Finding Time to Write

AKA Do You Know What You Did This Summer?

Time is the great equalizer, because everyone gets the same amount: 24 hours per day, 60 minutes per hour, 60 seconds per minute.  How you spend your time is one of the key ingredients to your success, because you and you alone choose what to do with yourself.

One of my favorite quotes is by Elizabeth Moon:

“The unpublished have no deadlines.”

This means if you do not have a writing contract, nobody cares if you write or not. You have to care. You have to want to tell that story more than you want to do anything else, because if you are doing something else, you are not writing.

Thinking about your story only counts if it results in words on the page.

Researching your story only counts if it results in words on the page.

Telling someone about your story rarely counts because you’ve just told the story, so you probably aren’t going to put words on the page.

balance

In order to find the time to write, you need to know how you spend your 24 hours in the first place. Just as you (hopefully) keep track of where your money goes, decide now, for just a few days, to keep track of where your time goes. Grab a journal or a notepad or a set of sticky notes and when you do something, write down what it is and what time it is. When you do something else, write down what it is and what time it is. Soon you’ll have a log of where your day went.

And the funny thing is, when you have to write it down, sometimes you don’t want to do it. You are now aware of how much time is going to what activities, be it on Twitter or watching TV. Suddenly, because you are now accountable for that time, maybe you want to spend it doing something else, like writing. You could also be pleasantly surprised to find 15 minutes here or 30 minutes there, which is more than enough time to jot down some character traits or write out a few lines of dialog.

Some people may flee in horror at the thought of keeping track of what they do all day the same way they can’t be stifled with a monthly budget. Your time record doesn’t have to be to the minute, it’s just a tool to help you find the holes, the minutes or hours that you don’t realize could be spent doing what you really want to do … assuming you really want to write.

If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.
- Lee Iacocca

Jul 28, 2009

Tags: organization  |  productivity

Categories: time management