20 July 2009

New writing schedule

Word Nerd is trying something new....

Lately, she's been lax about writing. Not much word nerd-iness going on here, or at least not much related to the WIP because writing at work has been on full steam since late May. But, she's been feeling the lack of creative work. Many people who are artists and writers can attest to this... how it's an internal feeling of misdirection when not producing material.

In the past, Word Nerd's writing time was about 6-8 p.m. She wrote two novel rough drafts during this general time frame. But as of this spring, that time isn't working... disappearing most of the time into other projects, late evenings at work and no head space left for creative work. This time frame was a holdover from graduate school when those two hours were the ONLY two she had to complete her Creative Fiction class projects. It just took her a while to realize that a schedule that worked six years ago wasn't working anymore.

So, this morning Word Nerd began the process of switching her writing time to the morning before work. The alarm went off at 6 and she got out of bed then, no hitting of the snooze button. The goal is to gradually work that time back to 5, to give her two hours of writing time in the morning when her brain is fresh.

This morning, she managed to carve out a few minutes even in the compressed schedule and it felt good. Word Nerd talked to several other writing contacts about their schedules and found that 5-7 a.m. (or earlier) was popular and productive. She really hopes this solves the lack of productivity problem and makes for some good writing time.

She's curious though --- who else writes in the early morning? Or how did you establish the writing schedule you have?

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