Finding the Time to Write

Okay, so my word count is suffering significantly ever since I started selling eight hours of my weekdays to the man again. What to do? What to do? I settled on lamenting my lack of time while scrolling through Instagram and as luck (or fate, or the universe) would have it, I found some answers.

Look and you shall find!

Thanks to the crew at Pro Writing Aid (that I am in no way affiliated with BTW) I've got a bunch of hot tips that I plan to implement from next week. Here's the original article for your reference and their credit.

Tip 1 - Word count is no longer my KPI. Writing time is the new Word count.

I've been putting myself under pressure due to the thousands of words I don't have on the page. All this pressure is accomplishing, is making me less and less motivated to write, because the gap between my forecasted word count and actual word count just gets larger by the day.

I actually posted on Insta the other day about how I wish I'd recorded from the start, the time I have spent developing my manuscript. I'd like to know total time for my own masochistic curiosity. Well, I can't go back and start the timer then, but I can start it now, so that's another thing to sort, figure out my digital solution for tracking actual writing time. I want something simple. Like an app that has two big buttons; one that says 'Time On' and another that days 'Time off'. And also in the background somewhere it counts the cumulative time spent. I wonder if that exists. I'll go look after I publish this blog and will let you know what I find in the comments.

The New Goal - Daily Writing Time of 30mins. I'll track this on my smartphone's 'Habits' app.

Tip 2 - Write in sprints. Set timeboxed writing sessions for yourself.

Ever since we got back from Fiji I've been all over the place with my manuscript. I sit down and end up editing something I wrote three chapters ago. Or I end up lost in the vortex that is me trying to get my head around social media for that mythical future I'm conjuring where I'll be marketing and promoting once my manuscript matures into a real live book. What the actual fuck am I doing? Gawd! So for next week I will experiment with forcing myself to write, not edit, not read, not blimmin social media-ing. For the whole 30 minute sprint I will write.

Tip 3 - Focus on writing, not editing, not researching, not plotting! Within this sprint I'm gonna need to set some guardrails (yes, yes, I know my agile - I live agile methodologies in my paid-working life). Guardrails will be required because I can't seem to stop myself from re-wording and fixing grammar mistakes when I sit down to write. So attempting to focus and just write should be super-interesting, and probably entertaining to watch, if I could watch myself, fight myself to stop editing and keep writing. But! Something's gotta change if I'm gonna get this manuscript finished this year, so that's what's changing!

Tip 4 - Get your writing organised. After completion of each chapter jot down a short summary. This helps you quickly, pick back up and start writing from where you finished your last writing session.

This is probably one of the best tips of them all, well, really I think they're all solid tips. This one just helps me and my situation out more-so, because it builds on my writing system, it actually plugs a pretty big gap I hadn't even realised I had!

You see, I have a beat sheet set up in Miro (see image to the left).

I'm proud to say it's my very own custom developed template, which I plan to refine over time as I develop my writing system. Who knows, maybe one day someone will find it valuable - I can only dream eh? Suffice to say, I live by the motto we're not here to fuck spiders. And hopefully these images illustrate how serious I am about producing a manuscript worthy of publishing. If not, that's my intention anyway.

So, I have my Beat sheet and Plot Overview (see image below). Which covers my main romance plot and also a (not yet to be revealed but super relevant these days) sub-plot and how they intertwine - snazzy huh!

I'm mighty proud of developing these writing tools, and I find, when I have the time (ideally 8 hours of luxurious length surrounded by the azure blue waters of the South Pacific), they set me free to just write endlessly. To just write, really write. Why? Because I know where the story is going. I know what I need to write. I just need to put the words down on the page.

But! I do not currently capture what I write. And I am positive that there is deviation between my beat sheet and plot overview and the words I put on the page.

I mean of course there is! Writing is art form! Writing is creation and driven by creativity and it cannot and should not be stifled by beat sheets and plot overviews that come before it. They are merely guardrails, not a boundary line that cannot be coloured over.

So, as I was saying I have a gap in my process.

I do not currently jot down a summary of each chapter as I commit them to paper. So that's what I'll be doing from now on. The gap I didn't know I had will be filled, and I'll also have a handy dandy outline to offer up to developmental editors when I finally get to that stage of this journey.

So that rounds up my latest lot of learnings. Oh! Apart from I also recently learnt what 'Fade To Black' romance means. I think it means the sex scene doesn't happen on the page. Kind of like 'Closed Door' romance novels I think.

Is there anyone out there yet?