Many people want to write a novel, memoir or nonfiction book, but a lot of them never complete their writing projects. If you find yourself floundering, or in the middle of a creative dry spell, you are not alone. But you can achieve your writing goals, through planning and self-discipline.
It takes time, energy and emotional wherewithal to write a book or script, and most of us live busy, stressful lives. So the task can seem daunting. But there was a reason you started your writing project. You obviously have something to say. It’s worth it to get it out on the page, whether you plan to share your writing or if it is something you are writing for yourself. The desire is there. You just need to figure out how to stay with it through the difficult parts. Some people are naturally motivated, and if they set out to do something, nothing is going to get in the way. But a lot of us need a little help.
Goals
A big part of accomplishing any large task is setting goals. These need to be measurable, so that you can concretely work towards them. If you want to save money to buy a car (end goal), you could set aside a certain amount of money every week (weekly goal) or you might decide to work half an hour of overtime every day (daily goal). The math adds up over time, and you either do or do not wind up with a car. Having that car in mind can help you deny little treats for yourself, or resist going home early, because you have a clear reason for WHY you want the car, and HOW to achieve it.
With writing, this goal-setting process can be more ephemeral. What do you actually want do with your writing? Why did you even decide to become a writer in the first place? Are you writing to pursue publication? That’s a completely different goal than writing for self-improvement, or recording family history.
Getting to the heart of your why is a truly personal process. Do you have a desire to write, even if no one ever saw your writing? Are you attracted to the sheer art of putting words on paper? Then you are halfway to finding a WHY that isn’t only measurable by the praise of your successful prose (through either money or accolades). I’m not saying that getting paid for your writing isn’t nice, but you can’t count on it. Even good books aren’t always a commercial success. And there are a lot easier ways to make money than being a writer. Knowing that, you will likely need a more powerful motivation than the thought of money or praise to get you through writing your first book, through long nights struggling with a sagging middle, or through the pressures that come from not knowing if your foreshadowing is subtle enough to keep readers from guessing the ending, or what that ending is even supposed to be.
Whatever goals you choose, they need to be something within your control. It isn’t fair to yourself to set a goal of, “I’m going to sell fifteen short stories this year.” You have no control over editorial tastes, whether there are other stories similar to yours being considered at the same time, or if slots are being filled with writers who are veterans of the magazine you’re targeting. You can, however, set a goal to write, edit and submit fifteen stories, with the intent of publishing them. You don’t have to be that ambitious. You could set a goal to write and submit one story, and make that story the best writing you can.
So much writing advice pushes publication as the only goal. There are many benefits to writing just for writing’s sake. You can process things that have happened in your life, or tell yourself fictional stories that include the themes you need to heal. You can imagine tough scenarios and decide how you would cope. You can have the personal success of having completed something.
Do you find any parts of your personal WHY in these benefits? Attempt to write this out in a statement you can keep at the top of your writing document, or printed out over your desk.
Under that, write out your writing goal. The sheer act of writing down a goal increases the likelihood that you will accomplish it.
Finding Time to Write
It’s one thing to have a dream or idea to write a book, and another to set manageable goals for your writing. It’s an even bigger challenge to sit down and actually do the writing.
Most people have commitments to day jobs and/or families. This can make it difficult to prioritize writing time, especially if you don’t have an editor giving you a deadline. It can be a lot easier for everyone involved if you set out dedicated time to write. That way, it isn’t a surprise when you retreat to your computer, and your friends and family can know which time periods will be unwelcome for distractions. Carving out specific time can help you commit to your projects as well. By telling your loved ones that you will be writing at specific times makes you accountable for actually writing at those times. And they may be able to provide support. For example, if there are children in the house, a spouse, family member or friend may be able to watch them during your writing time. But that person won’t know you need help if you don’t tell them about your project.
It’s easiest to share your writing plan once you have it down in concrete terms. Alot time for writing, editing, and (if you wish to share your writing) submitting to traditional publishers or learning how to self-publish.
Setting Parameters
Do you even know how long it will take you to finish the first draft of a writing project? Writers write at different speeds, and some projects are more complex than others, so there isn’t really an easy answer for that.
First, you need some idea of the project’s expected wordcount. If you are writing for publication, you can gauge this by looking at the wordcount of similar titles. Sometimes the publisher will actually state the desired wordcount right in their guidelines. They are quite serious about these limits and will likely not consider pieces that fall outside of them. If a magazine says articles for a column need to be under 2,000 words, make sure that’s all you give them. Short story wordcounts vary wildly, depending on the magazine or website. Some may cap stories at 2,000 or 6,000 words, while others will accept stories up to 20,000 or 30,000. For books (both fiction and nonfiction), most come in at under 100,000 words (unless you are writing science fiction or fantasy, which can be much higher). Genres such as romance can be as low as 55,000 words – though you may get more words if you are writing in a specialized sub-genre, such as regency romance.
If you are writing for only yourself or for your family, or if you intend to self-publish, you obviously won’t have wordcount limits set for you. But you should impose your own limits on the manuscript. What are you trying to accomplish with it? How big do you want it to be? You can’t figure out how much time you need to allot to finish a project until you really understand what that project is.
So how long will your project take? You can estimate, depending on your writing pace.
You need less than two thousand words a day to get a finished first draft of a short novel in a month. (50,000 – 60,000 words.)
You need less than 3,500 words a day to finish a longer novel in a month. (90,000 – 110,000 words.)
You need a page a day to have a 365 page novel in a year. (Estimated at 300 words per page, that’s roughly 110,000 words.)
Of course, that is just the first draft. You will also need to allot time to edit your work. But it takes significantly less time to edit a completed project than to edit intermittently.
Does the project require significant research? This is often the case of novels set in other time periods or geographic locations. Nonfiction books may need interviews with subjects, and a study of titles already published in the subject area. Add the time needed to complete this to your estimate.
Setting a Schedule
It’s difficult to accomplish a large project without having a timeline, and a schedule for when each task along the timeline needs to be completed. Once you know how much effort needs to go into your project, and roughly how long you can expect it to take, you will be able to track your progress.
Setting a writing schedule helps you commit to your writing time. It can be easy to say that you need 10,000 words written by the end of the week, but where will you find the time to write them? If there’s no time set aside specifically for writing, it can be easy to get caught up in other things, with the assumption that you will make up the needed words tomorrow or the next day. Then you get to the end of the week and realize you have written zero words.
Some writers prefer to count the time they have been working. (For example, Here’s a four hour time block on Wednesday for writing, and a two hour time block on Friday, working around other scheduled tasks.) Others prefer to track by word count, no matter how long the writing session takes. (For example, I need 3,000 words each day this week, but yesterday I got 5,000, so today I need a minimum of 1,000 to be on track for the week.)
However you plan to schedule your writing time, write it down. (Which, again, makes you more likely to commit to it.) Post your schedule somewhere where you can see it. Share it with anyone in your household you want to give you accountability and support. Even if they are reluctant at first, seeing the work you are putting into your writing projects can sometimes win them over to embrace your journey as a writer.
To the extent your other commitments allow, keep your schedule consistent. If you start writing at the same time every day, or multiple days a week, you may find yourself looking forward to that time. If you can’t schedule your writing sessions at the same time, look for other cues that you can give your brain at the start of each session that now is the time to be creative. Do you need a hot beverage? A specific pen? To sit at a certain table that has good natural light? To leave your home and go to a coffee shop?
Much like when someone goes to an office job, clocks in to do their work, then clocks out, a lot about productivity has to do with mindset. The same person in work mode at the office can often shift into a more social mode the minute they leave the building. If you are in “work mode” for your writing sessions, it’s a lot easier to take them seriously – and to be productive. You’re at that coffee shop to work on your projects, not people watch or surf the Internet. There’s a specific time when your writing session will be over. And then you can people watch to your heart’s content.
In general, you should put the tasks that are most important to you on your calendar first – be they writing, day job, or family and social obligations — and work around them. There’s a common illustration where you take a container and fill it partway with sand and then try to fit in some pebbles and a couple of tennis balls. Of course, the tennis balls don’t fit. But if you re-order the experiment and put in the tennis balls first, then the pebbles and finally the sand, the sand fills in around the larger objects and everything fits. Only you can decide what those tennis balls represent. But if writing isn’t one of them, you are unlikely to complete long writing projects.
When Time is Limited
Short stories, articles, poems – these can all be done with smaller amounts of available time. If you are at a place where writing can’t be one of your priorities, finding the time to work on these can be easier. It is more discouraging to start a full-length memoir and not have time to work on it than it is to admit what you really have time to complete is a half dozen personal essays.
But if writing is one of your “tennis balls,” how can you sneak in time to give priority to finishing a longer project, or to consistently complete shorter projects? If your day job and family take up most of your time, you may have to get creative.
Can you write:
- Early in the Morning – You may have to get up an hour earlier in order to write before work or school, or before the rest of your household wakes up, demanding attention and providing distractions.
- Late at Night – You might need to set your writing sessions for when you get home from work or school, or after other members of your household have gone to bed.
- While Doing Repetitive Tasks – Can you dictate while you fold the laundry?
- While Commuting – As long as you’re not driving, obviously. Folks have completed entire novels on their phones while riding the bus.
- 10 minutes at a time – I know a writer who carries a notebook and uses a stopwatch to record writing time throughout the day. Can you snatch time while waiting in line or in a waiting room, on your lunch hour at work or school, when the kids are napping, or during the ads while watching a video? Whatever your circumstances, you likely have some down time.
Limiting Distractions
During a writing session, it can be easy to get sidetracked. For example, writing in a coffee shop or internet café isn’t for everyone. If you find yourself listening to other people’s conversations instead of hitting your target word count, maybe you should change venue. If there are distractions at home as well, you might try going to a library.
Some writers choose a desk at home, facing a blank wall. Even a window can be too tempting and destroy the needed focus. This, of course, is much easier if you have a dedicated home office. Even if you don’t, try to create a dedicated space for your writing, so that others know that when you are in that space, even if it is a certain corner of the dining table, you are writing and should not be distracted.
Even when there aren’t external distractions, it is far too easy to create your own. For example, some may spend time imagining the worst that could go wrong with the project at hand, or a writing career in general, when that time would clearly be better spent getting words on the page. Or some may get caught up daydreaming about book launches and signing copies when the book hasn’t even been written yet.
It is even easier to lose track of time when distracted by more passive activities. Particularly screen time. It is so much easier to watch a movie than write one, especially if you’re at a stuck point. I mean, they are just telling you the story as you watch. You don’t have to figure out what comes next. There is a point to which reading and watching films can help to fill your creative well, but if you are binging three 16-episode K Dramas in a row just to see how they do romance, you’ve probably exceeded this point.
Personally, I tend to get caught up watching YouTube videos. The shorter format of many of the videos makes it difficult to keep track of how much time has passed. I find it is best to get my writing done before doing anything involving social media.
If you spend a lot of time with media, consider using screen time as a reward for completing your writing session or other tasks. If you tend to get distracted by web notifications or your e-mail, you can even turn off your Internet connection while writing.
Use screen time – or whatever motivates you – as a reward when you get to the end of your writing session.
You can finish your projects! Just keep writing!
