It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) post! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. 

Progress Made When Writing Fiction in Larger Timeslots

Until around last Friday, I had a hell of a time fitting in time to do my Fiction Writing, particularly my upcoming book of short stories, titled "Bad Apps". The cause of this was my day job which I have to make a two-hour public transit commute going and coming each day. I love my day job (I’m a library technician) and so won’t give it up, but it still takes up writing time. I don't work on my laptop on the bus or train because it's too awkward for me and so I would get less done than I would if I were writing in a more stationary place. 

Lately I've had to fight my way to squeeze out a bare minimum of 20 minutes of Fiction writing before going to work in the mornings. Then in the evenings I would work on what I could which often isn't much because by then I'm tired and ready to go to bed. Even on Fridays and Saturdays when I don't work my day job, my fiction writing time would break into several fragments, such as a half hour here and 20 minutes there. Sometimes it would go no longer than a half-hour by the time I’d get all my other writing related tasks done which mostly consisted of marketing. But I'm going to ease off the marketing, even though I'll still work with it to some extent, and focus more on the fiction writing itself. Slowly but surely, I’ve been doing that.

Marketing last year and before had been eating up too much of my fiction writing time and almost doing nothing but putting me behind in producing my book of short stories. But since the beginning of this year, I've been giving more time to my fiction writing, especially on Fridays and Saturdays. But I really noticed the difference last Friday evening when I gave a straight two hours of typing in revisions to one of my stories that I'm including in "Bad Apps". In that two-hour segment I got way more done than I had in several separate 20-to-30-minute segments. 

When I work within short time slots on a project as big as even just a short story, as opposed to a weekly article like what I write for my blog posts, I don’t get as much done. This isn’t only because of the shorter amount of time but also because each time I go back to work on my story during those smaller segments I have to look back to see where I left off. But in an hour or more of a time frame I can hold onto my line of thought better. I can keep working without having to go back several times to see where I left off. 

Don’t get me wrong. I will take five-to-ten-minute breaks about every half-hour because working straight through a longer time segment without even just a brief pause can too easily burn you out and run you into a writer’s block. So, those short five-to-ten-minute breaks are important.  

Dedicating more time to working on my short story all at one time helped me to focus more than if I were working on it in small segments that were a half-hour or less. I’m going to shoot for at least a straight two hours of fiction writing each Friday from now on and, because they’re more limited on time, continue working on my fiction for 20-to-30 minutes in the mornings on those days that I work my day job. Larger chunks of time to work are more efficient, yet, on those days that your schedule just doesn’t allow for them, every spare minute counts.

Blog Post Day Change

I'll be switching my blog posting day of the week from late Saturday/early Sunday to Mondays starting March 13th. I found out that more people have been reading my blog posts on those days and so I want to publish them during a time of week that's most convenient for the majority. 

Newsletter

If you want to see more details on my latest writing projects, including my short story collection "Bad Apps", then sign up for my free newsletter, "Night Creatures' Call"! I'm running late with the first newsletter of the year, partly because February is so short of a month. I'll have something out hopefully by the middle of March, by the end of it for sure. So, you still have plenty of time to sign up for it before the next issue comes out! 

Question of the Month

The optional question for March is: Have you ever read a line in a novel or a clever plot twist that caused you to have author envy? I don't really have much of an answer for this since I really don't envy other authors' work. I enjoy reading their work too much to envy them. I feel like we each have our own unique way of telling our stories, we each have our own voice. So, envy over another author's work has never been a problem for me.

Do you write better in larger time slots or shorter ones? 

Today’s IWSG is brought to you by these super co-hosts: Diedre Knight, Tonya Drecker, Bish Denham, Olga Godim, and JQ Rose! IWSG was founded by awesome author Alex Cavanaugh, writer of the Cassa Series of novels!

Until next time . . .