Book Review: The Organised Writer, by Antony Johnston

Until I discovered The Organised Writer, the only organised thing about my writing life was the hours I spent sitting in my office. I’d go in there once I had walked the dog, sit at the computer until noon when I have my lunch (and walk the dog again) then go back to work until I got hungry or the PM programme started on Radio 4 (whichever came first).

Within that general timetable, I’d aim to get at least a thousand words written each day. My total was usually more than that, but sometimes I’d get distracted by doing my accounts, other non-writing work, trying to find a lost reference book, acting as the family taxi service, dental appointments etc., etc., etc.— in other words, I wrote until life got in the way. Unfortunately, life was getting in the way too often.

The Organised Writer encourages approaching work from a different angle. Antony Johnston’s central theme is working with what he calls a Clean Mind. This means only starting work when you’ve scheduled writing time completely free from all distractions and appointments. Get an answering machine, schedule appointments for outside your writing hours, and make notes of things you need to look up on Google as you work, rather than stopping to look them up. Get in the flow, and keep going. DON’T stop writing, and start searching online during your scheduled writing time. Going down that rabbit hole while I’m supposed to be writing has always been one of my biggest time-wasters!

Writing with a clean mind means parking your life outside of writing by adopting a set of principles Johnston identifies using the initial letters F.A.S.T.E.N. Develop a great Filing system (and use it!), buy in Assistance such as an accountant to handle the stuff you can’t, Say ‘no’ to avoid getting overwhelmed, Make the best use of your time with calendars and reminders, Invest in the best Equipment (‘buy cheap, buy twice’ as my old granny used to say), and make Notes as you think of things, rather than getting distracted—but don’t forget to transcribe those notes as soon as possible.

I read The Organised Writer straight through from cover to cover without stopping, as the author suggests, then went back and read it again in more depth. The second time I followed his advice step-by-step.

I got this book at Christmas, so I’ve been using Antony Johnston’s system for a month now. It has improved my productivity no end! I’ve already written two completely new short stories, entered two writing competitions, managed to make quite a few journal entries, and done five thousand words of my Work in Progress.

It goes to show that once you have streamlined your workplace and organised distractions out of your writing life, you can get a lot more done.

Johnston is a fan of Scrivener, like me. That meant I warmed to him straight away. As far as I’m concerned, to know Scrivener is to love it—if you haven’t discovered its delights you can find out more here.

As well as finding the content of this book useful and its ideas easy to implement, I liked the layout. Checklists for the main ideas in each chapter are included at the back of the book, together with templates for the job sheets the author advocates. I have to say I’m not using those at the moment as so far, I’ve been working on one project at a time. As I become even more organised (!) I may try working on multiple projects in tandem. The job sheets would then be ideal. They’d definitely help me keep on top of my workflow.

There’s a website associated with The Organised Writer, where you can download PDF versions of the job sheets.

Have you found a particular book that’s helped you in your writing career?