The Writing Schedule

After the Writing Boot-Camp Ian and I held a couple weeks back, I’ve been thinking hard about what kind of schedule will work best to really get productivity out of me. I’ve settled on the idea that two sessions would make me most productive, giving me a chance to get out, get some sun, work my muscles, and ponder what I’ll write the next time I sit down.

I want this schedule to be effective enough to churn out books, and at the same time be doable during a work week. Here it is;

2 hours after breakfast and a morning walk, before starting other aspects of the day (such as school).

2 hours after an evening exercise and dinner, before bed.

The daily word goal is 2000 words, which means 1,000 a session. Thanks to an excel spreadsheet I used to track my progress during bootcamp, I learned that I can still average 645 words on my BAD hours. That means the goal is a good minimum-benchmark if I feel like I need to quit early.

2,000 words a day = about 10 weeks a novel. That’s about 5 novel sessions a year. Granted, some of those sessions might be editing instead of drafting, or outlining the next book, but that’s the kind of progress I want to be able to expect out of myself every year.

So I started today. I slept late, and after breakfast realized I only had 1 hour before Sara came over to run some errands. I sat down, said a prayer before beginning, and followed Stephen King’s advice to “shut the door”. I busted out 1,000 in that hour, easy-peasy, not counting the freewriting session I did for 6 minutes at the beginning to get my typing-fingers going.

So, it’s working. The trick is to make it routine.