Writing time for Writers

Time to write. Huh?

It’s all very well to be ready, willing and able to sit your writer’s bum on the chair and position your fingers on the keyboard.

With your next chapter in mind and your ideas parading as the best plot ever thought up, first you take time out to check your emails, network on Facebook and palaver all over the internet rather than tap and type and work on your masterpiece.

Even now I’m procrastinating by blogging about lack of time to write instead of working. BUT I must add, today, I’m doing it in my “new” official blogging space and time.

Yes, I’m on a strict TIMEtable. (I’m on a diet too, but that’s a whole other story incorporating similar themes such as lack of discipline, time, ability to stick to the program etc.)

The only way I can think of to organise my writing life and time, and get some actual writing done, is to implement a serious time management strategy. (But TM sounds terminally boring, unwriterly and so far out of the creative sphere, can I bear it?)

YES. I’ve got a lot to accomplish this year, and I know I severely neglected my reading time in the one just gone. Beyond my passion, reading is a necessity, not a luxury for a writer. So how to fit it all in.

I’ve avoided TM. I kept thinking with a bit of self-discipline I could keep on track. But, NO. I don’t know where the minutes (ahem, hours) go when I’m online. It’s easy enough to lose track when internet researching; at least that’s work. Yes, I know networking and social media connections are important business to writers too. But where to draw the line in order to get the actual writing done.

Sometimes, I think I’ll just duck in to Facebook for five minutes, but how am I to know that there’ll be 300+ recent posts waiting? An hour later, I’ll duck out again. (Or I’ll catch up on some great blog posts, but they can take up serious writing time too.)

No more ducking. It’s time to get serious about time. So I’ve mapped my weekdays, and I’m going to stick to the timetable. I can be flexible, in an emergency, or with other writerly calls, but not with online networking. It’s going to have a time and place, and a finite number of minutes devoted per day.

I’ve pasted a diagram of my draft timetable below to show my good intentions. I’ll let you know how I get on. Meanwhile, I’d love you to share your tips for time management or comment on how you go about organising and separating your actual writing time and business of writing calls on your time. How much time do you spend writing/FBooking/social networking/blogging etc? I find other writers’ processes fascinating.

Now all I’ve got to do is master some diet discipline and I might fit less snugly into my new party dress. One thing at a time though…