Getting the Most Out of Your Creative Day

This post is part of an ongoing series for HBIC Nation, a community that helps creatives learn, grow, and dominate in their fields. Our motto is Dream. Do. Dominate. You can find out more by going to HBICnation.com or joining the HBIC Nation Facebook Group. I recently transitioned from working a full-time day job and writing on contract for a publisher to writing full-time. I’ve been dreaming for years about making this jump. I figured I’d wake up, roll out of bed, and the words would just flow. If my fantasy was a formula, it would look like this:

All the time in the world + Writing full-time + Dream fulfilled = All the books in the land

Wasn’t I adorably naïve?

Instead of being the writer utopia I’d imagined, all of this uninterrupted time was daunting. In the past, my day job forced me to be extra disciplined and protective of my writing hours. I was getting stuff done before because, ironically, I had so little time in which to do it. It turns out that for me the formula looked like this:

No time + Deadlines + Stubborn determination = 4 books a year

Obviously, I was happy that I had one focus in my professional life instead of two, but without the structure of a demanding schedule I was feeling lost. I was too unstructured.

Fortunately, I have lots of creative around me who don’t work traditional day jobs. Instead, they create their own schedules that work at the pace of their own artistic flow and — this part is key — still get the work done.

I reached out and got a lot of great advice from women who’d made this jump before me, including from HBIC members Alexandra Haughton and Tamsen Parker. Then I took a step back to assess my own working habits and came up with these things that have been working for me.

Survey Your Week

I’m going to come right out and admit that I’m not great at future planning. At least not long, long-term future planning. However, what I am good at and find incredibly helpful is looking at the week ahead.

Every Sunday I sit down with my bullet journal and brain dump a list onto a piece of paper. I write down my appointments, important emails and calls, and every project that I know I need to get done next week.

Here’s a sample list of things I jotted down on my weekly to do list:

• Email London networking contact • Finish The Taste of Temptation draft • Make notes on Patreon • Dinner with Maegan, Tuesday • Agent/Editor lunch, Thursday • Podcast interview, Friday • Pick up dry cleaning • Long run • Cancel cable

See what I mean about brain dump?

One thing I don’t do is write down every little step to get those projects done. Finish The Taste of Temptation draft could look like this: finish hero realization scene, write grand gesture scene, write epilogue, finish transitional heroine scene you neglected to write because you got excited about other things. That, however, doesn’t help me see the big picture for the week. The nitty gritty details? Those are more likely to cloud up my view. Apparently I’m exactly who that seeing the forest through the trees adage is about

Make a Daily List and Make It Early

Once I’ve got a weekly list (which I make on Sunday nights), I get down to my big organizational tool: day-to-day task lists. The night before I start writing down everything I need to do the next day. Monday gets planned on Sunday night, Tuesday gets planned on Monday night, and so on. I do this because it helps me shut off my brain and keeps me from working 16 hour days. If there’s a to do list for tomorrow, those things can get done tomorrow.

This day-to-day list is where those nitty gritty tasks I avoid putting on my weekly list become helpful. They keep me on task and help break big projects down into actionable steps.

I’ve also found it to be helpful to sometimes write out a little schedule for myself like so:

7:45 a.m. — Shower, breakfast, morning pages 9 a.m. — Morning writing session 11:30 a.m. — Run errands, lunch 1 p.m. — Afternoon writing session 5 p.m. — Email catch-up 5:30 p.m. — Run

3 Daily Goals

If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m a lister. I put everything on lists, and that sometimes makes it hard to figure out what absolutely needs to get done and what can potentially get pushed to another day. Because of that, I like to highlight the three biggest things that must get done on a given day. I literally write a 1, 2, 3 next to them to mark that they’re my priorities, but you can use this prompt to help you organize:

Today I Will: 1)   ____________________

2)   ____________________

3)   ____________________

If those three tasks get done, the day’s a win for me. (Don’t we all need little wins for motivation?)

Make Time for Admin — And Keep It

Admin has been a huge pain point for me for a long time. The problem isn’t so much sending emails, writing blog posts, and social media. It’s getting myself to stop once I start. There’s always one more thing that I could be doing. One more newsletter draft. One more Facebook post. One more tweet. It’s enough to make an HBIC want to pull her hair out.

I’ve started to think about admin like I think about my writing time. I build out space in my week for it and I protect it fiercely. However, I’d say I go one step further when I work on admin during the predetermined time because I’m protecting the rest of my life from it creeping out and taking over everything.

On Sundays I’ll go into my CoSchedule app — an expensive but worth-it-to-me content marketing tool — and set up my blog posts, tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagrams for the week. If I have a newsletter I’ve got to send that week, I’ll make sure that’s ready to go and scheduled in MailChimp. I’ll fill up my Buffer with snazzy content from friends and make sure I’ve got some things ready to go if people I know have launches or book sales during the upcoming week.

Then, after all that is done, I close CoSchedule and walk away. Other than making sure that my content is going out into the world, I try not to open it again. I’ll jump on Facebook and Twitter from time to time, but that’s mostly for interaction and catching up on everyone’s news rather than promoting my content. The temptation to cut into writing is just too great. All of this content creation is supposed to serve the writing, not hinder it by taking excessive time and mental energy away from me.

I’m still learning my own best practices for working as a creative full time, and would love to hear what works for you whether you’re working on a side hustle or your art is your full time gig! Leave me a comment or shoot me an email at julia@juliakellywrites.com, and be sure to check out HBICnation.com.

How to Organize Your Writing Life: Setting Daily Goals

When you're a writer, the struggle to stay organized is real. Different drafts. Different books. Different projects. Release days. Blog posts. Facebook parties. No matter the stage of your career, you all have responsibilities pulling you in different directions. Organization is key to making sure that everything gets done when it should without leaving you feeling completely overwhelmed.

Every Wednesday throughout the month of May, I'm sharing some of the tips and tricks that I used to keep my writing life in order. Last week we talked about keeping your calendar straight. Today I'm going to talk about how setting attainable, realistic daily goals can transform your writing life.

The To Do List

 

My to do list drives the day-to-day of my writing career. I use it to keep myself on track and organize my long-term and short-term goals. It's also the place I turn to first when I'm feeling overwhelmed. If you use it well, I promise that it will help you take back control of your crazy writing hours.

I go over my to do list every day and update it. I write down everything that feels like a task to me, even if it's as simple as "pack lunch" or "write 1,500 words." Facing down more than one deadline, I've absolutely written down "take shower." Your to do list isn't going to judge you. It's a tool that lets you write down all of the random things zipping through your head, demanding attention. It also lets you let go of those things and say, "I'm going to take care of you, but you aren't my top priority right now." Once you do finish whatever task is bothering you, you can cross it out. You get a sense of completion, plus you can see physical evidence of all of your hard work. Non-to do list believers, trust me when I say it's an incredibly satisfying feeling.

Once I run out of things to add to my list, I look it over. I mark anything that must be handled that day as high priority.* I group similar tasks together so that I can complete them all at the same time. I usually look for tasks that have been on my list for a few days and try to figure out whether those are really necessary or whether I'm just avoiding them. If I'm avoiding, that's usually a pretty good sign that it's time to get that task crossed off the list.

 Three Daily Goals

I'm guessing that most of you already use a to do list to keep you organized. Now I'm going to show you how I take that information and move it off my list faster. I use a technique I think of as my three daily goals. Every day I write down three things:

• Three Goals
• Red Flags
• Successes

The three goals are the the three things that I'm going to do today that will help me move my writing career forward. These could be massive things (finish novella draft) or small tasks (post to Facebook). I recommend a mix. On March 12th, my list read like this:

• Set One Week in Hawaii cover reveal date
• Call with Alyssa Cole, 8 PM
• Finish new hockey scene for sports romance

Each of these things were pulled from my to do list and prioritized. They were also tasks that I knew that I could finish that day. That is one of the key elements of this three daily goals exercise. You're getting things done by breaking your larger deadlines into small, manageable tasks.

The next step is to identify any red flags you might have on that day. These are any activities that are potentially going to eat into your time and keep you from completing your three goals. For me, things like RWA meetings, friends visiting NYC, and unusual deadlines at my day job are the most common red flags. Identifying them can help you plan a strategy to not only comfort those red flags but also complete your writing goals.

And finally, I believe in celebrating little successes, so at the end of the day I write down the things that I did that day that helped further my writing career. I'm not always perfect with completing my three daily goals, so sometimes my list is as simple as, "Posted a release day promo to Facebook." Other days, I hit a good stride and overachieved. Wherever you fall on the spectrum of work success, find something out of your day that is a positive and celebrate that. We're writing big long books. We deserve a little bit of a boost throughout the process.

*I use my Mac's Reminders app since it syncs with my phone. This lets you mark anything high priority with !!!, something I find really helpful when scanning my list.

How to Organize Your Writing Life: Maximizing Your Calendar

When you're a writer, the struggle to stay organized is real. Different drafts. Different books. Different projects. Release days. Blog posts. Facebook parties. No matter the stage of your career, we all have responsibilities pulling us in different directions. Organization is key to making sure that everything gets done when it should without leaving you feeling completely overwhelmed.

Every Wednesday throughout the month of May, I'm sharing some of the tips and tricks that I used to keep my writing life in order starting with the basics: your calendar.

Keeping Your Calendar

I shouldn't have to say this, but I suspect that it's necessary. If you're going to take your writing career seriously, you're going to need a dedicated calendar. Just like you have to keep track of deadlines in a day job, you've got to keep things straight when it comes to your writing.

I use separate calendars for my writing, day job, and life events. They're loaded into my iCal that syncs to my phone and Mac. I do this because I'm never without my phone, and I can always keep it updated on the fly. I color code my writing calendar in blue so that it's easy to find at a glance, and I can uncheck the other calendars to isolate it when I need a writing overview.

Deadlines 

Whether these are set by your publisher or by you, you need to take your deadlines seriously. You're a professional. You wouldn't blow off a big presentation at work. Your manuscript isn't any different. But even when you take those dreaded deadlines seriously, sometimes they get away from us, making them a whole lot scarier when you finally remember them. If you use it correctly, your calendar can minimize the changes of that happening.

Here's what I consider a deadline in my own writing calendar:

• Each draft of my book. For my latest indie release, One Week in Hawaii, that meant my first, second, and third drafts. Then, once copy edits came back, my final draft. I was working with anthology partners so I also included the dates I had to get them back first and second draft critiques back. If you're working with a traditional publisher, you want to note the dates that you need to get all of your various edits back.
• Blurbs and cover copy
• Updates to back matter
• Cover art and formatting if I'm publishing independently
• Marketing rollout
• Cover reveal
• Release date
• Blog posts, articles, and other things I owe other people. This includes publisher blog obligations as well as blog tours and the occasional Facebook party.

I input each of these things into my calendar in all caps as soon as I find out about them. This means that I'm positive I have the most up to date information about what I owe who and when. If there is a change of date, the first thing I do when I find out about it is update my deadline in my calendar. My apartment could be on fire, and I probably would still stop to make a calendar adjustment. If I don't, there's  a 25% chance I will forget.

Writing Life

Your writing life is everything else that takes up your time or you need a reminder about. Some people block out time on their calendars for their daily word count to make sure that they know that's a permanent appointment. These are their office hours.

Since I have a day job and I write when and where I can, I don't keep office hours. I do, however, write down just about everything else I do related to my writing career. Here are some of them:

• Conferences
• Workshops and signings
• Articles for my blog
• Website updates
• Teasers, excerpts, and other materials for any upcoming releases
• Swag/business card order reminders
• RWA chapter meetings
• Writing dates with other authors
• Broadcast dates for First Draught, the writing talk show I co-host

I use my writing life calendar in conjunction with my to do list which includes emails I owe people, social media post reminders, maintenance on sites like Goodreads and Amazon's author page, and little day-to-day things that need to get done. Just like I mentioned in deadlines, the moment something comes up that will require my attention it goes on the calendar and possibly the to do list too.

Using Your Calendar

Writing all of this down is just half the battle. Now you actually have to put that beautiful (possibly color-coded) calendar to good use. I open mine every day and look at two views: the daily view and the monthly view. I'm looking for any red flag, deadlines, or projects that may have slipped my mind. I also try to do a three month look ahead once a week so I know that I'm looking ahead to. This helps minimize deadlines creeping up on me (especially blog posts I've promised to other people as those have a nasty habit of lurking in the shadows of my calendar).

Hopefully this gives you some jumping off ideas about how you might start managing your writing calendar to make it work harder for you. Now it's your turn to share. What advice can you give to writings looking to optimize their calendars and stay organized?