Need Time on Your Side?

I always say I need more time. What I really need is to be more productive with the time I have. I'm also guilty of heaping too many projects on my plate, but that's for another post.

Today, mystery writer Jan Christensen is here to share suggestions on how we can gain more productive time in our day. I've tried a couple of her suggestions, and they work.

Jan has to be doing something right. She's currently writing two mystery/suspense series - one of them about a professional organizer - and several short stories. She also writes an article on reading in each issue of Mysterical-E magazine. I've probably forgotten something.

Anyway, when Jan speaks, it pays to listen.

Jan is also doing a giveaway of the first book in her organization series, ORGANIZED TO DEATH. The winner will have a choice of a Kindle book, a paperback, or a PDF file. Leave a comment before 10 p.m. Thursday, and random.org will choose the winner. I'll post the winner's name at the top of Friday's post.

Oh, yeah ... Jan also happens to be my critique partner :)

AND

Today I'm at Julie Kemp Pick's blog, Empty Nest Insider, talking about A Day in the Life of a Writer. See you there after you take some notes on Jan's post and leave her a comment.

TIME MANAGEMENT FOR WRITERS

Thank you, Carol, for hosting me today at the fabulous Tiki Hut. Just my style—I even wore my beach hat. Carol suggested I combine my two main interests, writing and personal organization, to point out ways for writers to get more done and be more organized. A large topic, but I’ll try to be succinct.

I think most writers start off believing all they have to do is write, edit, submit their work, and then sit back and let the royalties roll in.

If that were ever true, how times have changed. Now it’s write, edit, submit or publish it yourself, and market our work.

I think many of us are finding out more of our time is spent marketing than the writing, editing, submitting of old took all together. Some writers thrive in this environment, some hate it and some are okay with it some days, and not so much other days.

Is there any way to get a handle on all this, to make it manageable? I do have several suggestions.

The very first is to learn how to use your computer and two basic computer programs—your word processor and your spreadsheet. Learn how to do an advanced Google search. Learn how to bookmark pages, how to send URLs in emails and on groups so that they work (copy and paste and be sure there is no period at the end or other mark or letters that will make it fail), and how to organize your computer files and browser bookmarks. And backup, backup, backup.

Then plan your days by either:

• Drifting. Do what you want each day when you feel like doing it. Write awhile, socialize awhile, edit some, submit somewhere, see what happens. Sounds rather pleasant, doesn't it?
• Focusing. For example, plan on an hour for writing, an hour for editing something else, two hours for social media, and quit when your time is up.
• Micro-managing. Decide exactly how much time you’re going to spend on each activity every day and then at what time of day you’re going to perform those activities. Further, decide if you’re going to try to juggle all four things every day (a balanced life), or concentrate on one thing for several days or weeks or even months (alternate obsessions) before tackling something else. See my blog post about planning a balanced life or using alternate obsessions to boost your productivity here:  http://www.janchristensen.com/obsessed-or-balanced/

For most of us it’s best to decide what to do when and for how long. Otherwise you drift, which works for some, very few, creative people. If you focus without micro-managing, that can also work if you’re not a procrastinator and are extremely self-motivated.

Now for some specific ways to help this happen. You probably use some or all of these already, but a quick review might help or give you new ideas.

• Master List. Besides your writing and editing plus doing your usual social media every day, you have other things that come up. Make a running list of those items.
• Schedule. When you’re starting out, it’s best to have a written schedule for your days.
• Calendar. I like Google Calendar for appointments because it sends me an email alert the day before an event.
• Log. A log keeps track of what you've done when. Yes, you will forget otherwise. Make one for each project. Spreadsheets are ideal for these. You might mark down how many words you wrote each day on each project, or hours for writing and editing. You could list where you have submitted it for publication, where and when it was accepted, and all the places you marketed it, with dates. You can track your sales, reviews, anything that comes up.
• Income/Expenses Report. Again, using a spreadsheet for this is helpful.
• Notes. For each project, I keep a notes word processing file to dump everything about the work as it comes up. When I start out, I have a table with a timeline and a couple of sentences summarizing each chapter.  My research goes in this file (I don’t do a lot—if you do, you might want a separate file for this). Maps, images, anything I can think of. When the work is ready to publish, I input my final log line/elevator pitch and the description at the top for easy access. Then, once the work is published, I put in the date of publication, ISBN numbers, price, buy links, both long and shortened, and anything else I think might be needed. It’s also a good idea to keep a separate document for reviews. Reviewer’s name, date published, where published, URL, and a copy the review.

If this all seems daunting, I agree, it is. The best way to handle it is to set aside about fifteen minutes a day to update each of these. Right after dinner is a good time, or just before bed if you work into the evening.

If you don’t keep it all up, you will panic at tax time, you will panic when you can’t remember if you did something, or you will embarrass yourself by forgetting to do something or doing something twice when you only needed to do it once.

Now, excuse me while I go cross this off my to-do list, and log it in my notes about ORGANIZED TO DEATH. Or maybe take a nap. I've become expert at that. Maybe Carol will invite me back for a post about napping. It would be a lot shorter than this one. Good luck to all! And a tip of the beach hat to Carol for having me here!

Back in her hometown of Newport, RI, Tina Shaw, twenty-nine, is picking up the pieces of her shattered life. She begins her first job as a professional organizer in a house filled with cardboard boxes and clutter, only to discover a dead body in an eerily neat baby nursery. She fears this career move may be a short one until the handsome but spooky new doctor persuades her to reorganize his office left in disarray by the former physician. Ignoring the doctor's obvious interest in her, Tina begins seeing her former boyfriend.

When he protests against her new profession, she realizes what a control freak he is. Then there's another old flame who is making her hotter by the minute. As she works through the office clutter, she learns the doctor has a possible motive for the killing. But when someone else is shot, the doctor has a solid alibi--Tina herself.

Drawn unwillingly into the case, she searches for answers as her list of suspects multiplies. When the killer begins targeting Tina and her friends, she works harder to learn the murderer's identity before someone else is found dead.

Jan Christensen grew up in New Jersey and now resides in Texas. Her published novels include Sara’s Search, Revelations, Organized to Death, and Perfect Victim. She's had over fifty short stories appear in various places over the last dozen years, two of which were nominated for a Derringer Award. She mainly enjoys writing mysteries, but every once in a while steps out of that comfort zone and goes for something else, blogging about personal organization and the writing life, for example.

Website: www.janchristensen.com

Blog: www.janchristensen.com/blog

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Jan-Christensen/e/B004XTXSYO/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jan.christensen.9275

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JanSChristensen

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/janchristensena/

See you at Julie's!

The Goodreads Giveaway for In Name Only 

ends at midnight Wednesday Pacific Time.

Congrats to whoever wins

Organized to Death by Jan Christensen!