This week was a solid week of work, but I have no real word counts to add because it was all concept and plotting work.
The next book isn’t due to be started until Monday. However, I adjusted the schedule and will actually start it on Friday, giving me a bit of leeway.
That left me with nearly a week of “spare time” and that’s exactly what I did: I spent the week working on my spare time writing — concept and plotting for the first of the thriller series.
Most of the structure is sorted out and over the next couple of days I will flesh it out, before breaking off the full-time work on it to get on with the next romance title.
Take Care of You.
One of the things that did happen this week is that I revamped my workout schedule.
Actually, who am I kidding? I built a workout schedule. For the two years I have been writing full-time and quite a few before that, I didn’t work out because I was so focused on getting the writing income up to a point where I could quit the day job. After that, for these last two years, I have focused on making sure the revenue doesn’t slack off.
There’s a lot of surprising differences about full-time writing. I have several posts/articles on the romance site about that topic that I will eventually transfer over here, then add an update on the findings from the last two years, if you’re wondering what they are. (They’re indexed on the Articles page, here.)
One of the biggest difference between writing part time and writing full-time actually isn’t a difference at all–I just assumed it would be. I figured that writing full-time would give me spare time to do all the life stuff I’d always put off until now.
Only, now I work–voluntarily–twelve and fourteen hours a day. I’m always thinking about work.
I figured out that waiting for the days to spontaneously lightened their load so I could take care of other priorities, like my health, was just stupid.
So was using the minimal time possible and working out at home. Technically, I’ve been working out at home for four years now. Guess when the last time was that I laced up running shoes?
I flat didn’t want to go out of the house to work out. It’s a pain in butt, it breaks into my day, it costs gas money and most of all, it costs time. Two hours out of my work day is a serious decrease in work time.
For all those reasons, and because I was resisting the idea so hard, I knew I must get out of the house to work out. Besides, the financial commitment of signing up to a club would further induce me to get out.
Health is one of those important, but not urgent priorities that can be so easily set aside when important and urgent priorities raise their heads.
Part of being productive includes living well, which presumes you’re looking after your health.
And so, another re-jig.
As a result of taking a two hour bite out of my day, I had to reorganize how I would get everything done for the “day job” side of my work, and where all the spare time writing gets done, after that.
There’s very little spare time left. I’m down to maybe an hour a night, plus any days when my full-time production schedule opens up (like this week) because I’m ahead of schedule, plus weekends. In other words, a spare time writing schedule that resembles the schedule of pretty much every other writer writing in their spare time.
That’s good (she says grimly). The point of this mad experiment is to demonstrate that it can be done, and that you can be productive and prolific even when you have a day job.