by Heidi Main, @HeidiMain
In a July pep talk, Rachel Hauck stated that even if you are unpublished you should practice writing to a deadline.
The reason why is because when you sign a contract you will be on deadline. When that day happens, happy dance, you’ll need to be able to draw from prior experience to accept deadlines from your editor. If you’ve been practicing deadlines in your writing life, you’ll:
- Know how to make a schedule and keep to it
- Have a sense of what you can accomplish in a certain period of time
- Have a sense of what elements within the writing life take more time for you
- Know how to balance living life and writing a novel
Here are some tips to practice writing to a deadline:
- Break up tasks. For example, write the novel of my heart, is not on my TO DO list. It is too overwhelming as one line item. But things like rough draft of h/h SEQ, internal & external GMC’s, write the h/h DMS in paragraph form, sketch chapter one, rough draft chapter one, macro edit chapter one, micro edit chapter one, and so on. Break up your tasks into bite size pieces that make sense to you.
- Use the Deep Work method. Susan May Warren recently spoke about deep work (the talk is in the folder Peptalks – Writer’s Life and is called Deep Work). Okay, we can all agree that when God made Susie, he broke the mold. She is amazing! All the writing she accomplishes (five published novels a year), all the craft teaching and marketing she does, and she invests quality time with her family. I learned two big things from that pep talk. First is that I am easily interrupted and I allow it. Second is that if I don’t put down my goals on paper, little will get accomplished. The easily interrupted thing is something I need to work on. It’ll take focus and dedication on my part. I know I’m a work in progress. The other item I learned, put my goals down on paper, is something I can implement immediately.
- Use the block management technique. In the Deep Work pep talk, Susie talked about how she uses a block management technique to schedule her time. Her planner goes into detail with this method, but if you want a simple technique ~ create a word document, insert a 7 X 1 table and print. You now have a column for every day of the week. If you only write on weekdays, make the table 5 X 1. For each day, I figure out what writing time I have available. If I am meeting a friend for lunch, running errands, going to a doctor appointment, have online critique meetings, all those things make it onto the schedule. I take the leftover time and create blocks for writing tasks. It’s a great way to see an overview of your entire day and week.
Hopefully you are convinced that you should write to a deadline. Doing so will tremendously help you when you receive that hard-earned contract. Consider using these three tips to create a schedule for yourself. We aren’t all created equal, what works for one might not work for another. Keep trying formats and ideas until you hit upon what works for you and your life. Now, as Susie says, go write something brilliant!
Aspiring novelist Heidi Main writes contemporary inspirational fiction. Her cozy novels reflect the quaint and simpler time from her childhood in a small upstate New York town. She began her career in the computer field, then operated a Jazzercise franchise, before developing a passion for writing. Central North Carolina is where she lives with her amazing husband and backyard of well-fed birds. Her interests include curling up with a good book, bird watching, taking walks, and gardening. You can connect with her on her website, Facebook, and Twitter.