Writer Deadlines - Contracts with Yourself...

 

The clock. It's ticking. You hear it. And with each successive tick, the sound resonates, reverberates, and ripples out louder, and louder, until each tick becomes a sonorous bong.

In your mind, the end time, that deadline — your literal writing career — well, it might as well be strapped to a bomb. You know you have to make it, or break it, as a writer.

Yes, that's right, peeps. Writing deadlines,

• need to exist, be penned into reality, and
  
• need to be seriously felt in order for you to take finishing your book to its literal end.
  

Simply put: if you don't have a deadline, you won't have a book.

Hobby In = Hobby Out // % of Effort Expended = % of Result Received

Law of the Successful Writer: If you don't take your writing dead seriously, who else will?

The To-Do:You work backwards to establish the amount of work you need to complete each week, each day, in order to complete your book. It's simple math.

I'll give you an example: I, myself, need to complete 3 books this year in the new genre series I'm creating. I've taken the total number of words/book and the 4 out of 7 days in the week I plan on writing on that series, and through simple math determined in those 4 writing sessions I need to pound out a 550 minimum to 1000 maximum word count per session.

Knowing this, now I can schedule all my other writing/editing/social media work I must get done in a week, and I plan out each work day to the hour (based on my # of hours/day), so that everyday I hit my office, I know exactly what I need to accomplish.

What this Writing Schedule does for Me:  

• eliminates the guess work out of each work day
• lowers my ruminating on what I should do to successfully complete each work day, which
  
• lowers my stress level, which
• ups my energy I can use to write my books.

A Self-Fulfilling Prophesy.

Does this schedule allow for life's unexpected? In a way, yes, as on those sessions I plunk down closer to 1000 words on that genre series, I am piling up bonus sessions, of sorts, so if my life takes me away from my keyboard, my word accumulation isn't suffering.

Is this a perfect system? No, of course, not. But it is a workable system, which allows me to know what I'm to work on next. Without an actual daily plan, all writers have are untethered hopes that things, our writing work, will get done, and that amounts to unfinished books.

HOMEWORK: I need you to:

• figure out the total word count needed to finish your book draft.
• establish the # of sessions you can actually attend per week. Be realistic. Know your limits.
  
• divide those total words by those # of sessions to get your per session word count.
• estimate, by past sessions, the # of minutes/hours it will take you to write that word count.
  
• proceed to fill out your weekly writing schedule where those sessions are penned in.

And, most importantly, take these daily deadlines as written in blood, as contracts with yourself that can never be broken, barring emergencies or health issues. And hear that ticking deadline clock as those mighty bongs resonate out, your writer career, strapped to those deadlines, that will surely blow to smithereens if those deadlines are not met.

Success, achievement, results made as planned. It's as simple as that.

Are you ready to sign your contract? Get your blood pen out. It's GO time.

~~~

PLEASE NOTE: Stop Not Writing... Now will post weekly, on Tuesdays, for the foreseeable future, so that I might meet my writing goals, as well. We are all in this together. Let's get writing.

Write For Yourself, First...

 

What If...

Instead of increasing the profit and prestige of Zuckerberg and Dorsey the moment you wake up,

You augment your own, first!

 

I'm going out on another limb here and guessing the moment you wake up, the first thing you get "done" is looking at your social media, and responding to said.

 

Yay!!!

Mark and Jack are SO proud of you!

You are giving them another billion, as they romp in the crystal clear waters off Kauai.

 

*Sigh....*

Seriously?

 

How 'bout we transform your priorities?

How 'bout we make a To-Do List that for each day 

THESE CERTAIN THINGS MUST BE DONE BEFORE I get my social media Dopamine fix.

 

Yes. I know...

Your needy approval quotient is down a quart since you've been sleeping...

So sad am I. Please hand me a tissue. Thanks.

 

Do we want to be writers?

Do we want to start, work through and finish that book???

 

There is no romantic anything in prioritizing your life.

If you want to accomplish goals before you croak, it's a Must-Do.

And what better day than today to begin!

 

For myself, I have daily To-Dos that must get done before I'm allowed my first break of the morning, before my other, larger projects can begin. They are daily writing micro To-Dos, and they all need to be done by about 11 a.m. I usually start working around 9 a.m.

Then, for a reward, a coffee break or early lunch, where I daydream out my picture window or grab some rays on my deck, readying my mind for the bigger projects of the day AND where I will respond to any necessary social media.

Then, from about 1 p.m. on until the close of my work day at around 4-5 p.m., I work on bigger projects - editing a WIP, completing a gig contract, writing on articles or on my next WIP. The project priority/deadline dictates what that line-up is each day.

 

For those of you who work outside of writing, you can swap out all that social media scrolling for completing your writing sessions. No matter what your day holds or what you do for income, there IS ALWAYS free time that can be swapped into productive time AND STILL have relaxation moments in your day. You just have to get creative. And you're a writer, right? Get creative already!

 

When I finish a To-Do, it gets crossed off the list as a visual reward, and I move onto the next. No rocket science here, peeps, just methodical plodding along through the day's duties, never using up mental energy to gripe about the list. It has to get done. I swallow that reality. I get it done. After all, I'm working for myself here, not Mark or Jack.

 

Don't throw excuses at me in the form of rotten tomatoes.

I duck every time.

And I've heard them all before, and they are all lame.

 

My day's end reward, especially during this pandemic, has been watching the news or sitting on my deck, sipping a cocktail while the dinner cooks, usually around 5 p.m. Prior to Covid-19, it may have been meeting with a friend for a drink or going swimming at my community pool.

 

My point is, you must develop a To-Do List that benefits YOU, not the zillionaires out there in Ethernet Land. Sure, social media has its place, but it won't be your buddy when you're despondent over not completing your writing dreams.

 

HOMEWORK: sit down tonight, and formulate that daily micro/bigger project list, to include breaks and reward times, like exist in any job.

 

CHOOSE to be disciplined about your future.

CHOOSE to look at writing as a serious métier, and not a hobby.

CHOOSE to live for yourself instead of waiting for Mark Z or Jack D to send you an invitation in the mail for you to permanently stay in their Hawaiian Guest House. ;-)