Any thoughts on how to use GTD to streamline writing process.

[Oogiem]

To go completely off-topic, Heinlein didn't need to rewrite, but every other author I've ever met or read about did.

Ah Grasshopper, seek to follow the Master ;-)

Seriously, I think it's more of a succinct way to say stop when it's good enough, and only make changes that make sense. Avoid the tweak forever tendency.

I will rewrite forever given a chance. Which is probably why I've never managed to finish a NANOWRIMO yet. I get stuck in re-writing and give up at about 20K words. Maybe this year I'll make it.

 

[kewms]

To go completely off-topic, I must respectfully disagree with the great master on #3. Heinlein didn't need to rewrite, but every other author I've ever met or read about did.

But hey, every writer writes differently.

IMO, hefty chunks of Heinlein could have used a bit more revision.

#3 is probably the most controversial of his recommendations among writers. It makes sense if you see it as advising against the endless second-guessing cycles that people get into. It's idiotic if seen as a claim that first drafts are immaculate and shall not be touched.

Katherine

 

[Brent]

And I completely agree with both of you, Oogie and Katherine. Perhaps the advice could itself use some rewriting?

3. You must refrain from endless rewriting.

Which is one thing I've been rediscoveirng about GTD, incidentally: Its constant, gentle reminders that I have other things to work on. Life keeps moving.

 

[DinaS]

Heinlein's rules are no doubt practical--if your desire is to have Heinlein's career, write Heinlein's kind of books. That's never been a writing goal of mine. For contrarian purposes here's another take on writing rules; I find them more appealing to my sense of humor.

http://www.sentex.net/~pql/advice2.html

Neither set of rules helps out the original poster since they're aimed at writers of fiction. For writing in the real world, I'd recommend the first edition of Donald Murray's Write to Learn. Murray was writing coach at the Boston Globe before he taught composition at UNH. The first edition, especially, has invaluable advice for every kind of everyday writing, from first idea to finished product.

And I'll second (third? fourth?) the suggestion of developing and using templates to speed up your process.

Dina

 

[SpoonFed]

I just wanted to add that Heinlein may have been referring to the publishing process rather than the drafting process. I'm an editor myself, and the one thing that authors really deserve to be shot for is changing their submitted text at the same time as I'm editing their submitted text. This results in two versions, and it's impossible to resolve conflicts and amalgamate changes without a truly enormous investment of time.

Depending on how strict the publishing house is, a portion of an author's advance or royalties may be clawed back to pay for this extra work. Alternatively, the author's revised text is simply thrown out, so they've only wasted their own time.

Also, at the time when Heinlein was writing, considerable editorial input was much more common for fiction. Now, publishers and editors take a comparatively 'hands off' approach, focusing more on, for example, obvious logical errors for a murder mystery and grammatical mistakes. Phrasing and structuring is largely left to the author. Heinlein could rely on a great deal of input from an editor - what's the point of changing something if an editor will ask that it be changed again?

As for how this relates to the OP: I think that, although everyone does write differently, the best hope that you have for limiting your writing time would be to write your first draft with minimal revision and interuption. It is hard, but personally I think it relates to GTD in that you need a method to keep track of any issues and get them your mind. It won't work if you're afraid that you'll forget something when you go back over the report.

One trick that I often use is to type "tk" next to a fact that I need to check or a phrase I want to rewrite. You can use the 'find' function in Word to find all instances of "tk" in a document - it's not used in any English word, so you'll be taken to all the checking/revising areas. I also find the comments feature really useful to note down anything that requires more than a simple reminder. Some people find keeping a paper notebook is more helpful to keep freeform notes.

The only reason this might save you time in the long run (as I agree with others, any time benefit would likely be pretty marginal) is that you can more easily justify your time to your superiors when it's clearly broken into sections. You can show them drafts and let them see explicitly how much work is involved. If you wanted, you would be able to create a case for outsourcing the revision process to a freelance editor or another staff member.