How to Organize Your Time as a Writer

Prolific writers all have one thing in common. They have more trouble pulling themselves away from their writing than they do getting started each day.

When you're just about to kill your heroine or have finally hit on the lead of a non-fiction piece you're pretty sure you can sell, it's awfully hard to remove your hand from that mouse in order to make it to a routine dental cleaning.

But a writer's life is full of things like seeing the dentist. There are oil changes for the car, school conferences, trips to the post office and monthly bills to be paid. For many writers, finding the right schedule is a lot more troublesome than coming up with article or book ideas.

The mix of time that feels right allows for sufficient time to write and an adequate number of hours for sleep, a job outside the home and other responsibilities. It makes it possible to feel your writing is a priority in life even when occasional emergencies occur.

Here are a few tips to make this happen:

1. Determine how much time you intend to write. What are your writing goals? Do you want to put in a certain number of hours a week? If you have in mind a specific number of articles or sales, you need to come up with an estimate of how many hours of writing time this will take in a typical week.

2. Assess when you're most productive. If you have a job outside the home with set hours, you'll need to determine when you're the most productive either before or after work. If you're retired, unemployed at the moment or a homemaker, you can look at your entire day to find your peak time. For most people, it's around a two-hour block. Let's say you're at your best from 1 to 3 p.m. If you decide you need an hour an a half to write each day but wait until 3 p.m. to start, you'll soon realize you're not doing your best work.

3. Be consistent. Most writers have several times a day during which they find it possible to work. This means in case of an emergency that clobbers their peak writing time, they can still meet a deadline by doing the work during another segment of their day. However, over time, the schedule will go more smoothly and you will be more productive if you establish your most productive time and use it on a consistent basis.

4. Assign your writing a priority. All too often, writers take care of all their daily responsibilities, look at the clock to find it's 11 p.m. and realize it's too late to start writing since they have to get up at 6 a.m. the next day for work. If you schedule enough time for responsibilities and actually use the block of time you've set aside for writing, both will get done.

5. Make it visual. You need to make a schedule that will work for you on a weekly basis. If you use software like Excel, you can make each entry within a type of activity the same. For example, meals are green, writing time is blue and cleaning and household chores show up as yellow. Make sure to leave at least half an hour free each day to deal with unplanned events. This visual schedule serves two purposes. First, it familiarizes you with the pattern of how you intend to spend your time. Secondly, you'll be less tempted to put writing in last place on Wednesday's schedule if you see it scheduled for 6 to 7:30 PM.

6. Let voicemail do its job. Tell your friends and acquaintances when you'll be unavailable to chat and be sure to mention it's because you'll be writing. Then let voicemail take over. Some writers go so far as to give out their cell phone numbers only to family members, the kids' schools, an outside employer and any family physicians. That way, if it rings, they know it's either an emergency or something that really needs their immediate attention.

7. Be willing to edit. You already have editing and proofreading skills from revising what you write. Use them on your schedule. A schedule is only good as long as it works for you. Revise it as necessary but not more than once a month. Even seemingly small influences such as a short illness or a medication change can affect your body rhythm and how you need to spend your time.

8. Defer to emergencies. There are times when your writing most certainly will be interrupted. Cats get out. The school nurse calls. You crack a tooth. Just as you would take time off a job outside the home to deal with each of them, you should accommodate them in your writing schedule. Then get back on schedule the next day.

Once you have determined a consistent time to write, you'll want to move on to the finer points of scheduling. This could involve cleaning up the space you devote to writing so that you can locate things more easily or even moving that work area to another part of your home, assuming you are writing at home. Writers who are scheduling pros are even very adept at assigning specific days of the week or portions of their writing hours to research, proofreading and the bookkeeping needed for filing income taxes.

It only takes a little bit of schedule organization to significantly increase a writer's productivity. So go on, get started today!