Hello again! Sorry I’ve been gone so long. I have had a mixture of health issues and other problems, and they’ve kept me busy – hope it won’t be so long again.
Let’s talk business. For many authors, making their writing work for them is a big problem. First of all, when you are working around a day job or around raising kids and taking care of a family, it can be difficult to treat your writing as a job. But if you want it to become a job, you have to find a way.
I know most of you have heard the saying about if you want to be the boss, emulate the boss…that’s true with just about any job. If you want to be a successful author, watch what successful authors do, how they act, what choices they make. Now, you may not have sixteen hours in a day to work at it, but discipline yourself to give it all you have the two or three hours you may be able to carve out.
Some authors find it easier to get up very early and spend their first two or three hours writing, before they get the kids and/or the husband up and out of the house. This is especially true if they have a day job, as well. Some authors write while the kids are at school and after they go to bed. I know one author who spends five hours during the school day writing, takes five hours to do her housework, make dinner and feed the kids, get them bathed and homework done, then her husband takes over and puts them to bed so she can write for another couple of hours. That’s dedication, and that kind of discipline will serve her well – she is published and it works for her.
Whatever your schedule, whatever amount of time you have to devote to writing, make sure you use it wisely. Learn to tune out or turn off distractions like Twitter and email and browsing. Allow yourself time for those things, but you must learn not to use them to avoid writing.
Keep receipts – books are now market research, so save your purchase receipts. Write down the date and time and mileage to the post office and back when you mail a manuscript, save the postage receipt, and keep track of those things. Talk to your accountant or tax consultant to find out ways you can save money and what you can write off as a business expense, and how best to suit your situation.
Learn to look at your life as an author as your work, what you do, and treat it that way. Make sure friends and family realize you are an author and between such and such hours, you are at work. If necessary, turn off the phone. I have learned that if you don’t respect and value your work time, others won’t. So don’t get into the habit of saying, yeah, okay, this one time I’ll watch your kids while you go shopping. Emergency situations are one thing, but you will know where to draw the line and don’t give in.
The best way to make the right decisions for your job is to remember how it would be if you had a day job working for someone else…would they allow you the day off to go shopping because you just don’t feel like working today? Would they tolerate you showing up whenever you felt like it? Would they allow you to talk to your mother for the first two hours of your workday even once a week? Act like a professional writer, a successful one, and you will become one.
Happy Writing!
Georgia
This is all so true. You have to train your family to treat your writing time as sacred, and they won’t until you do.
Great advice, Georgia! I needed to hear that this week, especially the part about getting people to respect the time of the day that you should be writing. It has to start with me for them to listen.
Reading this post was really a wake-up call for me. I’d strayed from a very disciplined writing routine, and it had a serious impact on my productivity. Last year I wrote eight books – this year I haven’t written even one from start to finish, though I’d started a few which are left half-done in my writing folder. Since reading the post, I’ve returned to the focus and productivity I’d maintained for four years, and it’s exhilirating to be back where I belong: writing first, everything else second.