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Charlie’s Choice
Weekly Tips to Help You Write,
Publish & Promote Your Work
MANAGING YOUR WRITING SCHEDULE
A number of readers have complained of the difficulty of balancing all of the responsibilities an active author faces, and have asked that I include a column on how to manage your time as a writer.
There are so many facets to our profession that it is natural that one struggles to meet every responsibility on time. Whether it’s a book or an article, the deadline must share space with perhaps a blog that must be posted, a website that needs tweaking, fact researching, market research, promotion, membership on social media and a host of other necessary distractions that keep us away from our computer screens.
Notwithstanding all of this, it is imperative that you keep your eye on the goals, and there are three that are primary for any author:
Completing your book or article
Promoting your book
Branding yourself and your company if you have created one.
Whether you write sporadically for recreational reasons or devote most of your day to churning out copy, think of writing as your primary job, even if you have a full-time position elsewhere.. What I mean is whether you’re an amateur or a professional, it’s important to consider writing as your priincipal occupation whenever you are in front of that computer screen.
Disciplining Yourself
Working out of your home is very different from spending your days at the office. It is much more taxing because of the many distractions you will encounter. Telephones ring for reasons other than business. E-mails arrive, and tempt us to read them at once. Children and spouses often intrude. Indeed, the very normal activities of a household become interruptions to the working writer. Ours can be a lonely life if we don’t plan our schedules carefully to balance family, social activities and work.
When I think of our need for isolation, I always think of this anecdote I relate when I speak about the writer’s life. It is about Judith Krantz. When this accomplished and prolific novelist works, she closes her office door. On it hangs a sign that reads:
“Do not come in. Do not knock. Do not say hello. Do not say I’m leaving. Do not say anything unless the house is on fire.”
Prioritize Your Activities
Face the fact that only a limited amount of hours and minutes exist in any one day. Your task is to fit all you must do into that time frame. To do it efficiently, you should prioritize the demands on your time and effort. If you plan a logical approach in advance, the likelihood is that you will not fall into the trap of trying to race through it all, leaving mistakes, missed deadlines and other bothersome problems in your wake.
The first consideration is trading off some other activity for more time at your computer. In my case, I limit my sleep because every working hour is precious to me and that’s the one way I can add working hours comfortably without stealing time away from family involvements.
Those early hours have become very precious to me. The phone never rings at 5 or 5:30 in the morning. Family members remain tucked in their beds deep in sleep. I find I can work with a fresh mind and without any interruptions. They are my most productive hours.
Now let me point out that I am not an advocate of endless 12-hour days of writing, seven days a week. I find that can be most unproductive. You become tired. Your mind sags, and your copy loses its punch.
The optimum writing period varies among authors. It’s up to you to test and determine what length is best for you. The balance of your working hours can be devoted to the other activities I spoke about earlier.
As you can see, I am a devotee of fairly rigid scheduling. I don’t believe in writer’s block. It can very easily be avoided through proper preparation. Sitting down to write with no advance planning, without taking the time to think through what it is you want to say results in leaving the blank screen empty. Do your preparation properly, and you will never suffer from the inability to turn your thoughts into words. Writer’s block is a great time waster and little more than a crutch for lazy writers..
Saving Precious Time
There are a variety of ways an author can reduce the amount of time wasted unnecessarily. Among the simplest is to maintain a carefully planned filing system so that retrieval of information becomes easy and fast.
If you are freelancing, set up working files for current stories. Don’t discard a file once the piece has been accepted. You may want to approach the subject from a different angle for another article later on. That way much of your research will have been completed for you.
Keep careful records of every piece or query you send out so that you can follow up if a response doesn’t come in a reasonable time. Keep separate files for accounts receivable and accounts payable so you are not scrambling for documentation at tax time. Fiction and nonfiction authors must file all financial matter very carefully. You will need meticulous records of your expenses and income.
If you are authoring a nonfiction book, keep your key research filed by subject so it is available when you need it. Novelists should be certain to keep a detailed profile of main characters so they never deviate from the essence of that character. Records of places and other descriptive material should be maintained. All of these must be available to refresh your memory and maintain exacting continuity. A reader will turn off quickly if a character acts or speaks out of character or if descriptions change midstream in your book.
If you post regularly on blogs of other writers, maintain a list of them with any info that you might need to contact them. That way you don’t have to go searching each time you want to post. If you are involved with several social media, and have difficulty finding time to update or post on all of them, look into online tools like “Ping.fm” and “Pixelpipe.com” on which you can post to multiple media at the same time. There are a number of others available on the Internet.
Lastly, it is important to remember that while a book can take months, even years to complete, it is much wiser to write on a regular basis once the research and/or planning has been completed. When you allow long hiatuses to intervene, you tend to lose the flow of the book. I would much prefer to see you take shorter, but very regular, work periods of say two to three hours daily than spend half or more a day sporadically.
Next week, we’ll take a look at another issue that has come up with regularity in e-mails sent to me: creating a quality cover for your book. We will analyze some of the elements of good book design and talk a bit about resources to design your cover by yourself. See you then.
Keep Writing!
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