Are you ready to make the most of 2013? I am!
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| Writer with a Day Job |
I have already developed my goals list (I am an inveterate list-maker anyway so this was no problem) and developed what I hope will prove to be an effective strategy for reaching them, using some of the tips and suggestions I culled from Aine Greaney’s book, Writer with a Day Job: Inspiration & Exercises to Help You Craft a Writing Life AlongsideYour Career.
The second part–the strategy–was a little trickier than most years because my schedule has more family obligations than usual. My father is still recovering from his heart attack (and doing quite well for a 90-year-old, I might add!), which requires four afternoons a week for cardiac and physical therapy therapy. Doesn’t sound like much, I know, and I am glad to do it, but given the entire time (the sessions plus travel) add up to about 3 hours or so each time (roughly 12 hours per week), you can see that my work week has been a little reduced.
So, like most caregivers, I went back to the drawing board and reconfigured my time so I could meet his needs and my clients’ needs as well. Fine–except what about my writing projects–my short stories, my novel, my writing book? When do I find time for those?
Here’s my plan: 30 minutes a day, five days a week, first thing in the morning (well, second thing. First comes coffee and CNN), I will work on my short fiction. Then, each weekend, I’ll devote a few hours to one of the following: submitting my fiction to literary journals, working on my writing book (the pitch letter, the proposal, the invitation letters to authors/writers I want to interview, the outline, the content), finding potential agents and/or publishers for my novels (one is done, two are in progress), or actually working on my novels. (Even though the first one was done in 30-minute increments, I’d rather set aside a longer chunk of time for them.)
Now, I realize that this plan doesn’t sound like I am spending very much time on my writing, but I decided that it was better to start small, and, if I have more time, take it and run with it, rather than be frustrated when my planned for all-day writing time got halved. Or quartered.
I’ll let you know how well this works out in a month or so. In the meantime, what are your goals for 2013? What are your biggest obstacles to achieving them? And how are you planning to go around, over or through those aforementioned barriers?
Share it here and give the rest of us some ideas to try!
Happy New Year!