Finding the Time

Sometimes life imitates art. Today, life is imitating a blog post.

I had already planned on writing about finding time to write for this week's blog entry. But as things have turned out, I am running behind on time. Thus, a mid-afternoon post instead of an early morning post.

But I am behind on my blog because I followed the advice below about writing The Jewelry of Grace.

Upon realizing there was time to work on my second novel, I put less important things aside.

The Jewelry of Grace will be released at the end of this month. Yesterday afternoon, I received my feedback from my two Beta readers. They both enjoyed the story but found a couple of errors and areas where a different word choice would help.

There were no large problems, but enough quick fixes to make the final round of revisions a couple of hours. I knew I still had a blog to work on, and I knew that there were three NFL playoff games on television (what can I say, I'm a sports junkie). But both those things had to be set aside to make sure I stayed on target to have my book ready by deadline.

This same approach applied when I was writing my draft or making earlier edits. I had to set aside less important matters to make sure I stayed on schedule. Sometimes that meant something as simple as not scrolling through social media at night and using those ten extra minutes to finish a scene. Sometimes it meant not starting the next book on my reading list because I knew I had a chapter that needed several revisions.

But it's not always that simple. If you could set everything aside for your book, novels would not be so time-consuming. But more important things should not be set aside. If your novel is important to you, hopefully you can find a handful of things in your life that you can set aside to work on it. But, more importantly, hopefully you have some things in your life that you would never set aside for writing.

Time with your family. Time with your closest friends. Doing your job (unless your writing is your job). Church. Baseball.

Just threw that last one in there. But I actually did schedule my writing around Philadelphia Phillies games.

There has to be a balance in the time management of writing. An author cannot let every Netflix series or social occasion be a distraction from writing. At the same time, a person should not let writing keep them from helping their children with school work or making their spouse their morning coffee.

Sometimes, this approach will leave only a few minutes here or there for writing. Keep a file on your phone for book notes so when one of those moments arises, you are ready to type or record your ideas.

Other times, you may get the hour-long break that you've been dreaming of. Keep the distractions away and get back down to business.

When you're done with the day's writing, you can catch the football game or build Legos with your child. When you're done with the day, you'll know you've made a step forward. And when you're done with the book, you'll know it was all time well spent.

Next week: Is this really the time for publishing a book?