One survey respondent asked about "how to maintain a writer's excuse for a work ethic when it comes to writing?"
It's not easy!
Writing is hard work: it's mentally taxing and sometimes
emotionally draining. Being a writer -- whether of fiction or non-fiction -- is quite different from many 9 - 5 office jobs, where a fair amount of your time is spent on emails, filing, photocopying, talking to colleagues, attending meetings and so on.
If you write full time, you might find you can write for about four hours of a full workday: you spend the rest of your time non-writing tasks. Not just because there's inevitably a fair amount of admin to do, but
also because writing is tiring.
Of course, many writers don't work full time. Maybe you're writing around a full-time office job. (That was me in 2006-8.) Maybe you're studying while writing (that was me in 2008 - 10, though I was doing a Creative Writing MA so there was a lot of overlap!) Maybe you're writing around small children (that's been me since 2013...)
So, for many of us, even four hours a day is laughably unrealistic. This means it's
even more important to make the most of the writing time that you do have.
Here are some ways to keep up that work ethic, however much or little writing time you have available:
#1: Be clear about what you're spending your time on. Write down all the things you do in a typical day, from getting up to going to bed. (If your days vary wildly, create a rough plan for a whole week; if you don't really know
where your time goes, keep a meticulous log for a few days.)
#2: When you're writing, write. Don't check emails, go on Facebook, tidy your desk ... etc. It's impossible to get any sense of flow if you're writing a sentence or two then stopping to do something else before you get back to writing. A focused 30 minute session may well net you more words (and better words) than two hours of distractable stop-start
writing.
#3: Track your writing in some way, recording your progress. You might, for instance, put a little star on the calendar each day that you write -- aiming to build up an unbroken chain of stars. You could keep a writing journal or log, recording how many words you wrote and any thoughts or worries that cropped up. You could put a widget on your blog to show your progress, or announce it to friends on
Facebook.
#4: Don't have unrealistic expectations of yourself. You are entitled to days off. You're allowed to get ill. You're also allowed to have down time -- you don't need to write every spare minute that you get. If you're feeling stressed and burdened by your writing, scale back a bit. There will always be writers who seem to have a stronger "work ethic" than yours -- but their life might look quite different. (Or they may be secretly
miserable!)
For me, I enjoy my writing most when I work in a focused, consistent way on it ... but when I also have enough free time (and enough time to deal with everything else in my life) too.
Whatever your writing work ethic looks like right now, try making individual small tweaks to get closer to whatever your ideal would be. Best of luck (and if you have a related question -- or a question on anything at all to do with
writing! -- then feel free to email me).
