Last week I posted about how I struggled with time management, and started to feel the strain of what is effectively working two jobs. For my own sanity, I cut back and don’t do any writing related tasks on a weekend. I re-organised my time and I thought I was doing fine, until a couple of weeks ago.
My first attempt at effective time management allowed me to do my paid job, exercise for 45 mins and do any housekeeping tasks between nine am and three pm. That left evenings for writing, by which time I was usually exhausted, and only got a few hundred words down, if anything at all.
Then I took a chance and joined the five am writers club. I heard other authors mention that was the only way they manage to fit any productive writing into their day. The thought of getting up to write at 5 am was depressing, but I decided to take a chance. Anything had to be better than my current schedule.
Since February this year, I’ve been up and writing for a couple of hours at five am. Nine til three was still blocked offf for real life stuff, which left me an hour or so to do research, blogging and working on craft before dinner, and then some time for some reading. So my reading time has reduced from three hours a day to just one. Just one hour before bed, how depressing.
My new schedule was working fine. Until recently, I was getting everything done, writing productively, and feeling great. So what went wrong? The answer is good old blogging.
Blogging has been the bane of my life since becoming a writer. My problem is it’s a whole writing project on its own; it requires research, planning, writing, editing, proof reading, and promotion. I feel the need to get all those things right because, if I can’t do that correctly for a 400 word article, why would anyone bother to reading a 90,000 word novel?
I want my blog to contain interesting and original content. Some writers and bloggers have suggested that in order to be a successful blogger you need to post new content every day. Every day? I can barely string together two articles a week. I can’t commit to any more than that as I just don’t have the time. If I tried to post a blog every day, I may completely lose my sanity and will to be a writer.
So what do I do now? I know blogging is an important aspect of being a writer, but I can’t commit to posting content more frequently than twice a week. I struggled to find time to research and write more than one post last week, and I felt like a failure.
Can I mange my time more effectively? I may need to allocate some time to researching effective time management for writers, but I really don’t know if I have the time.
If you’ve experienced problems with time management, feel free to leave a comment. Again, any tips would be most welcome.
