5. Systems -- a group of interrelated elements. What is your backup plan for operating without electricity? What system backs you up when your bridge line collapses in middle of a class? What system do you use if your hard drive fails or heaven’s forbid there’s a fire? What systems require backup plans, what can slide, and for how long? How do you communicate your backup plans to others?

Fieldwork: Make a list of your systems and then create some contingency plans.

6. Support. Do you have a support team? Who do you call to pass on a project that you prefer not to do or you are too busy to handle? What about when your editor or editors are on vacation or busy themselves with other projects? Do your editors understand your topics? Example: If you are a coach, does your editor understand coaching? If an engineer or accountant, do they understand lingo? Do they need to? Do you have a hardware technician or two available? Software specialists? Can they come on short notice?

Fieldwork: Make a list of support personnel and add names to each of those areas.

7. What are your power writing hours? They change frequently. What works on Mondays may not on Thursday because you are sleep deprived by this time every week.

Fieldwork: Track your power hour patterns for a few weeks. Also record what affects any changes, like a TV-show you stayed up late to watch. Heavy meals late at night. Look for patterns and then make new choices that create big changes in your writing production.

8. Do whatever it takes to stay unconfused. Too many thoughts flying around in old noggin? Try this system that I adore when this occurs.

Fieldwork: Create a make-shift white board if you don't have one. Use side of a bookcase, picture, or semi- glass wall. Using Post-It notes, write one idea per note, and paste them up. Stand back and take a large picture view. What is appearing? Move them around according to your needs. What do you see? Nothing, give it some space and return and take another look. Keep moving, adding or deleting until patterns and pictures appear.

9. Exit plan. What is your exit plan for writing or project? Do you plan to get out if something occurs? What is your measurement when you no longer want to be a freelance writer, what to move on to something else, or even just use writing in a different manner? If you are writing an ebook, what happens if it isn't making any money? When do you say, that’s enough effort on this, write it up to experience, learn from it, and begin spending your energy on something else.

Fieldwork: Never take any new project one, until you know what your exit plan is for it. Practice writing them even if they are a sentence or two. This shifts your thinking that stuff is forever because nothing is.

10. Environments do affect your writing. It might not matter if it’s well-organized. Do you have different areas or places that provide different energy for different types of writing? Do you prefer to sit in a garden to write a garden article? Then again, you may prefer to sit in your car. Can you sit in a bookstore to write one way? In library, another? The kids playing loudly for another? Totally quiet for yet another?

Fieldwork: Know what environment fuels what type of writing for you. Make a list, then plan your writing around those environments. Notice as your topics change so will environments need to change.

Reviving up your writing productivity begins with you -- good communication internally and externally. My friends tell me that they can recognize gleam in my eye when something is taking form so they allow me space without interruption to take record my thoughts. Is this what you need? If productivity needs revving. Think, what it is and ask for it.

- Sometimes when an idea pops into my head, I can visualize final article. I want to get it on paper before vision goes away, so I drop what I'm doing and write article immediately. This is when writing comes extremely easy. I call this "flow".

Divide large projects into parts and write one part at a time. Don't publish first part of article until you have completed all parts, or at least several of parts. When working on later parts of a multi-part article, you may find it necessary to make some changes to earlier parts.

Your first draft doesn't have to be comprehensive. Just get main ideas down. You can go back and flesh it out later.

Your first draft doesn't have to have have correct spelling and grammar. Just get words on paper (or on disk). You can go back and correct spelling and grammar later. The first draft may not be perfect, but having an imperfect first draft is a whole lot better than having a perfect nothing.

Go back later and revise your first draft. Make sure it contains all information and ideas you wanted to put in article. But keep in mind that almost any topic is infinite. You have to limit scope of your article based upon purpose of article and practicality of doing research required for a more comprehensive article.

I feel it's very important to let someone else read your article. You may have written something in a confusing way or a way that requires reader to have some knowledge or experience they can't be expected to have.

- If your article is for an audience that is expected to already have some understanding of subject, limit explanations of basics. You have to limit explanations at some point or article will be too long and too boring to your target audience.

Go back and correct spelling and grammar but don't try for perfection. I see spelling and grammar errors in magazines, newspapers, and on TV all time. If all writers waited until spelling and grammar was perfect before releasing their work, we wouldn't have anything to read.

I feel it's important to set your article aside until next day and then read it again. But don't take editing to an extreme. No matter how many times you re-read your article, you can always find something to change. Don't try for perfection. Your goal is to create an article that communicates information and ideas that you intended. Recognize when article is good enough and meets requirements.

If you are not an expert writer, keep learning by studying a page or two each day of a grammar book such as Painless Grammar by Rebecca Elliot

With your idea notebook, writer's attitude and ability to recognize when an article is good enough, you have tools to be a productive writer. Have You caught writing bug?

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