Carving Out Time, and Priorities
August 31, 2024 by Harvey
In today’s Journal
* Carving Out Time for Your Writing
* Time Mapping Exercise
* Priorities Matter Too
* WITD and the September Challenges
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Carving Out Time for Your Writing
To give credit where credit is due, this is a trick I first learned from Dean Wesley Smith. I’m sure he probably learned it from someone else.
Yesterday, I mentioned if you really want to write authetic fiction, you need to build a routine, a habit of writing fiction.
To do that, you have to carve some time out of your day, preferably every day, to write fiction.
The more you practice and the more often you practice, the more quickly you will develop the habit.
Some folks honestly believe they don’t have any time available to write. With very few exceptions (so few that I’ve never met one) I believe everyone does.
There is a way to carve out some time every day (or most days) to write.
If you want to see where your time goes, do the following exercise. I recommend doing it on at least two separate days, a typical weekday and a weekend day, and more if you have certain days you believe are different than others.
This exercise will help you find it. I suspect it will be revealing. It was for me.
Time Mapping Exercise
Each day we are all allotted 24 hours.
Most of us sleep a certain number of those hours. Other “must-do” activities take up other chunks of the day: attending a day job, preparing or eating meals, etc.
You can automatically deduct sleep time, however long that is for you.
If you have a day job, you can also omit the hours you spend at work.
Then, on the left side of a sheet of paper, beginning with when you typically get up and ending when you typically go to bed (or work), list the rest of the time in 15-minute increments. (You can write 250 words in 15 minutes.)
So if you get up at 7 a.m. and go to bed at 11 p.m. and you do not have a day job, your sheet of paper might look like this:
AM
8:00
8:15
8:30
8:45
9:00
9:15
…
PM
10:00
10:15
10:30
10:45
11:00
If you have a day job, track the time in 15-minute increments from the time you get up to the time you leave for work and from the time you get home to the time you go to bed.
On days off, track the whole day.
I know. It seems like a PITA, right? But if you have a copier, you only have to write or type the sheet once, then copy it.
If necessary, you can list the times in two or three or four consecutive columns down the page. You’ll only need a couple of inches of space between the columns for your brief notes.
Carry the paper with you as you go through your day. Write what you’re doing during each 15-minute period.
If you’re making (or eating) breakfast from 8:30 to 9:00 you can connect those two times with a “)” and scribble “breakfast” (or whatever) next to that timeframe.
Do the same thing with other set routines you already have.
If you have a day job, you might also track the time during your lunch hour in 15-minute increments. Maybe you can eat your typical lunch in 15 minutes, or a half-hour, or 45 minutes instead of a full hour.
Or maybe you can skip lunch altogether, or eat a protein bar instead, or whatever. Doing any of those things will leave part of your lunch hour to escape real life for awhile and write fiction.
During your non-working time in the evening, continue to note what you do. If you watch a film or binge a series, you can block out that time. Or maybe you can use that time or part of that time to write instead.
See where this is going? We all have disposable time. Time during which what we choose to do is entirely up to us.
It’s a choice to binge a series for four hours, just as it’s a choice to binge for only two hours and write for two hours. Or skip bingeing and write for four hours.
If you find that your day is absolutely filled with essential, absolutely can’t-set-aside tasks,
can you get up an hour earlier?
can you go to bed an hour later?
Even if you’re retired or do not have a day job (or on days off if you do), you still probably have certain commitments, certain things you have to do.
But you have a great deal more “disposable time” than if you had to report somewhere to work five days a week.
There will still be some time periods you can block out as necessities. But a lot of the hours between the time you get up and the time you go to bed are yours to decide how to fill.
My own day job typically runs 10 to 14 hours per day. Then again, my boss actually encourages me to write fiction while I’m at work. (grin)
Speaking of which, it’s a good idea to track how you spend your time on the computer too. Priorities, remember?
Do you really need to play that computer game? What does it give back to you?
Do you really need to spend all that time on Facebook or whatever other social media?
If you have to rein-in your time on social media, maybe get one of those inexpensive little wind-up timers and set it for ten or fifteen minutes. When it goes off, close social media and go have fun with your characters.
Finally, play the Where Will I Be in a Week (Month, Year) game:
With regard to writing production, where will you be at the end of the day or week or month or year if you spend all your computer time playing games or on social media?
And where will you be if you spend that time having fun telling stories instead?
It really is all up to you.
One more note—
Hey, life happens. And sometimes it interrupts your wrtiting time. When it does, don’t beat yourself up. Tomorrow, put yourself in the chair and write.
I didn’t write at all yesterday, and I wrote only a little two days ago. Today I’ll write my short story for the week, and maybe add more to the novel too.
For a writer, the only valid comparison is what you accomplish today vs. what you accomplished yesterday.
Priorities Matter Too
Almost always, carving out time to write is a matter of priorities. Again, if you work a day job, you probably can’t write while you’re at work.
(But I knew one police officer who, while he was sitting along a highway waiting for his radar to tell him with a tone that a speeder was coming, would break out his laptop and work on his fiction. But I’m sure he was an exception.)
The point is, whether you work a day job or not, ANY time when you don’t HAVE to do something is disposable time, meaning you can choose what to do during that time.
I hope this helps.
WITD and the September Challenges
Tomorrow I’ll be back with some notes on Writing Into the Dark. I hope that will help some of you with the September Challenges.
If you aren’t aware of those and would like to jump in, see this post for information on the rules and rewards.
Talk with you again then.
Of Interest
Free Downloads for Readers and Writers
The Numbers
The Journal………………………………1260
Writing of Blackwell Ops 28: Ariana Ramos
Day 1…… 2583 words. To date…… 2583
Day 2…… 1339 words. To date…… 3922
Fiction for August…………………….….… 47432
Fiction for 2024………………………….… 563264
Fiction since October 1………………… 779482
Nonfiction for August……………………… 27830
Nonfiction for 2024……………………… 274840
2024 consumable words………………… 751265
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 12
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 5
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 94
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 242
Short story collections…………………… 29
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer, but please try this at home. You can do it.
On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies. They will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Please support TNDJ with a paid subscription. You may click the Subscribe or Update button below, or you may click Donate Here and set up a recurring donation of $5 per month OR make a one-time (annual) donation of $60 via PayPal. Thank you!
Very cool stuff!