Every writer has times-days, weeks, sometimes even months or at worst years-where they fall far short of their writing goals. Every writer gets caught up in something called life once in a while and time passes them by. And I'm sure every writer has at least once looked at a clock and gone 'it's that time already? I have to leave now and I didn't get any writing done'.
Personally, I've spent most of the last month not writing. I've written quite a bit of poetry-almost half a book of poetry, actually-but very few blog posts and even fewer novel chapters. I looked at a calendar just the other day and went 'where did July go?'
So what does a writer do in such times? Renew their commitment to writing, of course. How does one do that? Well you start by looking at your routine. What do you do every day-or at least five days a week-without fail? This includes things like work, school, even your daily walk. After everything that's part of your routine, how much time do you have left in a day? Most people will probably have somewhere between three and seven hours of spare non-sleeping time. Some have less, some have more.
Now that you know how much time you have in a day that's not dedicated to routine things, figure out how much of that time you want to devote to enjoyable activities that aren't writing. Say you want to devote one hour to reading or one hour to video games. Or maybe you just want to make sure you have one hour of completely spare time every day during which you can just relax. Every person is different. I've got a lot of spare time because it's summer, and I'd like to keep it that way. Some people plan out every minute of their summer six months in advance. I think those people are crazy, but who am I to call anybody crazy?
After you've decided what else you want to do in your spare time, take a look at how much time you have left. You might not want to devote all of that time to your writing-if you've got a lot of spare time, spending it all on writing will probably burn you out sooner rather than later-and that's perfectly fine. But you want to make sure you're writing time is enough to get something worthwhile done every day. Everybody works at a different pace, so for some of us fifteen minutes is enough to get something done and for others it takes an hour to write a couple of pages. That's fine too.
You might also want to leave your weekends, or just one day of your weekends, completely open. This doesn't mean that you won't spend any time on your weekend writing, it just means that you don't have to. Though I don't have school or work, lots of my friends do, and parties are always on weekends; I won't be scheduling writing time into my weekends because that's my social time. Of course I'll still spend some time writing on my weekends, but if I don't get anything done, I have nothing to feel bad about.
When scheduling remember that it doesn't have to be a rigid schedule. You can make a commitment to spend at least one of the hours between six o'clock and ten o'clock writing, if that's your spare time and you're bad at schedules. So long as you get the writing done, it doesn't really matter what time of day you're doing it at. Writing is one of those things that can be done at any time of day or night, week or weekend. Some people work better with a rigid schedule and others work better with a minimal commitment.
So what does renewing my commitment to writing mean to me? It means that I've decided to spend two hours writing every day, five days a week, for the month of August. In September I'll cut back to one hour a day, five days a week.
What qualifies as writing during your writing time is a post of its own-and that post should be going up on Monday. In the meantime, I'd love to know what renewing the commitment to writing looks like for you.
This week is packed full of end-of-term work, trying to work on my novel, working handing out flyers for a few bucks, and of course, huge things in the works regarding this blog and my personal website. It's been a hard week, and I haven't gotten half the things on my to do list done. But I am proud of what I've accomplished, and I'm proud of what I'm going to be doing with this blog in the very near future.
Most of you are aware that next month I'm going to be doing a Dear Diary workshop here at the blog. This involves top secret planning, not only for what I'm going to be doing here, but what I'm going to be doing over on the Wriye boards. The lovely Erin, who not only runs Wriye but also Augno and a number of other writerly efforts, agreed to let me do this workshop in January.
I've been pumped ever since-preparing blog entries and forum posts, figuring out exactly what I'm trying to do with this workshop, outlining the workshop, and sending on information. Things have stalled thanks to a lot of homework and a busy life, but I'm really happy with where I am, and I'm confident that this workshop will be useful. I'd like to take this time to announce some other plans...
About three weeks ago I was contacted by someone who wants me to host a giveaway of six books on this blog. I can't begin to explain what an amazing moment it was for me to read his email. Somebody actually wanted to give away their books on my blog? It's still an amazing thought, and it gives me faith that there are people reading, and that I've gotten somebody's attention.
The giveaway of these six books will be happening towards the end of this month. Keep reading to find out more, and to get a chance to win the books.
The other thing that I'd like to mention today is my personal website. I decided, rather than create a website solely for Fictional Worlds, to create a personal website. This will be my author website when I someday get published by the Great Gods of Print Books, and consists of a more personal blog, information about me, information about the blog, and best of links for Fictional Worlds. I'm looking into also creating a forum there for readers who are interested in the workshops, and I'm starting work on a newsletter.
There are a lot of big projects in the works for me right now, so posting might be a bit sparse until it's giveaway time. Bear with me folks. I do love you, but I've got a lot on my plate.
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