Time management is a challenge that most people think about how to handle well. We all want more time but there is no “more time” available. All we can do is learn to make efficient and effective use of the time we do have.
As writers and artists, we have special needs and demands that many other people do not face when it comes to time management.
Doctors and accountants
How many doctors and accountants go to work and charge for their time. The doctor charges for her hours and the accountant for his. Then they go home and relax.
You probably don’t know many doctors, accountant, lawyers, or dentists who take on a second job so they can continue to practice their professions? How many doctors, dentists, accountants and lawyers do you know who go to work every day at another job so that they can practice their professions early in the morning or late at night?
Not to bemoan the issue
I have made this comparison not to whine and have a pity party but to point out that we writers have a special issue when it comes to time management. Without acknowledging and resolving this challenge, we will not write and publish a memoir—at least not a quickly as we might like.
In conclusion
The articles below will offer you an insight into effective time management techniques. You will read advice and tips that are specially tooled for time management for memoir writers.
As Denis Ledoux writes in Writer’s Time: Management That Works, a download course to help writers take control of their use of time, “Writing your memoir does not call for more time than you have. You actually have more time than you think you have.”
Read the posts below, check out Writer’s Time: Management That Works, and, by all means, leave comments after the posts if you have a practice that you would like to share with us.
More memoir-writing resources at The Memoir Network.
Recently, we sent our list of free resources. “Free” is great—in fact, we call it “superior”—but “free” can take you only so far. For more memoir-writing resources, explore the following.
Your fee-based options to learn memoir writing:
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Your writing is your work–Schedule first your time for writing
To make time for writing, you have to be serious about the principle that your writing is your work. You must act on it and take it as seriously as your paying job.
This is low-hanging fruit for time management: honor your writing schedule!
You do not show up at your work when you feel like it—nor do you write only when the feeling comes over you!
If you are working as a nurse or a therapist or a business office administrator or whatnot, you do not show up at your work when you feel like it or when you are inspired. You have certain hours whether you work full-time or part-time during which you are expected to show up at the job. The same is true of your writing. You show up for your writing schedule.
If you write when you “get to it,” when you “feel like it,” when inspiration moves you, you will likely do little writing and almost certainly not complete a book of memoirs. If you were being paid for this memoir “job,” your boss would fire you. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Setting Writing Goals That Work For You: Better Time Management
I have a goal for this post. I want to help you to develop and articulate your writing goals for the next three months—that is, 90 days. You can start your three months today, at the beginning of the next week or at the first day of the next month, but don’t put off setting writing goals. It is a prime tim management skill.
Three months is taken from the business model which uses quarters—three months—to implement plans. It is a useful way to set goals for three months. Three months both give you time to accomplish something and is not too long that you get distracted or discouraged.
What exactly is a goal?
A goal is a wish with a schedule and a deadline. If you don’t have a schedule and a deadline, what you have is a wish and not a goal. You are free to dawdle and pine away that your memoir is not getting written!
Let’s work at setting memoir-writing goals and planning to achieve one of these in the next three months.
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Regular Writing for Great Results
Success is built on daily habits. Write regularly every day for a year or two and before you know it you have a book.
Use Time Wisely to Write Your Memoir
Use time wisely to write your memoir. Writing is important and you have less time than you think you do.
Commit to finishing your memoir
Today, I am offering you a dynamite coaching session. If you read through this post and check the links, you will have an experience that will set you up for success—when you commit to finishing your memoir.
Ahead of you is a week available to make progress on your memoir. By next week at this time, will you have written an encouraging number of pages on your memoir or…
Will you be regretting the week, saying, “Well, you know how it is…life got in the way! Ha ha!”
The choice of results is yours to make.
How are you going to use the coming week? Will you “try” to use it well – and find on Friday that you have let so much get in the way that you wrote very little in a week’s time? Or…
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Memoir is Long Form Writing.
One challenge many first-time and only-time writers of memoir face is understanding that long-form and short-form writing are not the same. That is, long form is not just longer short form. Long form has its requirements.
Let me explain how memoir is long form
Many of the writers who come to me for coaching and editing are already fine writers—of short form. They can write coherent and clear sentences and their paragraphs convey meaning. There is no problem with their ability to write short form—the essay or blog post. This may lead them to overestimate their ability to produce long form.
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Writing Time Wasters
Writing Time Wasters Do Not Elude Me
I’m no more immune than anyone else to the plague of time wasters. Time wasters are habits we fall into that consume the time we have allotted (or could allot) to writing so that we end up not writing! Here are some of the most insidious that take up too much time and squander my writing energy. Better time management is possible.
1. Checking on e-mail before I begin to write for the day. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Distance Learning: A Precious Opportunity
For most emerging writers, enrolling in a distance learning program is an exciting experience. At long last, for a period of time that is long enough to make a difference, you give yourself the opportunity to immerse yourself in learning the “best practices” of the writing craft that you has been so wanting to learn for a long time.
An adult-learning program which will help you to master writing might be a university course, a local workshop, a one-on-one relationship with a mentor, or a tele-course over the telephone and/or internet.
Many, perhaps most, adult learners, with responsibilities that often include a family, a job, a home, you are unable like your adolescent counterpart to take time out—months, even years—to leave your life to devote yourself to mastering the craft of writing.
Open your world up with distance learning.
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