‘publish-worthy’ piece.
Game over, right?
Wrong!
The first mountain you conquer is not the toughest climb, no matter how much it seemed before you began.
What is the hardest part to climb?
Not even the second, the third, or the fourth.
No way.
The hardest part to climb is the first couple of steps on the next, always.
And they begin where the current one ends.
Essentially, it means you’ve to keep moving.
That is a perpetual tussle you’ll have with yourself.
It takes some experience and a bit of time under the sun to realize that your successes are as irrelevant as your failures.
Claps, congratulations come into being for a short while, like insects after the rain.
They vanish soon after.
Everybody is too busy getting their shit together.
Nobody cares, really.
Ofcourse, except your Mother.
She loves you more than you yourself.
Go hug her!
Then get back to work.
There will be days when you just don’t want to do it.
There will be moments when it will seem pointless to keep at it.
There will be times when not doing it will feel like the wise thing to do.
But you MUST do it, for that is the wiser thing to do.
Every day, same time, same place, same thing, like clockwork.
No room for reasons, justifications, logic, wisdom.
Let them not trick you into complacency.
Do not pay heed to that inner voice for they make no sense.
They are different voices of the same devil ‘Resistance’.
When it is time, it’s time.
Show up, be consistent.
Beat the ‘Resistance’.
This is the hardest part.
To be prolific, you must remember that you’re in it for the long term game.
It is incredibly easy to not do what you ought to.
It is always easy to decide to give it a break for a short while.
But it is equally, if not more, important that you choose NOT to do that.
The law of inertia is at play here.
Remember that, always.
When you do not do the thing, you’re most likely to continue with that.
It will become harder to break that inertia of complacency and procrastination.
Contrary, when you continue doing the thing you need to, you’ll find it easier to continue doing it.
After a while, taking consistent regular action will seem easier and more viable than the choice of not doing it and starting over again later.
The law of inertia is real and is inevitable.
Being aware of that, especially at the beginning, will make the journey ‘easier’ for you to continue on.
Regardless of what form of writing you do, if you stay put and continue on the journey, at some point, you’ll see some results pouring in.
Stay put for the long haul, and all of a sudden you’ll see some amazing things happen.
You’ve to know that success in a lot of things, especially writing, follows a parabolic curve.
When you begin, the changes are non-existent.
After some time, you start to see some changes happen, but they are insignificant.
Overtime, all of these changes compound and you reach a point where you see a sudden change happen.
No matter what the metric of success in question, this moment not only feels ‘unreal’, it fails to make any sense.
But it is real, and it happens because the little changes that your efforts caused every day, consistently were adding up.
You could not see them or feel them, but they were up to task.
However, they are visible only when they accumulate up to a good amount.
That is the beauty of things which follow the parabolic growth curve.
Here, the results don’t show up until you’ve shown up consistently for sometime.
That is the lure of being Prolific.
I am on a similar journey, and I’m loving it.
You should too.
Until next time, take care. 🙂