The life of a writer can be very complicated and difficult, especially if you are working out of the home. Time and energy are usually at a premium. So, in order to be successful, you have to divide up your time so that you can make most efficient use of your time.
I worked full time for over 35 years and still found time to write despite my fatigue and time restrictions. Regardless, I got a lot of writing done. In fact, I wrote six academic books, 1,000 articles and book reviews and ten e-books.
And while working full time, I always found at least fifteen to twenty hours a week to write. In order to do that, however, I had to find creative ways to write, despite how I felt. Therefore, I always had many different kinds of writing on the go. Therefore, when I was tried and didn’t feel like writing new material, I revised or wrote shorter pieces as you will see in my list below. That gave me the kind of variety that I needed to keep writing every day.
In the following article, I will lay out the different ways that you could set up your writing so that you get a lot of writing done, despite what else is going on in your life.
These are the different kinds of writing that I pursued and still do after 42 years:
Given these areas of writing, I have developed a lot of variety in my writing life.
Also, with all of these types of writing, there is the draft stage, redraft stage, and revision and edit stage. So, when I worked full time, I would divide my writing day as follows:
In the morning, I would do new writing for an hour or two, depending on my commencement time at work.
On my one hour lunch hour, I would eat lunch for 15 minutes, then revise or plan for 30 minutes, and take a brief 15 minute walk.
When I finished work, I would head to the gym for an hour, 3 days a week. Otherwise, I would come home and just take a 30 minute walk around the river. During my walk, I would decide what I would do on a particular evening. If I was tired, I would revise or write a blog post or revise a picture book or short story. If I wasn’t too tired, I wrote for an hour or two.
Then I would come home, shower, rest for 30 minutes, and have dinner (which was usually prepared ahead of time so that all I had to do is to warm it up).
In the evening, I usually got a minimum of an hour to two hours of writing done. It didn’t have to be new writing. But I had to get some type of writing or revision in.
On the weekend, I would create large writing chunks of two to four hours to write, each day. During these times, I would feel rested and I would do a lot of new writing.
My reality is quite a bit different now that I am mostly retired. I still teach online at the university level, and I am a very active instructor with Savvy Authors. However, there is still the possibility for me not to be efficient, if I’m not careful.
I stay productive by:
Try it!
Irene S. Roth
I worked full time for over 35 years and still found time to write despite my fatigue and time restrictions. Regardless, I got a lot of writing done. In fact, I wrote six academic books, 1,000 articles and book reviews and ten e-books.
And while working full time, I always found at least fifteen to twenty hours a week to write. In order to do that, however, I had to find creative ways to write, despite how I felt. Therefore, I always had many different kinds of writing on the go. Therefore, when I was tried and didn’t feel like writing new material, I revised or wrote shorter pieces as you will see in my list below. That gave me the kind of variety that I needed to keep writing every day.
In the following article, I will lay out the different ways that you could set up your writing so that you get a lot of writing done, despite what else is going on in your life.
These are the different kinds of writing that I pursued and still do after 42 years:
- Blogs
- Articles for kids
- Short stories
- E-books
- Picture books
- YA/MG novels
- Romance for adults
- Contractual writing for Philosophy
Given these areas of writing, I have developed a lot of variety in my writing life.
Also, with all of these types of writing, there is the draft stage, redraft stage, and revision and edit stage. So, when I worked full time, I would divide my writing day as follows:
In the morning, I would do new writing for an hour or two, depending on my commencement time at work.
On my one hour lunch hour, I would eat lunch for 15 minutes, then revise or plan for 30 minutes, and take a brief 15 minute walk.
When I finished work, I would head to the gym for an hour, 3 days a week. Otherwise, I would come home and just take a 30 minute walk around the river. During my walk, I would decide what I would do on a particular evening. If I was tired, I would revise or write a blog post or revise a picture book or short story. If I wasn’t too tired, I wrote for an hour or two.
Then I would come home, shower, rest for 30 minutes, and have dinner (which was usually prepared ahead of time so that all I had to do is to warm it up).
In the evening, I usually got a minimum of an hour to two hours of writing done. It didn’t have to be new writing. But I had to get some type of writing or revision in.
On the weekend, I would create large writing chunks of two to four hours to write, each day. During these times, I would feel rested and I would do a lot of new writing.
My reality is quite a bit different now that I am mostly retired. I still teach online at the university level, and I am a very active instructor with Savvy Authors. However, there is still the possibility for me not to be efficient, if I’m not careful.
I stay productive by:
- Having routine and planned times to write.
- Schedule my writing time ahead of time, on the weekend.
- Being very strict with my writing time. It is basically non-negotiable unless there is an emergency.
- Showing up to write, regardless of how I feel. I still am able to do some writing, instead of none if I push past my immediate obstacles.
- Making sure that my family respects my writing time. It took a while for my husband to respect this time. But I was consistent, so he didn’t have much of a choice. He took up a few hobbies himself after a while so that when I was writing he was doing what he loved too. So, it all worked out for the best.
Try it!
Irene S. Roth
Upvote
0
