Monday, June 21, 2010

Establishing A Writing Schedule

Milwaukee was gorgeous and wonderful! One more city to add onto my list of places where I would like to live at some point in my life. Even if it is in Wisconsin, the land of cheeseheads and bad drivers. (I kid.) But now, I am back and it's time to get down to business again. Plus, I missed all of the corn and flatness that is Illinois, obviously.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm guessing that for a lot of up and coming writers, writing is not the only thing they have to do during the day. No matter where you are in life, your day is probably packed with other activities.

I think writers are such determined and brave people for doing what they do. I mean, check out this. It's been bookmarked in my computer for days when I feel like whining that I don't have enough time to write. I like to write. I want to write. But I like and want to do a lot of other things too. And my writing probably wouldn't be very interesting either if I sat around and did nothing except hammer words onto a page every day.

The question is, when do you write? I know some writers who write every day. I know some writers who write every other day. Some writers try for a couple times a week. Still other writers go on a dry spell for a couple of weeks and then have a burst of productivity and bang out 10,000 words at a time. Some writers write in the morning. Others, after everyone in the house has gone to bed.

I've tried both. I've written in the morning and when I've gotten inspired at 2 am. The hard part about summer is I don't have a set schedule of classes/work every day (my internship is very fluid with work times as long as I get a certain number of hours in) so I have different free time every day depending on when I decide to get up. It's hard to write at the same time every day, even though I've heard this is the best way to do it. 

What do you think? When do you write every day? When is your favorite time to write? And if you had a choice in your schedule, when would you prefer to write?

Oh, also, because I am basically Rick Riordan's professional book pimp unpaid one-woman marketing department, check out the cover for The Lost Hero (out October 12)!

5 comments:

  1. I work full time, so my "real" writing has to wait until evening (I do some writing at work in slow times, but only things that can be easily dropped/picked back up). My standard writing time is 10:30pm to midnight Tuesday through Sunday, with Monday nights off (manicure night). I do work on edits earlier in the evening, but the set time is when most of the real writing happens.

    If I had my druthers, I'd edit/plan/outline, etc in the afternoon, when my brain is kind of "primed" for that activity. I'm a night person though, so I'll probably always do the bulk of my draft writing late at night.

    Good luck finding some sort of schedule for yourself... :-)

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  2. Scheduling has been my biggest problem. Back in college, I went through spurts - no writing for weeks, then lots of it consistently for a few weeks. This was always at night because that's usually when I try to "study," which inevitably causes me to really want to write. Haha.

    Now, I work full-time, so I can only write at night and on the weekends. The problem is at the end of the work day and after my commute home, I'm like mentally pooped. Traffic in SoCal is as mind-numbing and soul-sucking as everyone makes it out to be, and I don't even take the freeway! So yeah, it's a motivation thing for me.

    I'd prefer to write in the mornings when I'm not tired, but that's not possible with work. I did the morning thing when I was still unemployed and then part-time, and I found I really enjoyed it (more than late nights). Then again, my mornings were like 10am.

    OMG, I got so excited when I saw the cover yesterday!!! It's more in the style of Red Pyramid cover, no?

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  3. Well, as of now, I have all the time in the world, what with it currently being summer and all. So I basically write when the urge strikes me (er, that would be often. :p).

    During the school year, though, I usually had the tendency to squeeze writing in on the weekends, or if I knew there wasn't going to be a particularly important test the next day, I'd stay up all night until the early morning writing.

    (And then dragged my face around all day at school. :D).

    I still prefer to write at that time, as it's when I feel most inspired and comfortable.

    Also: KJFOPDJK THE LOST HERO I AM EXCITED AAAHHHHH!!!!

    Ahem.

    (Also also: I am not dead. And need to finish Three.)

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  4. Jamie & Krispy - Sounds like I should probably get a schedule down, haha. It's interesting how people like to write at different times of the day. I think the best writing I've produced has been at night, yet given the choice, I always want to write during the day. Afternoon's my favorite.

    theinkymuse - DUDE, I was starting to get concerned that you basically dropped off the face of the planet. Glad to know you are still alive and kicking.

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  5. Haha, yeah I did for a while because the last three months of school were like busy as hell. But I'm back to this bloggin'-writin'-readin' business now. :D

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