So Much to Write, So Little Time: Part I

Posted by admin in Writing Help      3 comments

Sep
13

No one said life was easy. You’ve got bills to pay and mouths to feed, zzz’s to catch and errands to run, places to go and people to meet. Chances are most people you know are busy 99% of the time, but there’s one huge difference between those folks and you: you’re a writer.

When it comes to time management, writers have it tougher than most. We’ve got those same pedestrian responsibilities—do the food shopping, clean the house, pick up the kids from school–but with the added demand of carving out writing time from our over-burdened schedules. So, what’s a busy guy or gal to do?

I’d like to tell you that WriteByNight has discovered a way to slow the rotation of the earth, thereby creating the potential for a 30-hour day. Six blessed hours of uninterrupted writing time, eureka! Unfortunately, we’ve fallen slightly behind schedule in our experimentation with total planetary control. Good news for you, there are much easier methods for making steady progress in your creative pursuits.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be detailing some of those methods right here on our blog. First up, The Block Method:

This tried-and-true path to stacks of pages with your name on them involves choosing a block of time, each and every day, during which you sit and you write. Come fire, flood, famine or—the worst of natural disasters—laziness, you sit and you write. Lock the door. Turn off the ringer. Do whatever you need to do to get the job done.

An hour is fine. Two hours is great. Three hours is fantastic. Four hours, you’re Stephen King. If you only have half-an-hour to spare, or even 15 minutes, so be it; 15 minutes is better than no minutes at all. And if you have no minutes to spare, wake up earlier. Go to bed later. Write on your lunch hour. Dictate your writings into a tape recorder in the car. Use your imagination. You’re a writer after all.