Making time to write. Protecting your time. Getting motivated.
These are recurring themes for writers and recurring themes for me. If you are a long time reader of my blogs, you’ll know that this theme pops every so often in different forms. Why? Because talking about it, reminding myself, helps me re-invigorate my own writing. My guess is that you may need that nudge as often as I do.
Today I’m focusing on where writing falls on my priority list. For the last 3-4 weeks, it’s been close to the bottom as preparation for classes, presentations, other speaking engagements, and email have taken precedence.
I led an intensive with two wonderful writers at the SCBWI Dakotas conference two weeks ago and we talked about this. It’s the “I’ll just do this first…” syndrome, whether it’s answering “a few” e-mails, preparing for a talk, doing the laundry…
But how often do you finish that one thing, only to start another? Pretty soon our day is gone and we haven’t written anything.
Errrrr.
Now granted, some of us can’t seem to calm down and focus unless our environment is mellow/neat/clean around us. I’ll be talking about creating a writing space for yourself in the next Friday Focus.
In the meantime, rather than say I must write first thing before anything else, I’ve looked at my calendar for next week and carved out 30-90 minute time slots that are now scheduled for writing. My goal is to treat those just like any other appointment and when the time comes, I will show up and write.
How about you? Is writing a priority for you? What do you do to make it a priority?
