Writing Schedules

How important is it for a writer to have a schedule?  In my opinion, extremely.  If you plan to make writing your career and want to write full time, you need to treat it as a full time job.  You need to work set hours and put in the effort and time into what you plan for your career.  I don't know how many times I heard my grandmother say "You get what you put into it".  How true that is especially with writing.

If you follow my blog, you will know that I have a very set career path of writing full time within the next year or so.  In that vein, I need to set my writing work hours and treat my writing as if it was a job that I had to answer to someone else for.  I set how much time I spend a day writing, and although I love the flexibility of changing the hours if I need to day to day depending on what is going on in my life, I have to remain rigid in the fact that I need to have at least three to four hours set aside each day for writing.

As I progress further into my writing career, I need to also set time for marketing and updating social media.  And let's face it -- social media is a necessary evil for writers.  It helps us connect with our readers, other writers and gives us the opportunity for networking, however it can be a huge time sucker from your day if you get caught up in it.  I have found that I need to allow myself so much time in the day for social media and I use it in small chunks.  Morning with my coffee -- check social media.  After a writing chunk and I need a break -- I allow myself another social media check in and then again in the evening when my day is winding down.

What kind of writing schedule do you have and do you struggle with sticking to it?

Old Cemeteries

What a week it has been!  Last weekend I took a drive to Pennsylvania with a friend.  I had the opportunity while I was down there to peruse an old cemetery.  I just love old cemeteries!  I love looking at the old headstones, seeing names that haven’t been used in years and just letting my imagination go wild with thoughts of what their lives were like.  This cemetery had a lot of headstones from the late 1800s.  While I was there, of course, letting my imagination work, I have come up with another plot for another book, not to mention some really cool character names.

After we return from the weekend trip, I sat down to start planning out my writing schedule for the next few months, or what I thought would be the next few months.  Well, as it turns out I have enough writing projects planned to keep me writing until early 2016!  On top of that, I will be shooting for three releases in 2015. This will mean 2015 is going to be incredibly busy as I not only keep my writing on track, but my son will also graduate from high school, I will be putting my house on the market and planning a move. Deep breath…..I can only think about this in small increments or it is extremely overloading.

But for now, I am racing on deadline to finish A Fine Line, hopefully by the end of October.  I have a special conference I’m going to in October where I will have the chance to meet Cherry Adair and have a one-on-one plot session with her for another book.  More details on all my coming projects in an upcoming newsletter.  If you don’t receive my newsletter and would like to, feel free to check my webpage for the opportunity to sign up for it.