Five Ways to Get More Writing Time

Time can fly when you are on a deadline.

The Psalmist said, “LORD, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is.” (Psalm 39:4, New Living Translation) These days seem to be racing and I'm aware of how time flies and feel the need to make the most of each day.

Each of us have the same 24 hours. Yet some people seem to get more done in those hours than others. How are you using those hours for your writing? In this article, I want to detail five ways to get more time for your writing.

1. Get Aware of How You Spend Your Time. It's easy to waste time if you aren't aware of how you spend it. Take a day or two and keep a brief running list of your activities. This list will help you eliminate and improve your use of time. 

2. Consider your writing expectations. Do you plan to write in the mornings or in the evenings or when? Do you expect to get a large block of time to concentrate and write a lot of words? As you think about your expectations, think about if you have put any artificial expectations such as I will write for two hours without pause. That expectation is not realistic. Maybe you have said to yourself that you need ___ minutes to write. Can you write off and on throughout the day on a project? Be willing to experiment and change to see what improvements you can make in this process. Each of us are different but at times we create artificial (and wrong) expectations for our writing. 

3. Use good writing tools.  Some friends do their writing in a coffee shop while others need silence. Would a new tool help you increase your writing? I've mentioned my AlphaSmart 3000 which I bought on ebay for about $25. It is old technology but allows me to write on the go and easily change my location. I've written on airplanes and in libraries and many other places. Maybe a new tool will help you get more writing time. 

4. Apply the lessons from your time monitoring. Awareness is the first step but then you need to make changes to your use of time from what you learned. For example, if you spend several hours a day on Facebook or any other social media site, you can make some different choices. Maybe you love watching sports and that is consuming a lot of time or some favorite show on television. 

5. Be committed to moving forward no matter what happens. When you slip and waste time, it's easy to beat yourself up and even give up. Each of us have schedule interruptions and get sick and have a car break down or countless other interruptions. Be dtermined to move forward and meet your deadlines whether personal or from an editor. 

Each of us have the same time and space limitations. Yet each of us can continue to grow and improve in this area. I know I have a lot to learn and continue to learn about how to manage my time.
What steps are you taking these days with your time? Let me know in the comments below.

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Reading Lists & Destination Bookstores

While I've read a high volume of books for many years, I don't have a reading list. Do you? I was fascinated to see the article in The New Yorker about Art Garfunkel's reading list which he has faithfully kept for almost forty years. As Nick Paumgarten points out the Garfunkel Library begins in June 1968 then chronologically lists 1023 books that Garfunkel has read.

If you check out the list you will see that Garfunkel is committed to reading classics and reading for pleasure. I loved this quote about his commitment to reading: "I read for the reading pleasure, not for the gold star," [Garfunkel] he went on. "Reading is a way to take downtime and make it stimulating. If you're in the waiting room of a dentist's office and don't want to twiddle your thumbs, you turn to Tolstoy."

I identified with this statement since for many years I've used spare moments any place to pull out a book and plunge into the topic. Yet the idea never crossed my mind to keep track of the various books which I've read. About the only time I can think of even using a reading list was during my final years of high school. I used a college preparatory reading list to give me ideas for classics and books which I read for pleasure but also wove into my high school assignments. It was a good step and gave me some needed exposure to those books before college.

Besides this article where Art Garfunkel is declared the King of Reading, my local newspaper included this article about nine destination bookstores (which I found repeated in the Chico, California paper using Google). The diversity is fascinating and I've only been in two of the nine stores: The Tattered Cover in Denver, Colorado and Powell's City of Books in Portland, Oregon. Each experience was special and unique. I agree with travel editor Beth J. Harpaz about getting list in Powell's bookstore. You do need a map for the complicated twists and turns in that place.

For many years, I've read about The Strand in New York City and actually stayed near Union Square for the American Society of Journalists and Authors meetings but going to that classic bookstore did not get into my plans. I'm eager to see if I can get to it in April during my next trip to New York City.

My point in this entry about The Writing Life is to point out the necessity of being committed to reading books on a regular basis and if you reach one of these destination bookstores, to poke around inside them.