Tonight, we had a great conversation about scheduling time for writing at the weekly Twitter chat at The Whole Story Media Group hosts. (You can follow us at @wholestorymedia on Twitter.) As the writers there talked about how we make time for writing – grabbing an hour when our spouse first comes home, getting up at 5:30am, setting word count goals, scheduling specific hours – I came to a realization. It’s one I’ve had off and on for years, but tonight, it really sunk in.
I don’t prioritize my writing.
I let people and obligations and social media and TV and fatigue and eating get in the way. And the truth is that I could still do all of these things AND get some good writing in each day if I just made writing my number one daily time priority.
Even writing that previous sentence gives me pause because I don’t want to sound like my work is more important than people. People are always going to be more important than anything else to me, so I need realize that I’m prioritizing my time, not my life’s values, to make more time for writing. I think sometimes I confuse these things – managing time well and loving people well. I’ll have to think on that idea more.
But for now, I’m committing publicly to this schedule:
I will write from 10am-12pm, five days a week. I will begin this schedule on Thursday of this week, the 17th of November. 2011. (Specificity helps hold me accountable, too.)
If you could check in with me regularly to see how this is going, I would really appreciate it. I need to know people are counting on me – at least in some generic way – to meet this goal. So your help is very much appreciated.
What writing schedule do you keep? Do you need one? What would work for you and your life?