Mastery, Chemistry Productivity Community - today Productivity

Productivity is the ratio of Output to Input. In commercial enterprises, the usual productivity measure used is the amount of revenue earned divided by the number of paid hours worked. To use this traditional productivity measure for writers is not meaningful.

So, I have used Productivity to mean anything that has a number attached to it. How much? How many? How often? How soon?

My personal experience, including my experience listening to others who write, is that Productivity can be, simultaneously mind you, the most boring, infuriating, frustrating, soul-killing, elating, prideful, discouraging, ignored, fixated-upon, dismissed-as-irrelevant,or disappointment-inducing factor of the four measures of success. And the Productivity factor, depending on the writer, is either the least discussed, or most talked about aspect of writing, accompanied by either the greatest fanfare or the most modesty.

Please keep in mine, Emily Dickinson would have scored pretty close to zero on many of the Productivity factors listed below.

The Productivity notion, as with Community and the other factors, is for you to select the metrics you want to measure yourself by. And, so you may retain your sanity, ignore the rest at least for the time being.

So, for example, and in no order whatsoever:

• Self-imposed deadlines
• Group, publisher or other external deadlines
• Word count specifications
• Line length specifications
• Number of stories, novels, poems written
• Number of stories, novels, poems submitted
• Number of stories, novels, poems rejected
• Number of stories, novels, poems published - no revenue
• Number of stories, novels, poems published - some revenue; or revenue over / under $X; or $ Advance
• Number of speaking / workshop engagements, offered
• Number of residencies, teaching positions, offered
• Number of requests for coaching, mentoring
• Number of requests for more stories, etc.
• Number of pages produced each day / week
• Number of pages edited / revised each day / week
• Number of hours spent writing / revising each day / week
• Number of words generated each day / week
• Number of submissions per acceptance or dollar earned
• Amount of time ignoring / sacrificing the rest of my life
• Percentage of writing time that is mostly joyful
• Number of forms (poems, light verse, short stories, flash fiction, biography, etc.) tackled
• Year-to-year increase / progress in productivity

So, the writer who produces the final version of a short story in one hour, submits it to one publisher who pays her a million dollars for it, and who receives a tenured professorship from a prestigious university would have an extremely high Productivity score.

Personally, right now for me, I'm pretty happy when colleagues say they like what I have written, offer constructive suggestions for improvement and, sometimes, a magazine or newspaper says "Yes".

That's a higher Productivity standard than I had for myself a year ago. 

Thanks to everyone, you know who you are, who have helped.