How to make writing a dream with a deadline.
Doom scrolling the latest news may not be writer’s block, but it sure as heck ain’t getting shit done. The world was burning when you started that scroll, and it will still be burning when you finish, but you’ll feel better about life and about yourself if you get words written in between.
Writing is, or can be, a business, and anyone in business will tell you that you need to “just do it.” Get past the fear, the block, the angst, or the blahs, and just do it. And anyone who says that doesn’t understand fear (or writer’s block).
I’ve lived fear, the kind that kept me bottled up with the writing lid firmly capped, and I can’t live in that fear anymore.
Promises were meant to be broken.
If you’ve been there, with that weight on your shoulders, you’ve made a promise to yourself, much like that one you made in your early 20s, the morning after the night before, a promise that starts “I swear I will never drink tequila again.”
The writer’s promise is like a reverse 10 commandments. I swear:
I’ll stay off the Internet.
I’ll avoid social media.
I won’t answer the phone.
I won’t feed the kids, the pets, or the spouse.
I won’t do laundry, dishes, or avoidance-cleaning.
I will sit at the computer until I have written 2,000 words.
On Saturdays, I will write 10,000 words.
I will write 3 books a year.
I will write 4 books a year.
I will replace my regular income in 6 months.
Butt-in-chair is a good strategy, but it can easily devolve into doomscrolling without proper self-care and a solid plan.
Dreams with a deadline.
Long before I wrote a word, I dreamed of writing, but dreams require action to move them out of the ethereal dream world and into this world. And getting there isn’t simply a matter of writing “I want to write a bestselling novel” on a vision board (sorry, I like vision boards, but like all good things, writing takes real work in the real world).
Writing down goals is a wise start; however, we need to have an understanding of what it is we really want out of our writing life. So let’s start there.
What is it you really want as a writer? Fame, fortune, and fast cars? Critical acclaim? Parental approval? Celebrity endorsements? A sit down with Oprah (yes please!)?
Writing in and of itself is a process, a creative one as well as a craft, but what we want to achieve as a writer varies by writer. Self-help gurus are big on SMART goals, so when it comes to specificity, it’s easy to come up with a specific goal like “I will write three books a year,” but there’s not much attention on how to get there, and that’s a problem.
I wrote three books in 2016, while I was in an MFA program and teaching college-level English, oh, and I had two kids at home as a single mom.
The stress nearly killed me. Creatively, it left me concussed.
So I’m not convinced that SMART goals work for creative people, or at least not the kind of goals they talk about in those ubiquitous how to succeed at anything books in the self-help section.
Tell me what you want.
To avoid burnout, you need to know what you want, what you’re passionate about, and how you can meld the two. If you can add a realistic look at your calendar, energy, and writing speed, that would be a plus. Let’s get to it.
What do you want out of writing?
Writers have all manner of wants from writing grandma’s memoir to proving that the asshole 8th-grade English teacher was wrong (she was…I’m just saying). It’s easy to let the world or our closest friends and family convince us to strive for something that seems like a good idea when they do it, but following the leader can lead us straight to writer purgatory.
I have a friend writing for Hallmark. I love her. I am so proud of her. I love her writing, but writing a Hallmark-style book would kill me. I binge on Hallmark at Christmas, but if you’ve read my fast-paced suspense, you know that sweetness works well in my coffee but not my stories.
So while I would love to follow her path to success, it wouldn’t be my path, and in the end, even if I succeeded, I would have failed at building an authentic writing life, and the failure would eat me alive.
So figure out what you want out of writing. Not what you think you should want, what your family wants for you, what your critique partner says you’re capable of, or what the last judge in that last contest swore was your destiny. What does your heart want?
Write it down. Writing is healing and empowering. And you really want to, so go ahead. No judgment. I’ll wait.
What makes your writing heart go pitter-pat?
Know your passions (no, not that kind…although, I suppose that too, but just don’t tell me. That’s TMI).
What makes your writing world rock? For me, it started as writing about strong women. I figured I could write in any genre, any theme, as long as my female characters were strong, empowered, and unstoppable. In fact, the third book in my first series was titled Unstoppable. The main character was Unstoppable, and trying to be all that almost killed her too.
My writing passions have evolved with each book, and while they still have that killer femme, they also have common themes like isolation, abandonment, brotherhood (or sisterhood), and an enduring belief in a found family that is stronger and more vital than blood.
What is your passion?
Think specific, but not confining. For instance, “I will write 3 Sci-Fi Space Operas with a smartass blonde from Belfast Ireland,” might be too limiting.
Instead, consider recurring themes in your work, and if not your writing, in the books you enjoy reading or the movies and music you love. What themes cross genres, such as themes of abandonment or fear or love conquers all? What concepts cross genres, such as the lone wolf trope, the invading alien army trope, or the star-crossed lovers trope? What values do you need to uphold to stay true to yourself or your vision? What characteristics should your characters exhibit?
Essentially, think about what you enjoy and are passionate about, and then figure out how to make any book in any genre work for your inner muse. If that happens to be crazy old guys who drink, smoke, and wear cowboy boots, you can put that old guy troop on a spaceship, in the old west, or in a contemporary romance, and you’ll have something you really enjoy in each of those books.
Take a minute to write down the values, passions, and themes you want to include in your writing. While you’re at it, consider if you want to specialize in a genre like John Green with YA novels, or if you want to go the route of writers like Neil Gaiman who is all over the literary map. Go on, take your time. I’ve got nowhere else to go.
What is your purpose?
When I first started writing, my primary goal was to entertain. Reading sustained me through some awful times in life, and I wanted to give that joy to others. I still want to entertain, but I also expanded my purpose. With my memoir and creative nonfiction, my purpose is to educate and empower readers. With my literary fiction, my purpose is to create a character so compelling that readers can’t put the book down. They will think of her, I swear—not the no-tequila swear—but I swear they will think of her long after the book is finished.
My bigger purpose is to tug at the heartstrings of all my readers.
What is your purpose?
What do you want readers to remember about you?
What do you want readers to remember about your books?
Write it down, so the next time you get a crazy idea about a space opera, you know how you can make that space opera uniquely yours.
Now, how do we get there?
Ok, yes, now we’re setting goals because we know what we write, we know why we write, and for whom we write, so now let’s figure out the deadline.
What are your priorities?
No one says writing has to be your first priority. For me, the most important thing in my life is my kids. They come first. So I block out time in my calendar when I know they are off work/school, that’s just time for us as a family. Then, because I like to pay rent, I prioritize my day job. Writing is third; someday it will be second priority (the kids will always come first).
So before we get any further, figure out your priorities.
How much time do you have in a typical week?
What are the tasks or jobs you cannot skip? Think about things such as your day job, picking up the kids, or taking care of your elderly parent.
What can you delegate?
What can you delay?
Now, place those things that you “must” do on your calendar. Look at your calendar (real or in your head). Figure out how much time you have to write after the things that take priority.
Next, add your writing time. Make it sacred. Let your family know this is your writing time and that they can’t interrupt. If you have to leave the house to get the time/space to write, try a coffee shop, the library, or a park on a nice day. Heck, inside the car in the McDonald’s parking lot would work. Just make sure that this is your time without interruption.
I write in 2 or 3-hour blocks. I often use writing sprints with friends to keep me accountable. You can do this in person (sitting in the library or at the coffee shop) or you can do this online. Right now, we’re using Discord and we have members from a bunch of different time zones, but it helps us to touch our writing in meaningful ways a couple of times each week.
What is your deadline?
We all want to write as many books as possible this year, but the reality is that we may not have the time to write 12 books or even 3.
Now that you know how much time you have set aside to write, what is a realistic deadline for finishing that novel, book, or script?
For example, if you write 500 words an hour and have 10 hours per week, you can realistically write approximately 5000 words per week. If you write 1000 words an hour, you are a goddess and can finish 10,000 words in ten hours a week, so it might take you only 6 weeks to write a 60,000-word novel, but not everyone has that much time or writes that fast. Most of us who aren’t writing full time don’t have that much consistent time to write, but you can find a way.
I have a friend who wrote her first novel during lunch breaks at work. She set aside one hour a day, so 5 hours per week, for about 2500 words per week. If her first book was 60,000 words, that would have been approximately 24 weeks, or half a year, to finish her book. That’s more than someone who doesn’t have goals and doesn’t set aside any time to write.
Take a moment to figure out how you can convert your writing time into a realistic word count to give yourself a general idea of how long it will take. Remember to build in time for family emergencies, work emergencies, or general exhaustion so you don’t overschedule yourself.
So, how long will it take you to finish that novel given the time you’ve set aside? Don’t try to meet these arbitrary word counts in this article. Look realistically at your production time. Some famous writers wrote incredibly slow. Hemingway wrote approximately 500 words a day, and yet look at how many books and stories he released into the wild. You don’t have to be fast, you just have to be consistent.
Final Thoughts
Writing can remain a dream. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that life isn’t where it needs to be for you to write consistently. Yet. But if you’re planning to write this year, make sure you have a plan.
Cindy Skaggs is a writer, public speaker, and military veteran who holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University and an MA in Creative Writing from Regis University. She is an advocate for military and veteran issues, mom to two humans, and a reluctant wrangler of too many critters. She is a native of Colorado where she teaches graduate and undergraduate creative writing.