Discussion Lesson Two of How to Have your Best Year Ever

[Sunny Irene Roth]

Lesson Two ​

Welcome back! In this lesson, you learn a few more tips on how to be a successful writer. Please read through the lesson and print it off if possible. When you have a hard copy of the lesson, you can highlight and make notes in the margins. That’s the best way to proceed through these lessons so that you can get the most out of them.

Tip 4: Organize Your Writing Projects
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Most writers can typically save themselves an hour or two a day by getting organized ahead of time.

Therefore, getting organized is your ticket to being successful. If you are organized, you will have everything at your fingertips before you sit down to write.

You will also know precisely what you will work on before you sit down to write. This will help ensure that you don’t keep fumbling around, wasting time when you sit down to write.

Becoming organized needs to occur on different levels for it to be successful. For starters, your workspace must be organized and not cluttered. In other words, create a separate folder for each of your manuscripts, and make sure that you write notes as to where you leave off and timelines for when you plan to have the manuscripts completed by.

Here are a few concrete ways to get organized.

1. Paste your three main writing goals above your workstation.

2. Plan what you will do the night before.

3. De-clutter your desk before you start writing the next morning, preferably the night before or the Sunday before for Monday.

4. On the weekend, organize your reading material and writing files for the week.

5. Plan next week’s writing projects on Sunday. That way when Monday morning arrives, you will know exactly what you should work on.

By following these steps, you will be a much more organized writer and you won’t be wasting time because you didn’t know what to work on. Being organized before you start to write is the key to time management and success.

Tip 5: Declutter Your Day​

There is so many writers need to do every day. Many things that must be done have little to do with actual writing, such as answering and sending emails, texting, cruising the internet and pitching. These activities have to do with the business side of writing.

To be your best, you must separate the business side from the creative side of writing by decluttering your mind from all the small extraneous tasks so that you can spend more valuable time writing and completing your manuscripts. This is necessary for writers to be successful.

So, here are a few tips to declutter your day:

• Write first thing in the day when you know you will be uninterrupted.
• Set concrete writing goals and times to complete them.
• Write these goals down and tack them up above your writing area.
• Schedule these goals into your planner.
• As you complete each writing goal, make sure you check each of them off. This will give you a feeling of completion.
• Create a designated, pre-established time every week to work on the business side of writing such as sending out queries, pitches, and check email. You may want to devote Friday afternoons to the task AFTER you get your writing done.
• Don’t let the business side of writing bleed into your writing time. If you do, you won’t complete your writing goals in a timely manner and you will be frustrated and loose self-confidence.

By taking these steps, you will be doing nothing but writing during your scheduled time. Once you are finished your writing, you could then do other things such as check websites for submission guideline, order books for research and correspond with editors and agents compartmentalizing your writing tasks. This is another important way to be at your best.

Irene S. Roth