“Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e. do not cave in to endless requests to have ‘essential’ and ‘long overdue’ meetings on those days.” ~ J. K. Rowling
I am not the kind of person who sets up writing days for myself. I do try to put blocks of writing time on my calendar, but those are subject to, um, forgetting to do that. On the occasions when I do have a writing day, it’s both wonderful and ineffably spontaneous.
But the appeal is undeniable. I’ve seen lots of advice along the lines of not waiting for “the right mood” because then you might end up waiting around forever, rather than writing the whatever it is you know is inside you somewhere. Once you manage to carve that out of your life — which takes a greater combination of energy and willpower than I have at the moment— hang onto it with tooth and nail. There will always be other priorities to consider, but that’s just life. If your writing time is important to you then carve out time somewhere else for the other stuff.
So far this post is a little “do ask JK days and not as I do.” Oops. On the other hand, I have set this posting schedule and held myself to it. Since doing so, I’ve written more than I have in years! So maybe I do have writing times, albeit more in the form of self-imposed deadlines. This strategy might not work for everyone, but since I never fell into the write-it-the-night-before camp in school I think this is just what works for me. It might not be writing days but I do put up a fight when it comes to getting my posts up as planned.
What’s your writing time strategy, blog-writing or otherwise? Do you have different strategies for different types of writing?
at Milliways with a pen 
I try to keep my schedule as structured as I can, but life, of course, has a way of disrupting my schedule on a daily basis. I’ve had to learn to be very flexible and not get (too) upset when the schedule goes out the window. I only get an hour or two of free time a day to write, and rather than trying to squeeze the blog, novel, journaling, and research/essays into that time block, I’ll only focus on one project at a time. It’s an arsuous process, and I work on a weekly/monthly basis rather than daily. And I’m okay with that!
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That sounds sensible. Too much multi-tasking on different can really scatter things around too much sometimes. 🙂
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Great question. I used to be a night owl (I still am in a lot of ways) and wrote late into the night because I felt more inspired then. Since doing NaNoWrimo though, I’ve learned that morning is actually a pretty optimal time because my mind is fresh and I’m more awake haha 🙂 I used to set word count goals for myself, about 500 words or 1000 words in a day. Now that my writing schedule is all over the place though, on some days I don’t write at all and on others, I’ll sit down and write pages and pages of work. I think after a while, if we haven’t wrote, we miss it and then it all comes pouring out. In regards to my blog, weekly themes really help keep me on track (although I’m not always the best at updating it regularly).
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As a fellow night owl, I feel like we should high five. But I know what you mean about mornings. As long as I have a good hour to wake up and at least one cup of tea, I can get a lot of stuff done — usually more work stuff than writing stuff though, because by the time I’m fully awake it’s usually time to be at work, heh. Thanks for sharing!
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Here’s a virtual high-five 🙂 There’s something very productive about the morning but I know what you mean about it usually being work stuff rather than writing. If I got an early start to the day, I felt like I got much more accomplished at work.
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