Be A Time Efficient Writer
10 Hints for Writers to Improve Their Time Management
If you're struggling to find time to write, here are ten tips on how to make the best use of your time without ignoring your family.
One of the most common problems for writers, especially those who have to hold down a full-time job as well as writing, is how to maximize their time. Quality time is perhaps the scarcest resource that writers have. Different writers have different methods for making the best use of their time, and here are ten ways for a writer to make better use of their time.
It’s worth remembering that most writers don’t live in a vacuum. Most have partners and in many cases families. It’s easy for the writer’s family to feel neglected, particularly if it’s early in a writer’s career, and the family is not seeing the benefit of sales, only an awfully distracted artist in their midst.
Here are ten tips for making the very best use of the limited time available to write in.
1. Write every day. It’s what writers do. But with the need to market and the seductive distractions of the internet and e-mail, it’s easy to forget that basic fact. Even if it’s only for 45 minutes a day – write. The author Charles Coleman Finlay compares lack of practice with being a tightrope walker; “If you don’t practice for a day, only you notice. If you miss writing two consecutive days, your partner notices as well. If you miss three days, it’s your audience that notices.”
So write a certain amount every day.
2. Keep a pad at hand at all times. Many writers wake in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea. The fear of forgetting it will often lead to insomnia. So keep a pad handy, write it down, and then go back to sleep secure in the knowledge that it isn’t lost.
3. Unless you’re deliberately marketing via a chat group or something similar, never respond to an e-mail (except for time-sensitive work, ie for a deadline) within 24 hours. The reply often generates another reply, and so on.
4. If you have a lot of similar correspondence, cut and paste template letters to cover general enquiries like ‘how’s the weather over there?’ or ‘how’s work?’ This may sound cold, but real friends will understand the need for such methods.
5. Better still, rather than writing to one’s friends, it makes sense to use groups to spread the news. And again, unless it’s for short-term marketing plans, set the group mails to ‘daily digest’ rather than individual mails. It cuts down the number of mails that end up in one’s in-box, and also means the correspondent has to specifically post a mail to the group site, which requires a conscious effort, rather than the almost automatic response of simply hitting the ‘reply’ button!
6. Make the family a team. Tell the family and partner of progress on a regular basis. And don’t be scared to tell them when it’s a struggle, but explain why. Partners tend to be dismissive from ignorance, rather than callousness.
7. Negotiate time to write or spend. If your partner is aware that the keyboard will be the centre of attention for a specific period, after which they your undivided attention, it gives them an element of control, and they’re much more likely to be understanding. But honour the deal.
8. If it’s possible to extend their involvement, get the family’s help on an active basis. If booklets need printing, sorting and folding, or envelopes need posting, they’ll probably be happy to help. If the writer’s family is actively involved they are much more likely to be supportive.
9. Writers like Bruce Holland Rogers have even involved their partners as first readers. Your partner may not be an aficionado of your kind of fiction, be it mystery, SF, literay or even non-fiction, but they are readers nonetheless and good at spotting sub-standard writing. Sometimes it may not even be conscious, but people kind instinctively spot the good from the bad.
10. Above all, use every opportunity to write. This article arose from Angela Verdenius suffering a change to her schedule that robbed her of 45 crucial minutes in her day, and some subsequent brainstorming via the WelcometoReadersStation writer’s group. What is one writer’s problem is another’s opportunity, and yet another’s solution.
