Over the last few years, I have found it harder and harder to carve time for myself to write. While sometimes I was able to sneak in a poem (or 30 during April, due to a supportive poetry month writing group), I particularly struggled with focusing in on longer manuscript length projects.
As someone who is employed in the writing industry, running Authors Publish and the Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish, everyone assumed I had lots of time to write, but in fact most of my days are filled to the brim with other tasks in a way where working on my own writing often feels selfish. My students’ projects often feel like the priority.
In October I decided to budget two hours a day to write, no matter what happened, during the weekday. That did not happen. It turns out that I was not very good at sticking to my own plan if an urgent request came in from someone else.
Then after about a week of trying and only once managing to write for more than hour, I bought an agenda.
It is no different then most agendas, with every month broken down by day. The main difference is what I’ve started to add to it. I’m not putting in appointments or work meetings. At the end of each day, I open it up and share how much time I spent writing that particular day. I am now hitting the two-hour mark regularly, and it’s all kept track of, in a satisfying and meaningful way.
It’s not what the agenda was really designed to do, after all mine is a record of things I’ve already completed, rather than what is upcoming and still needs to be done. But it does seem to be working for me.
It’s made me more accountable to myself. I can clearly keep track of which days I’m writing and which days I’m not. I am also very clear cut in terms of what I’m tracking. For example, this article was written for work, and therefore it doesn’t count towards my two hours a day.
Now, I won’t really know if this has a lasting impact, and helps in a long term way till next November, but if it does, I will check back in. I do think, based on the few weeks that I’ve tried it, that it is a worthwhile strategy for most writers to at least try, especially if they have full-time jobs, and other time-consuming responsibilities. If you want to make more time in your life for writing, it may well be worth trying.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2024 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.
