When Agile practices started making their way into my job, I didn’t resist. I actually leaned in. I volunteered with some other folks from the Tech PMO back in 2016 to get the early training for Agile Methodology. The moment I began learning about sprints, velocity, and backlogs, I saw potential. Agile was structured without being rigid. It encouraged focus but allowed flexibility. It created a framework where work moved forward in a steady, predictable rhythm instead of through frantic bursts followed by long stalls. That was the kind of system I wanted to be part of.
At first, I saw it as a way to manage projects more efficiently. Break the work down. Commit to a sprint. Measure what we accomplish. Adjust. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
But the more I worked with Agile in my professional life, the more I realized it was reshaping how I thought about productivity in general. And eventually, it seeped into the way I approached my writing.
For years, my writing output was inconsistent at best. I’d get hit with a wave of inspiration, write thousands of words in a weekend, then fall into weeks, sometimes months of silence. I found myself writing with the seasons. I would jokingly tell folks that starting in the Fall and into Winter, my creativity would explode, but then I would dry up during the Spring and Summer. I told myself that creativity couldn’t be forced, that I had to wait for it to hit, but in reality, I was letting my habits control me instead of the other way around. Agile gave me a different lens. What if I stopped treating writing as something that happened when inspiration struck, and instead treated it like a project with measurable goals, achievable increments, and a steady flow of progress?
Velocity was where I started. In Agile, velocity measures how much work a team completes in a sprint. It’s not a perfect predictor, but it’s a powerful tool for forecasting and improvement. For my writing, velocity became a way to track my own creative capacity. Back in 2019, I started small. Taking the advice of Maine's own Stephen King I aimed for 200 words per day. That number was easy to hit, and that was the point. I wanted the goal to be attainable, not overwhelming. I logged my word count every night, the same way I would track a team’s deliverables at work.
The numbers told a story. Over weeks and months and years, my velocity grew. 500 words a night, then 1000. Eventually, there were nights where I’d write 2000 words without even noticing. There are nights now that I'm banging out 5000 words and I'm finding that I'm completing several short stories per week. It's not about chasing the biggest number every night. It's been about building a trend line that kept moving upward. And on the nights when the words came slowly, I had the data to remind me that one slow day didn’t erase weeks of steady progress.
Sprints came next. In Agile, a sprint is a fixed block of time where the focus is on delivering something tangible. As an author in the modern age, I had participated in writing sprints with fellow authors, but I hadn't thought of it in the same light as that of a Sprint from an Agile lens. I began to treat my writing time as an Agile Sprint. Every night, I have time blocked out as dedicated window that is (mostly) non-negotiable. Our family sits together every night before bed. There is usually something playing on the TV that I'll pay attention to while I write, especially if it is a comedy special. But the key is that the whole time, I have my hands on the keyboard putting out words. At first, these writing sprints were short with 20 minutes here, half an hour there, but I committed to them fully. Over time, the sprints lengthened and the output increased, but the real magic was in the consistency. The habit became ingrained, and showing up for my writing became as natural as showing up for a meeting at work.
Then there is my backlog. This is one of my favorite Agile concepts. At work, it’s the prioritized list of everything the team might work on in the future, a single source of truth a project team can pull from when planning the next sprint. For my writing, the backlog became an idea bank. My beaten and scuffed notebook is full of half-finished scenes, stray lines of dialogue, random character sketches, concepts scribbled on random pages... And when I hit a block on my current project, that backlog saved me.
I heard someone call it “productive procrastination” and the name stuck with me. Instead of staring at a blinking cursor and getting frustrated, I’d pick something from the backlog and to work on. Maybe I’d draft a short story based on a single sentence I’d written months ago, or expand a scene that hadn’t yet found its home. It kept my momentum alive and my velocity steady, even when my main project and characters weren't cooperating.
The beauty of Agile is that it doesn’t demand perfection. It demands movement. You learn to break work into pieces you can actually complete, to measure your progress, and to keep a steady rhythm going. Bringing it into my writing life taught me that creativity thrives when given structure, and that inspiration shows up more often when you give it a schedule.
I used to think my writing suffered because I didn’t have enough time. Now I know it wasn’t time I lacked. It was a system. Agile gave me that system, and whether I’m managing things at work or drafting a new story, the principles are the same. Set a clear goal, commit to the sprint, track your velocity, and always keep something in the backlog.
Whether you’re managing a product launch or drafting a novel, Agile’s core principles apply: set a clear goal, commit to the sprint, track your velocity, and always keep a backlog ready. The progress will follow.
Since adopting this approach, I finished all three of my Sove books by 2021 and completed all four Whispers in Chaos books this year. It's proof that the system works. And works well.
If you're interested in my books, the Sove trilogy is available for pre-order now. Or you can check out my other stuff on any online retailer.
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