Now that I'm on summer break, I'm making a concentrated effort to use the days revising and finishing up my third novel. And like most writers, I have a day job that I love.
So I found this article, How To Keep Your Day Job From Killing Your Writing Career, most insightful. For all of you aspiring to finish a writing project, you'll appreciate the link I found via Practicing Writing.
For my first novel, I used time after work/gym and some weekends to write. For the second, I was faithful to a 4 am wake up time to write a couple hours before work.
But as I advanced in my day job, and needed to do more planning and managing the work of others along with longer work days, I began using morning hours for gym and evening hours for planning day job work or sleeping. Those are no-no habits for someone managing a day job and a writing career.
So, I'm doing the summer break catch-up now. But if I had my way (and just putting into the Universe my intention), the 4 am writing wake up is the best and most manageable plan for me.
Other dual-career folks... what has been helpful for you? Or those of you aspiring to finish a writing project... what can you do more of to make your career dreams move forward?
fs
5 comments:
Hey thanks for the link, I hope I can put some of that into practice, I lack writing discipline and suffer from the eternal re-writing syndrome: instead of moving forward, I re-read what I've already written, it never satisfies me and I try to improve it on and on. I guess what I need is to follow the stream of consciousness (instead of self-consciousness) and not to look back until I have a first full draft.
Does this happen to you too?
Anyway, thanks for your books.
Thanks Fred!
I am basically planning on doing some early morning writing or on days when I don't have class since I'm working on my master's. I just need to schedule time and see how that works out.
Good post! I'll check out these books. please send your snail mail address to me at carleen (at) carleenbrice (dot) com so I can send you a I heart black authors button.
I'm going to check that book out. And I can relate to your post. I've been trying to finiish book 3 for awhile. But juggling the day job, plus school, and writing was tough. School's over in 6 weeks and I'm anxious to get back to the 4am writing schedule I followed for book one. Best wishes on getting your #3 done!
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