On (Needing?) External Deadlines

Photo credit: dgoomany on Flickr

So I recently started part-time work again to help me save for a thing, and when I initially started and got my hours I was a little worried about how I was going to be able to squeeze everything in. Between being on deadline (and not a self-imposed one!), and working on my freelance projects, and now the extra work, I was genuinely concerned there might not be enough hours in the day for me to get everything done that I needed to—and that's even with starting work around 6AM most days, and working on Saturdays.

That concern is still there for some days, but on my first super-packed day where I had a long shift and had to work on my deadline project and had to work on my freelance project, I found that squeezing it all in actually wasn't as terrible as I thought it might be. Largely because I wasted a hell of a lot less time on Twitter and random apps when I knew I had to stop working in a couple hours to go to work.

"I have less than 4 hrs left to work before I have to get ready to go to work" is a thought I just had.

Relatedly, time to get off Twitter.

— Ava Jae (@Ava_Jae) April 13, 2017

It kind of surprised me how easy it was to ignore distractions when I didn't have unlimited time throughout the day—I hunkered down and edited, and read, and did everything I needed to, and on the day that I tweeted, I ended up finishing with time to spare. Go figure.

Which got me thinking...maybe I kind of need less hours in the day from time to time? Even on the days that I don't go in to the day job, I had a renewed appreciation for the full hours I had available to me, and I ended up getting more work done than I needed to so I'd have less work to do on days I had less hours available. And really, getting my butt in gear was as a simple as just having five to six hours less on certain days of the week.

It's something I hadn't really thought about before—and I am still more actively worried about burnout, because understandably, I'm working even longer days than I used to. But it's been interesting, at least, to see how much easier it is to focus when my days are less flexible.

Maybe I work best under external deadlines after all.

What do you think? Do you work best under external deadlines or limited time?

Twitter-sized bites:

Do you work best under external deadlines or limited time? Join the discussion on @Ava_Jae's blog. (Click to tweet)

On Creating (Flexible) Schedules

Photo credit: RHiNO NEAL on Flickr

So a couple days ago, I tweeted a realization I had about just how incredibly busy I'll be in November. I suppose I already knew that logically, but after picking up a part time job, remembering NaNo is days away, and booking editing clients for next month, it all started to sink in. But it was a good realization—because while my schedule will be, let's face it, a lot, it's all stuff I really enjoy doing.

The tweet, however, inevitably led to people asking me how I plan to manage it all, which got me thinking about scheduling, yes, but more specifically flexible scheduling to make the most of my time every day.

I've written before about how I'm a morning person and get most of my writing done then. This worked well when I had afternoon classes or worked nights as a waitress—I got all my writing done in the early morning hours then tackled whatever commitments I needed to get done. Looking at my schedule for the first week of NaNo, however...I can already see that's going to be a little more challenging.

Right now, out of the first six days of NaNo, I have commitments in the morning on three days. I'm getting the sense this is probably going to be a common thing next month, so I've already started making necessary plans to fit everything into my schedule. The building block for busiest days next month will probably look something like this:

5:15 AM: WAKE UP (I've been getting lazy with this and pushing this closer to 6AM, but next month I need to be stricter about it because I'm going to need the time.) 

5:30 - 7:15 AM: Write, blog/vlog stuff 

7:15 - 8:30 AM: Get ready for day's commitments 

[Do day stuff] 

2:00 PM - ???: Editing work, work out, whatever else I need done for the day.

This of course is a really rough sketch and will need to be adjusted daily depending on my needs for the day, but I find that it helps to plan out my busiest days, so that on days I have extra time or more flexible hours, great, but if not I know I can still squeeze in what I need to. I'm also thinking it might be a good idea to plan my blog topics in advance because it tends to take me longer to figure out what to write about than to actually write the post. Maybe I'll even write some posts in advance...hmm.

Then, of course, there's a very important second component to this: built-in breaks. Traditionally, I've established Sundays as my day off, in which I don't allow myself to do any work. This will remain true next month, though I've already decided if I fall behind on my NaNo writing, Sunday is the day I'll allow myself to make it up, mostly because it's work I find the most enjoyable, so I wouldn't stress too much over it. Even if I manage not to fall behind, I'll likely NaNo on a Sunday or two to give myself wiggle room for those days where I just can't squeeze the writing in.

The keys to flexible scheduling, I find, is to plan for the worst (i.e.: least time), take minutes where you can, and be kind to yourself. That last part means don't forget self-care, because when you're in the grind, forgetting self-care can be pretty disastrous. For me that means Sundays (mostly) off. For you it may mean something else—just make sure you don't neglect it.

I'm wishing you guys all the best next month, whether you're NaNoing or not!

Do you use flexible schedules? 

Twitter-sized bites:

Tight on time but want to get some writing done? @Ava_Jae shares tips on making flexible schedules. (Click to tweet)

On NaNoWriMo and Finding Time

Photo credit: bitslammer on Flickr

As NaNoWriMo approaches, I've been seeing more and more writers consider whether or not they'll join in this year. And one of the top considerations for whether or not that answer will be yes or no is, understandably, time.

So far, I've done NaNoWriMo twice (though I've done my own write a book in a month challenges much more often). The first time I was at my first year of art college, and my classes and assignments were rigorous and time-consuming. My homework involved detailed projects that required many hours multiple days a week to finish—and that's without the frequent trips to art supply stores downtown to get what I needed for those projects.

Basically, I was the busiest I'd ever been, but I also knew I really wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo for the first time even though finals were happening. So I did.

This required stealing time wherever I could find it. I did the bulk of my daily writing in the early morning hours, sipping blearily at my tea, and on the bus on the way to my classes. When I didn't get enough words in during those slots, I wrote before class started at my desk, or after I got back between homework assignments and final projects. It was challenging for sure—and doubly challenging when I realized thirteen days in I was writing the wrong manuscript and scrapped the whole thing—but it was also rewarding. I proved to myself that even when I was tackling the end of the semester I could get the words I needed down.

Of course, the last few weeks when I was home from school on my extended winter break were much easier. But it was still rewarding to know I could manage to keep my head above NaNo water at the end of a busy semester.

The point is, time is absolutely a factor when it comes to whether or not you should NaNo—but it's not the only factor. Because like writing at any other time of the year, if time is the only issue it's not often impossible to overcome. As writers, we have to learn where we can best squeeze in our writing time, whether that's on the commute to work, getting up extra early before school, while kids are at school or napping, or after a long work day into the late night hours.

There will always be reasons why we won't have the time to write a book, or participate in NaNoWriMo. But if time is the biggest factor for you, it might not be a bad idea to sit down and really consider where you could steal enough minutes from your day to slap down 1,667 words. You might just be surprised by how a couple minutes here and there of quickly jotted down words can add up.

How do you fit writing into your schedule? 

Twitter-sized bite:

Concerned about time when considering whether or not to #NaNoWriMo? Author @Ava_Jae talks finding time to NaNo. (Click to tweet)

On Keeping Track of (Fictional) Time

Photo credit: FABIOLA MEDEIROS on Flickr

Invariably, when the time comes to revise a WIP, I eventually realize I need to figure out the timeline for the manuscript. Because, as of yet, I've neglected to keep track of passing days/nights/weeks while first drafting (even though, you know, in theory it would be a good idea). And so I have to meticulously go through the draft the look for markers of time and write it down, then see where I need to adjust things so it makes more sense.

So far, I’ve used three different methods for keeping track of time during the process of Going Back to Figure Time Out.

• The list. This is as simple as it sounds. Usually in Evernote (which is where I take a lot of my notes in general) I’ll start with Day 1, write a brief summary of what happens with bullets that day, and continue until I’ve reached the end of the book. Oftentimes I’ll do this before organizing it into anything else (i.e. the calendar), or I’ll just use this list as is. 


• The calendar. I did this once for Beyond the Red, mostly because the time system is different there (they have different ways of measuring days, weeks, months, etc.). If I remember correctly, I’m pretty sure I started with the list, then decided to create the calendar to help me see it more visually and also figure out other things. It also became important because I would have markers like “a week later” or “months” or something, and because they measure time differently, it got a little confusing for me to work it out just as the list.
  
  However, this could also be useful just in terms of keeping track of the days of the week and months, so it’s something I may very well use again in the future. 


• Aeon Timeline. I only have a free trial of Aeon Timeline right now, but it was so useful with the one instance I used it that I may very well have to invest in the future. The cool thing about Aeon Timeline is you can set up your timeline with whatever markers you’d like—including totally made up measurements. I used it while revising my YA Fantasy just in terms of Day 1, etc. because I needed to keep track of a few threads, and the number of days I was spanning was way too high for me to do it in list form (like, well over a hundred days). This also made it easy for me to see a visual representation of elapsed time, and it did math for me. So. Definitely useful. 

So those are methods I’ve used to keep track of fictional time. In the future, I plan to attempt to be more careful about keeping track while drafting…but knowing my track record thus far, we’ll see how successfully (or not) that goes.

How do you keep track of fictional time in your WIPs?

Twitter-sized bites:

Struggling to keep track of passing time in your WIP? Author @Ava_Jae shares a few methods. (Click to tweet)  

How do you keep track of fictional time in your WIPs? Join the discussion on @Ava_Jae's blog. (Click to tweet)

Having to Prioritize

Photo credit: Wiertz Sébastien on Flickr

So, as expected, I guess, I’ve been really busy lately. Between school, revisions, more revisions, social media and life stuff, I’ve spent pretty much every day including the weekends from 5:30ish AM to at least 5PM doing something productive. And even then, at the end of the day, I still have plenty I didn’t get to.

So naturally, I’ve had to prioritize. And the first ball I tend to drop when I get this kind of crazy-busy is answering comments and e-mails.

I want to say that I still do read every comment—whether blog, vlog or otherwise—and e-mail that I get, but lately the only time I’ve had to squeeze in answering them tends to come on the weekends. Or the super early mornings. Which means I am so very behind and my inbox is pretty much bursting with comments and lovely e-mails and I don’t want you guys to stop! I love that stuff, but I do want to say that I know I’ve been slow answering and, well, I’m probably going to continue to be slow answering until things calm down a bit.

Because right now, the only way for me to get everything I need to done means prioritizing. And school, writing and my mental and emotional health has to come before answering non-urgent e-mails and blog/vlog comments. And I mean, I figure you guys would rather I met my editor and agent deadlines whilst not falling behind in school than answer blog comments speedy-quick anyway.

So I guess what I’m saying is please continue commenting even though it takes me a bit to answer—I do read them as they come in and you guys are so, so awesome. Thank you for continuing to contribute to the conversation here on Writability, and over on bookishpixie, and everywhere else. And please continue to feel free to use my contact page to e-mail me, because I do read them right away and though I can’t answer them quickly, they are appreciated.

Just know that silence on my part or being one/two/three weeks late answering that comment/e-mail/etc. isn’t because I don’t care or because I’m ignoring what you’re sending me. But sometimes things get pushed down on the priority list and in order for me to hopefully get books out to you guys, and hopefully graduate, and hopefully not completely crash mid-semester, my once-speedy response time is now not-so-speedy.

Thank you, to all of you, for making the community here and elsewhere so awesome. You guys have blown me away with your support and continuously insightful comments and I look forward to so much more.

Onward and upward. :)

Don’t have a question for you guys today, just virtual hugs and lots of gratitude. You all rock. <3

How to Write Transitions

Photo credit: Geraint Rowland Photography on Flickr

So a few days ago a funny thing happened where two people suggested basically the same post, on two different social media channels. One requested a post, one requested a vlog, and I ultimately decided a post would be more suited for this question, so. Here we go. 

Transitions. 

Once upon a time in your writing class, or on Twitter, or in a writing book—whatever—you read and heard over and over about the importance of showing rather than telling. “Remember, show don’t tell!” you heard over and over and over, until you pretty much had the words branded to your brain. 

You may remember, if you’ve been around Writability for two years, that I once wrote a post about when is a good time to tell (rather than show). And this right here—the passage of time—is one of those times when telling is key. 

So PSA: readers do not need to know what your characters have experienced every single moment of every single day until the story has ended. The lulls in the day, the passages of uneventful weeks (or months!) is something that as writers we need to learn to navigate without putting our readers to sleep. 

The key, honestly, is the easiest transition in the history of transitions: you skip the whole thing and sum it up with a phrase or sentence. 

Some phrases that are useful with this kind of transition include:

• [Passage of time] later… —A month later…
• After [passage of time] of [what’s been going on]… —After three weeks of falling asleep in the back of class…
• The next [passage of time]… —The next day… 
• [Protagonist] has been [doing whatever] for [passage of time]. —I’ve been passing out in math class for three weeks.

So on and so forth. 

The key to think about when writing these transitions is to answer two questions: 

1. How much time has passed? 
2. What do my readers need to know about what happened during that time? 

Sometimes, as is often the case with shorter passages of time (an hour, a day, etc.), the answer to the second question is nothing. That’s when “The next day” or “Three hours later” work perfectly without any further explanation. 

Oftentimes with longer passages of time, however, readers need just a little information to fill in that gap. Usually you can fill this in in under a sentence (as per the example of “After three weeks of falling asleep in the back of class”) and then move on to whatever is happening in the present. Sometimes, when a little more has happened during that time, but not enough to merit writing it out scene by scene, a few sentences of summarization can fill in the pertinent information before you move on to the important now stuff. 

Last thing you’ll want to think about is whether you make the transition in mid-chapter (usually after a scene break, but sometimes without even that) or at the start of a new chapter. Both can work, and honestly I think it just depends on how you structure your chapters and where the transition fits in naturally. CPs can help you figure out whether you’ve structured your transitions in a way that flows or not. 

Once you’ve done all that, voila! You’ve now skipped over the boring part of your protagonist’s story. A+.

Do you struggle with transitions? What tips do you have? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Not sure how to handle passages of time in your WIP? @Ava_Jae breaks down how use transitions. (Click to tweet) 

Not sure how to skip a day/week/month, etc. in your WIP? @Ava_Jae explains how to use transitions. #writetip (Click to tweet)

Vlog: How to Juggle Writing & School

So for many of us, school is now in session! Which means all the extra, easy-to-find free time for writing is no more. So what do you do when you're a writer who goes to school? How do you juggle the two? Today I'm sharing my top tips picked up through writing through high school and going on five years of college.

RELATED LINKS: 

• Balancing Writing with School (Julia Byers's post)
• How I Became a Morning Person 
• How to Write When You Don't Want To (vlog)
• On Finding Time to Write (vlog)
• Do You Have to Write Every Day? (vlog)
• Do You Need a Degree to Get Published? (vlog)

What tips do you have for juggling writing with school or work?

Twitter-sized bites:

Struggling to juggle your writing with school or work? @Ava_Jae vlogs about her top five tips. (Click to tweet)  

How do you find time to write a book while at school or working full time? @Ava_Jae vlogs her top tips. (Click to tweet)

On Prioritizing Your Time

Photo credit: becosky... on Flickr

Sometimes, life gets busy. There’s work, schoolwork, parenting work, house work, writing work, marketing work and life stuff, sometimes all rolled up into a week, or a day. And sometimes, finding the time to get that writing work done can be a massive struggle. 

It inevitably happens to all of us at some point or another. 

The key, I’ve found, to consistently keeping up with everything and finding time to write is to carefully prioritize your time. I tend to break things up by hard and soft deadlines. 

My hard deadlines are ones that I need to have done by a certain date. This is usually something that someone else is expecting, whether it’s school work, internship work, a revision, pre-scheduled blog posts/vlogs etc. These are deadlines that generally, I can’t move. If I miss them, there will likely be repercussions. 

Soft deadlines are ones I usually set myself. These are deadlines that I’d like to get done by a certain time, but if need be, I can move them. These are tasks I can put aside for a day or two without having to worry about it. 

Hard deadlines I try to get done first. Because I’m a person that likes to schedule my days, I usually have a to-do list of things that need to be done and things I’d like to get done. I often make sure to check off all the hard deadline items first before I worry about the soft deadlines. 

This is something I had to learn the hard way: the fact of the matter is, some days, writing can’t be a top priority. Some days there’s too much life stuff and work stuff and family stuff and health stuff and everything else to make much writing progress, and you know what? That’s okay. You don’t need to kill yourself to get your daily writing in and you don't need to write every single day to call yourself a writer (really). 

Because other days you will have the time, or some time at least, and those are the days where you can really capitalize on that time to get writing work done. You just have to make sure to get your butt in the chair and do it. 

Do you prioritize your time to try to get your writing work done? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

"The fact of the matter is, some days, writing can’t be a top priority." (Click to tweet)  

Writer @Ava_Jae shares some tips on prioritizing your time and fitting writing into your hectic schedule. (Click to tweet) 

9 Distractions for Waiting Writers

Photo credit: vancouverfilmschool on Flickr

So on June 13, something strange and wonderful happened. I woke up feeling energized and excited to get writing. I blasted through writing sprint after sprint and ended the day with 5,214 new words in my WIP.

I’d expected to be tired the next day, but I wasn’t. This happened, instead:

Wrote 7,896 words today. Would have continued, but I somehow reached the end, and now I don't know what to do with myself. O.O
— Ava Jae (@Ava_Jae) June 14, 2013

It was exhilarating, and wonderful, and I finished two weeks ahead of schedule, and I went to bed with a smile on my face and latent excitement in my veins.

When I woke the next morning, I was left with...now what? I wanted to dive immediately into edits, but I knew I edit most effectively after giving my manuscripts time to cool. I needed distance, even if I didn’t really want to take the time to let it settle.

I know I can’t be the only one who gets impatient while waiting for the cooling off period to end, and so I’ve devised a list of distractions. Enjoy.

1. Catch up on that TBR pile. We all know how difficult it can be to make time to read while also making time to write. Sometimes, when in the middle of a first draft, your reading pile begins to grow. Now you have a little extra time—why not use it to read some excellent books?


2. Read a book on craft. Now’s a good a time as ever to whip out your highlighter and dust off those writing books. Even better—take notes while you’re at it that you can use when you begin revising in a few short weeks.


3. Work on another WIP. This has the added bonus of focusing your mind on something completely unrelated to the first draft you just completed. And as an extra extra bonus, you’ll have two (or more) WIPs to play with at the end of it.


4. Get some research out of the way. For writers like me who tend to leave the bulk of the researching until the revision stage, now’s a good time to start taking notes and what you know you’ll need.


5. Brainstorm with Pinterest. Yes, yes, Pinterest is an enormous time-suck if you let it...but it can also be a source of fantastic inspiration for your WIP. So it’s a worthy time-suck, IMO.


6. Do some non-writing WIP-related activities. This can be a variety of things—create a mock-up book cover, write a language for your fantasy, fan cast your characters, or create an inspiration board. Just don’t open up that WIP quite yet.


7. Go outside. Neil Gaiman said it best. We writers have a tendency of locking ourselves in our writing caves and regarding the sun as a fiery ball of kryptonite while writing. But sometimes it’s good to go outside and remember how to describe sun on your skin and wind in your hair.


8. Spend time with family and friends. You know. Before they start to wonder if your keyboard ate you.


9. Indulge in mindless hobbies. Look, you’ve done something amazing, something that millions of people haven’t—you’ve written a book! Now that you have a little extra time before you start editing, go ahead and indulge in something silly. Watch Hulu, go to the movies, practice your Colonial America assassin skills. Whatever it is, don’t feel guilty about indulging—you deserve it.

How do you distract yourself between WIPs?

Twitter-sized bites:

Are you in between WIPs? Trying not to go crazy while waiting? Here are nine distractions for writers.  (Click to tweet) 

Are you a waiting writer? Here are nine ways to keep your sanity intact. (Click to tweet)

Discussion: Do You Write at a Specific Time?

Photo credit: North Charleston on Flickr

My favorite time to write is in the morning. While I don’t get up before the sun to do so, I often like to start the day by getting a blog post written or my first writing sprint completed.

While I don’t accomplish this as consistently as I would maybe like, I love the feeling of having completed all of my daily writing goals before noon. It gives me the freedom of having the rest of the day to blow those goals out of the water (assuming I have the rest of the day open to do so), or getting whatever else I need done with the satisfying knowledge that I’ve already accomplished what I needed to as far as writing goes.

However, while this is my favorite time to write, as I don’t get up ridiculously early to do it, it isn’t always feasible. While I suppose I could get up at five or so in the morning if I wanted to, until I find the inner strength to do so, I suspect I will continue with some late night writing sprints.

The difference for me, is that when I start earlier, I tend to be much more ambitious. Rather than stopping after meeting my minimum goal, I’ll do another sprint or two later on when I have the chance, and completely decimate the minimum while I’m at it. And it feels fantastic.

When I write later in the day, however, I’ll usually stop after meeting my quota. This is because I am at my laziest at the end of the day—I’m perfectly content to sit sloth-like in front of my monitor and catch up on my Hulu queue, or scroll through Twitter and tumblr until my eyes glaze over. Or sign off early and read. Reading is good, too.

I share this with you, because I’d like to hear about your writing habits. Do you have a specific time that you clock into writer-mode every day, or is your writing time more sporadic?  

Twitter-sized bites: 

Do you write at a specific time? Join the discussion on @Ava_Jae's blog! (Click to tweet)  

This writer prefers to write in the morning, but what about you? (Click to tweet)

How to Survive the Waiting Game

Photo credit: lett -/\= on Flickr

It's no secret to most writers that a large part of the writing process is actually the waiting process. Let's face it, we writers have to learn to wait a lot. For example:

• We wait for our manuscripts to cool between writing and editing. 
• We wait for beta readers and critique partners to get back to us. 
• We wait to hear back from agents and editors while querying. 
• We wait to hear back from agents and editors while editing again. 
• We wait until we're able to share fantabulously exciting book-related news to the world. 

And so on.

They say patience is important, but I think it's twice as important for writers as it is for everyone else, because we truly can't escape the inevitability of waiting, nor should we try to.

You see, the trick isn't to try to avoid the waiting altogether, it's to learn how to deal with the waiting so we don't go crazy. Here are a few tips to help you along the way:

• Don't look at it. What "it" is depends on what exactly you're waiting for. If you're waiting to hear back from beta and CPs about your WIP, then don't look at your WIP. If you're waiting to hear back from agents and editors while querying, hide that query. If you're waiting to hear back from agents and editors who are looking at your partial or full—put the WIP away and for the love of God, don't look at it. Why? The answer is simple. If you look at your WIP or query letter after you've already sent it, chances are you're going to find a mistake. A typo. A misplaced comma. Something that's going to drive you crazy and give you an unnecessary panic attack about how whatever you sent is atrocious because of that one error.
  
  Look, you've already sent your work out. You can't retract it now, you can't update with edits, you can't fix anything. So save yourself the anxiety attack and keep your work hidden until you get feedback. In this situation, ignorance is most certainly bliss. 


• Distract yourself. This may seem somewhat obvious, but we writers tend to be a little obsessive. It's one of the quirks that many writers share, and because of that, it makes the waiting game much more difficult because we can't. Stop. Thinking. About it. It's all in our heads, and we're usually aware of it, but it really makes things much more difficult than need be.
  
  Solution? Find a distraction. Many distractions. Read a bunch of fabulous books, start brainstorming your next WIP, watch a lot of crappy TV and catch up on your Hulu queue. Whatever it is, make sure it's sufficient enough to keep your mind off whether or not you have fantastic (or terrible) news sitting in your e-mail inbox. 


• Set your e-mail to automatic notifications. Whether or not you're able to do this step will depend largely on the technology you have available. I've had my e-mail set to automatically notify me when I have mail for years (both on Windows and Mac computers, so it's available on both platforms) and truly, it's a lifesaver during the waiting game because it saves me the temptation of sitting in my e-mail inbox and pressing "refresh" every five minutes. My computer and devices tell me when I have e-mail without having to check it, so unless I've been notified, I know I can rest easy because there isn't a response waiting for me in my inbox. It's a little convenience that has saved me quite a few headaches. 

Those are just a couple tips for surviving the waiting game, but now I want to hear from you: What tips do you have for waiting writers?

How to Juggle Writing and Life

Photo credit: Pedro Moura Pinheiro (Flickr)

I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again in the future—writers are never just writers. We’re husbands, wives, parents, students and employees. Some of us work nine to five jobs, others the graveyard shift, some are stay-at-home parents and still others attend school full time and work part time elsewhere. We all have multiple responsibilities and oftentimes, life likes to get in the way of our writing.

Despite life and workish things that like to become obstacles and suck up valuable writing time, it’s still entirely possible to juggle life and writing in a manageable and less stressful way. Here are a few tips to help you get started:

• Make a plan. Without a doubt, one of the best ways to maximize your productivity during the day is to map out what you need to get done and figure out when you can do it. For some, that means dedicating the large nine to five block to non-writing work, then either getting up early or adding an extra hour (or half hour) after work to get some writing in. For others, that means spreading out short writing bursts throughout the day until you’ve reached your goal. Regardless of how you do it, making a plan is a great way to figure out how much time you can dedicate to your writing daily, and actually getting it done.


• Use timers. I’ve written about this before, and this point is related to the first one, but I think it’s worth repeating—timers are a fantastic tool for writers. I’ve found that I actually like to keep one running somewhere visible while I’m writing under a time constraint (like now). It keeps me pushing harder (because few things are quite as motivating to write as much as you can as a visual representation of your available time literally slipping away) and it allows me to make sure I can write without worrying about going overtime and being late to start whatever my next task is. Use timers. They help more than you’d think.


• Allow yourself to write in bursts. For a lengthier explanation of this, you can check out this post, but in short, writing in bursts is just as productive, if not more so, than sitting down for long writing sessions. Many writers don’t often get the opportunity to sit down for an hour or more to write, but we often have bits of time scattered throughout the day—ten minutes while waiting for lunch, another fifteen before a meeting, etc. If you use these little doses of time to write a couple hundred words here and there, you might be surprised how quickly it adds up.


• Be forgiving. We writers have a tendency of being pretty hard on ourselves when we miss a day of writing or don’t meet our daily quota. Sometimes we have to accept that life gets in the way and that it’s ok if we don’t meet our daily writing goals every day. Don’t waste energy beating yourself up for a bad writing day—instead, invest that time in getting more writing done tomorrow. 

Those are just a few tips for juggling life and writing, now it’s your turn to add to the list: how do you juggle writing and life? Any tips? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Why Writers Should Let Their Manuscripts Cool

Photo credit: alex: on Flickr

So a long while ago I wrote this post on the cooling off period between writing the first draft (or any draft, for that matter) and editing, and while I got my point across, I must have consumed about fifty buckets of sugar before writing it or something, because it was just a little hyper and ADDish.

Partially because of that and partially because I’d like to write a more coherent post on the topic, I’ve decided to write about the cooling off period again because yes, it’s that important. (If you really want to read the original, I suppose you could go here. But you don’t have to. In fact, it’d probably be best if you didn’t.)

Anyway. As many writers know (and some would rather pretend they didn’t know), the cooling off period is more important than it sounds—it’s the time that allows us to take a couple steps back away from our freshly drafted WIPs, so that we can then in turn edit more objectively. It’s the pause between writing and editing—the breather, so to speak, and without it, it is very difficult to edit effectively.

Here’s why: completing a draft of a manuscript is a big accomplishment and it makes us writers feel many different emotions—everything from pride to manic excitement to sometimes a little fear and nervousness—but usually just a lot of excitement and pride. After you complete a draft, your mind is reeling with the world you’ve immersed yourself in while writing—the characters, the setting, the battles and victories and losses—all of those things are fresh in your mind, still sparkling with that wow, I really wrote this shine.

While you’re editing, however, that shine needs to go away. I’m not saying you can’t be proud of your work—but if you really want to edit, if you really want to make your work the best it can be, it requires a lot of legwork on your part and it often requires sacrifices. You have to be able to look at your words and pull out the weaknesses. You must be able to recognize the plot holes and flat characters and inconsistencies and scenes (or entire sections) that need rewriting entirely, and quite frankly, it’s very difficult (if not impossible) to do all of those things when you finished writing the draft yesterday.

You need time to let your manuscript cool—to create some distance between the story you know so well and your excited feelings. Without it, editing is going to be that much more difficult and not nearly as effective as it would have been had you given it time.

I recommend waiting at least a month, but the longer you can stand to stay away, the more distance you’ll create, and the easier it will be to edit objectively—which is, ultimately, the goal.

Do you take a cooling off period between writing and editing? If so, how long? If not, why not?

How to Write a Novel in Only 500 Words a Day

So if you follow me on Twitter or have liked my Facebook page, you might have seen this tweet enter the world of the internet a couple of days ago:

Wow. Friday's post is going to be my 200th blog post. O.o #fb
— Avalon Jaedra (@Ava_Jae) August 1, 2012

I did the math, and figuring that every blog post averages somewhere around 500 words, that means that after today, I’ll have written somewhere around 100,000 words in blog posts, and it really got me thinking. Because I almost didn't start this blog. I almost talked myself out of publishing that first post and announcing it to my (then) 100 Twitter followers.

I almost missed out on an opportunity to add 100,000 words to my writing experience in a relatively simple way.

It really got me thinking, because writing 500 words three times a week is really not that difficult—sure, choosing a topic isn’t always butterflies and rainbows, but the actual writing part of putting 500 words to paper? Not so hard.

It really got me thinking, because 100,000 words is longer than some books—and it’s definitely longer than most of my WIPs.

It really got me thinking, because I’ve often heard people say things to the effect of, I’d love to write a book, but I don’t have the time and truth be told? Time isn’t really an issue when it comes to writing a book.

Let’s just say that you’re working full time (like many writers) or going to school full time (like many writers) or have children (like many writers) or all of the above and you only have a couple hours of free time every day. That’s fair. A lot of people are busy and aren’t really swimming in an ocean of time to spare.

But there’s this misconception that writers must be drowning in extra magical free time because it takes hundreds of hours to write a novel, so if you’ve written a novel, you must have hundreds of hours to just throw around. But truth be told, most times writers don’t have that much more time than anyone else, and the dirty little secret is that you don’t need it.

Photo credit: Wiertz Sébastien on Flickr

Sure, it’s nice if you have free time, and I’m not going to pretend I don’t love the days when I can sit down and dedicate the whole day to putting in a few thousand words into the current WIP. But that’s not every day, and that’s ok.

Because all you need is enough time to write a few hundred words a day, and if you keep at it, before you know it you’ll have a novel sitting on your hard drive.

Let’s look at the math:

If you write 500 words a day five days a week, that’s 2,500 words a week or 10,000 words a month. At that rate, it’ll take you anywhere from six to ten months to finish the first draft of a novel, depending on how long your WIP is. If you write six days a week, you can finish in five to eight and a half months. That means if you write 500 words a day and take a one or two day break, you can get that novel written in less than a year.

Let’s up the ante. If you write 750 words a day five days a week, that’s 3,750 words a week or 15,000 words a month. At that rate, it’ll take you roughly four to seven months to finish first drafting.  At six days a week, you’ll be finished in three and a half to five and a half months. Not bad at all.

Writing 200 blog posts has really reminded me about the power of working in small doses. You don’t need to put in ten hours a day every day to accomplish something great. All you need is enough discipline to chip away at that novel or whatever it is you’re working on a little every day, and before you know it you’ll be looking back in awe of what you managed to accomplish with thirty minutes a day.

And let me tell you—it feels pretty good.

How do you manage your time? Do you have a specific daily writing goal or some strategy to help you progress with your WIPs? Share your experience—I’d love to hear about it.   

The (Not So) Surprising Key to Writing Quickly

Photo credit: 2create on Flickr

So not too long ago, fabulous author Beth Revis mentioned this guest post on Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America about how one writer (Rachel Aaron) increased her daily word count output from 2,000 words a day to 10,000 words a day. No, you didn’t read that incorrectly. If you have time to read the full article, I highly recommend it, (you can also read Beth’s take on it here) but if there’s one bit that really stuck with me, it’s this: it is much easier to write quickly when you know what you’re going to write.

Now I’ve written in the past about the pros and cons of both plotting and pantsing, and for those of you who aren’t too keen on plotting, I don’t think it’s a requirement to intricately plot out your entire novel in order to write quickly. However, as someone who has in the past indeed pantsed an entire novel (and enjoyed the process), I can say from experience that if writing quickly is your goal, it helps to know where you’re going.

The reasoning behind this is pretty obvious—as many of you are aware, I’m sure, the times when we don’t know what to write next tend to be the slowest and most excruciating writing days. They’re the days that we write a sentence, then stare at the screen, then decide we’re hungry and grab a snack, then think maybe I’ll find inspiration on the internet! and spend precious writing time trolling Twitter and tumblr (don’t deny it—you’ve done it). Even when we don’t seek distraction, the times we don’t know what to write next tend to not-so-coincidentally also be the times where you have to fight for every word (at least, it is in my experience).

So by setting down some landmarks and deciding what you’re going to write today ahead of time, you can save yourself the headache of slamming your head into the wall and jump right into the writing bit.

Although I pantsed the last WIP that I drafted up, I decided to actually outline the one I’m currently working on in a checklist format—and I have to say, it has made all the difference. No, I didn’t plan every intricate detail, and yes, I’ve changed things around as I started writing, but having a checklist of plot points that need to happen along the way has saved me huge amounts of time that would otherwise been spent wondering where to go next. With the outline kept close at hand, I have a pretty good idea what I’m going to write every time I sit down, and this has allowed me to really boost my output.

While I’m not writing 10,000 words a day (yet, anyway), this one change (combined with previously discussed speed writing techniques) has allowed me to achieve an average of 900 some-odd words per 30 minute #wordmongering session.

Now, if you’re a pantser you’re probably thinking, but I hate outlining. That sort of ruins the point of pantsing. Which would be true, except I’m not saying you have to outline your entire novel (I did, but you don’t have to). 

What I am saying is that before you sit down to write, it helps tremendously if you go in with a good idea as to what is going to happen. For Rachel, it meant writing down a brief list of things that had to happen in the scene she was going to write. For me, it meant looking at the next point on my outline and thinking about how my character would get there and what would happen during the scene before I actually started writing.

And just like that, writing quickly became easier.

What do you think? Do you have any tips for writing quickly?

Writing Goals: How to Meet Them When You Don't Have Time

“Killing time isn't as difficult as it sounds. I can shoot a hundred numbers through the chest and watch them bleed decimal points in the palm of my hand. I can rip the numbers off a clock and watch the hour hand tick tick tick its final tock just before I fall asleep. I can suffocate seconds just by holding my breath. I've been murdering minutes for hours and no one seems to mind.”  — Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me (Page 127)

Photo credit: Plonq on Flickr

A popular grievance amongst writers (and everyone else, to be honest), is about the lack of time in the day. And it's a fair complaint—time seems to race right past us, especially as we do workish non- writing things. Sometimes days go by so quickly that it feels like if you blink, you might just miss a couple hours. 

I'm sure many of you know the feeling. As most writers have other non- writing related jobs and responsibilities (i.e.: parenting, education, work...parenting while going to school AND working, etc.), it can sometimes be difficult to set aside time to write, which in turn can make meeting your writing goals significantly more difficult.Truth is, we're all busy people trying to juggle social life and work and family and writing and all those other things, and sometimes twenty-four hours in a day just doesn't feel like nearly enough time.

But as a rather wise, H. Jackson Brown Jr., said, “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”  (via Writer's Relief's tumblr). 

The key isn't to try to cram more hours into the day (because except on Day Lights Savings, that's impossible)—it's to learn to fully utilize the time that we have. 

You see, we're really good at killing time. Whether it's zoning out in front of the TV or scrolling through Twitter during our breaks, we have a tendency of wasting precious minutes, then wondering where the day has gone. Or we look at the clock and say, "No, I don't have enough time to write before I have to do x" and we go enjoy some time-wasting activities during our free moments. 

But the truth is you really don't need much time to pound out a few hundred words a day. 

I've mentioned Write or Die before, and I'm going to mention it again because I think it's especially helpful when we're short on time. If you don't know what Write or Die is, I explain it in more detail in my secret fast- writing strategy post, but in short, it's an app (available on the web for free) that times your writing session and plays unpleasant noises and makes the screen turn red when you start daydreaming or otherwise do something that is not writing. And the best part is you set your own time (options vary from five minutes to two hours) and word count goal (which you type in yourself). 

So let's say hypothetically, you're going to work but you found you have some extra time before you have to leave. Most of the time, I imagine, those minutes would be spent doing things that don't involve writing. 

However! Those are precious moments that could be spent added some extra words to your WIP. Using Write or Die (or just a normal timer), you can plug in five minutes (or ten, or fifteen, or however long you have) and get some words written. It doesn't sound like a lot of time, and no, I don't expect you to write a thousand words in five minutes (nor should you expect that from yourself), but if you use the extra free minutes scattered throughout the day to write fifty words here and fifty words there, it starts to add up. All you really need are a couple ten to fifteen minute focused writing sessions to get a few hundred words written. 

Writing goals can be easy to meet if you use your time strategically. Because no, we writers aren't always gifted with huge amounts of free time, but as long as we take advantage of the free time we do have, we don't need an abundance of time to keep the momentum in our writing. We just need to use the time we have. 

Do you take advantage of your free time to write? How do you manage your time? 

Time and Priorities for Writers

Photo credit: pOOfkAt on Flickr

So the other day I wrote a post about Why I'm Glad I Joined Twitter in which I basically wrote 500 words about how awesome Twitter is, especially for writers.

However. As awesome as Twitter and other social media sites (hello tumblr and Facebook) are, there is one very scary danger that we writers are particularly vulnerable to: the Time Suck of Doom.

All writers have their own time management challenges. Many of us have a full time job, or are full time students, or full time parents or some combination of all of the above, and then on top of that we're writers and we're putting together a book (or books) and maintaining a blog and popping in to Twitter and Facebook and tumblr to try to keep our web presence from shriveling up and dying, all while trying to remember to eat three square meals a day and keep a healthy lifestyle (oh, and someone needs to do laundry. You should probably get on that).

Point being, writers don't often have an abundance of time— and we rarely have any time to waste.

So when you consider just how easy it is to fall into the trap of spending hours scrolling through your Twitter/tumblr/Facebook feed (what I like to call the Time Suck of Doom), social media can be just as dangerous as it is useful.

Truth is, too much of anything can be a bad thing, and social media is no exception. For writers, our number one priority (after family, bills and remaining generally healthy) must be the writing. It doesn't matter what you're writing, what matters is that you constantly improve it, add to it, practice it until you have a finished manuscript (or four), and then when you've completely polished it and are ready for publication, you keep writing.

Because for writers, there is nothing more important than improving our writing skill. Because yes, the connections you make through social media are fantastic and yes, a web presence is important for writers in this day and age and yes, you do find some really incredible and useful links through social media, but the writing must always come first.

So next time you catch yourself surfing the web/streaming videos/playing XBox when you know you really should be writing that book/blog post/poem/short story, remember what your top priority is as a writer and get back to work.

You can tweet about it later.

What do you do to fight the Time Suck of Doom?

When Writing, Take Your Time

Photo credit: listentothemountains on Flickr

We often talk about writing quickly, editing quickly, reading and revising and getting those word counts down as quickly as humanely possible.

We share secrets about how to write faster, how to make the most of our time as writers, how to go, go, go in a culture that only seems to be speeding up.

And sometimes it's not a bad thing, sometimes the difference between 100 and 1,000 words written in a writing session is directly related to mindset or strategy. Sometimes writing quickly is exactly what we need to finish our WIPs, especially when we're short on time.

But sometimes we need to slow down.

I've already written about how for writers, time is on our side, but I'd like to reiterate something that I think is important because it's something that's easy to forget: we all write at our own pace.

Each of us writers has our own journey— for some of us it takes a couple years to meet our goals, for others it takes over a decade. Some writers write four to five books a year, others take two or three years just to complete one novel. There are writers who self-publish immediately and writers who spend years seeking representation, even long after the advent of indie publishing.

What I'm trying to say is that it doesn't matter how much time it takes for you to reach your goal. It doesn't matter if it takes you a month or a year to write a first draft. It doesn't matter if you spend three years to bring your manuscript to the best it can be, while your writing buddy finishes in a couple months.

What matters is that you take all the time you need to write the very best work that you can.

When you see other writers speeding past you, don't let it get you down. When it takes much longer than you expected to finish your novel, while your family peers over your shoulder, don't let it bother you.

A writer's journey is not a race. It's not about who gets to the finish line first, or how many times they race around you on the track.

A writer's journey is about one thing: meeting your goals on your time. At your pace. At the time that's right for you.

So next time you feel tempted to rush through a writing stage, take a deep breath and remember to take your time. As long as you keep moving forward, one way or another, you'll meet your goals, too.

Have you ever felt like you were taking too long to finish a writing stage? What did you do to combat it?

Time is on Your Side

Photo credit: kamera.obskura on Flickr

At the beginning of my writing career, I was racing against the clock.

I read about authors like Christopher Paolini who wrote the first draft of Eragon when he was 15 and had it published traditionally five years later at the age of 20. I devoured books and read so-called “instant” best-sellers and wondered what they were doing that I wasn't.

I worried that I was taking too long.

It wasn’t until much later, after rounds of rejections and trunking novel after novel that I realized that time wasn’t working against me—it was working for me.

The fact of the matter is it takes time to hone your craft. It takes years of practice and writing and reading and getting feedback and writing and reading until your skill level matches your passion. Stop running and take the time to enjoy the ride.

Don’t rush the writing—the process of discovery, of improving, of falling in love with your characters and the world you’ve created is beautiful. Take the time to marvel at what you’ve created.

Don’t rush the editing—as they say, writing is rewriting and there is just as much to be learned from the editing as there is from the writing.

Don’t rush the submissions—take the time to make sure your book is the best that it can be before you send it out. Research agents and guidelines and take the time to personalize your queries—it makes a difference.

Don’t rush the publication—I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: please don’t publish for the sake of publishing. Go indie if you think it’s the right choice for you, but don’t slap your book up on Amazon just because you can.

Slow down and remember that time is on your side—the more time you take to improve your craft, the better prepared you’ll be when your time to shine comes.

Have you ever been tempted to rush through part of the process? Share you experience in the comments! 

Finding the Time: A Challenge

First and foremost, a million thanks to the amazing Lyn Midnight for presenting me with The Versatile Blogger Award yesterday. YAY! I feel like I just won an Oscar. I’d like to thank the Academy…

Kidding! On a more serious note, I’ll be passing it along myself later in the week to three fantastic bloggers. So more on that later!

Now on to the main attraction.

Many of those who’ve never written a novel like to think that those who have must have all day to just sit around and write. “How nice,” they think. “I wish I had the time to sit down and write a book.”

Truth is, we don’t have any more time than anyone else. As much as we’d like it, writers aren’t gifted with the ability to cram more hours into the day (though if anyone figures that one out, totally let me know).

This is no secret to us writers. Finding the time to get words on paper isn’t an easy task. If you’re a student, it means writing before (and sometimes during) class. If you’re working full-time, it means getting up early to get some words in that WIP, or staying up late in the night to finish that chapter. When your friends are going out for the weekend, sometimes it means staying home to edit yesterday’s writing.

Fact of the matter is, we all have lives. We have friends and family and work and school and a million other responsibilities that compete with the time we have for writing. Some days it’s impossible to get anything in, and that’s ok.

The best writing advice I ever read was simple: make a writing quota and stick to it.

For me, it’s writing 1,500 words a day or 10,500 words a week. If I miss a day, which happens, it’s fine because I know I can make it up another day. As long as I make 10,500 words a week, I’m happy. And if I don’t? That’s ok too; I can make it up the next week.

The daily/weekly writing quota has helped me finish many a manuscript. It keeps me honest, and it saves me from the guilt of wondering whether or not I wrote enough that day.

Even more recently however, I discovered something that changed the way I approach writing completely. There used to be a time when I’d sit down and write until I met my quota. This was painful. Some days it’d be easy and I’d be done in no time. Other times I’d sit at the computer for hours, checking every five minutes to see how many words I’d written. This led to screaming in frustration when after an hour I only wrote 500 words (or on really rough days, even less *shudder*).

It turns out, you DON’T have to write it all at once. Whoa.

Let me say that again: you DON’T have to write your quota all in one sitting.

My new method was stemmed from a little beauteous Twitter hashtag known as #wordmongering. I intend to write a full post on this later (because it’s just THAT amazing), but it’s basically a thread where writers get together at the beginning of every hour and write for a half hour, then compare word counts. We cheer each other on and there’s virtual confetti.

Ok, a LOT of virtual confetti. Like an ocean of virtual multicolored strips of paper. Though that may be partially (read: completely) my fault.

Anyway, its effectiveness blew me away. Writing in spurts, it turns out, is much less stressful than trying to get it done at once. With just a few half-hour rounds a day, I’ve been able to get my word goal down without a problem.

So. If you haven’t assigned yourself a word count, I challenge you to do it. Try it for a week. It could be a 100 words a day or 5,000 words a week or 15,000 words a week. Whatever it is, stick to your guns and get it done.

You just might be surprised by how rewarding it is.

So let’s see it! What are YOUR word count goals this week?