Solely Your Responsibility

Dear Imaginary Reader,

            Self-managing is a difficult but necessary practice if a writing career is your goal. Learning to create your own projects and deadlines to achieve said goal is solely your responsibility. Having read many articles from authors stating that in order to become a writer, you must write every day. Hahaha!!!

            This is where self-managing begins. You need to realistically look at your schedule and your habits. I would love to write every day. Before children I did. Hopefully, it’s a practice I will pick back up when the children have become a little older. However, for now, I am a stay at home mother of three boys, two three year olds and a six month old.

            Can’t you write during naptimes? No, and I want to congratulate those mothers whose children nap all at the same time. My youngest wakes up around six in the morning. The other two emerge around seven. Youngest naps around nine, eleven, and one. If the older boys choose to nap it is between one and two. While they are awake, I am at their beckon call until my husband gets home.

            Then you write when your husband gets home? No. I could write when my husband gets home, but I’m not going to. After ten hours of listening to screaming, squealing and crying, kissing injuries, playing, and preparing breakfast, lunch and snacks, my brain is fried. Nothing worthwhile is coming out of the raw nerves of frustration and exhaustion at that point. My husband’s arrival home is the point in my day when I banish my family either to the back of the house to play trains or the front of the house so I can call my mother to complain about the horrible day, laugh at the funny moments, and come to accept that my life rocks and prepare to do it again the next day.

            So, after your down time, that is when you write? Nope. This is when my husband and I discuss our day and decide what we want to do with our evening. I rarely decide to spend the night writing. This is when my husband and I curl up with dinner, watch television. and play card games. I can honestly say that I choose my husband and children over writing.

            Then you don’t really want to be a writer. Maybe, this is my way of procrastinating, which I excel greatly at.

            Fine. Then when do you write? On the weekends. From Friday evening when my husband gets home to Sunday evening, after church, I have a blank check to walk away from my house and write. Friday, I have an excited energy about being able to get away and do what I love. Saturday, I have the mentality of, “This is my work day.” Sunday, when J3 is not under quarantine from the world, we get up and go to church as a family, otherwise, I get up go to church. Either way, I spend the afternoon and evening writing. By the time the weekend is over, I am grateful for the next four days of down time. I estimate approximately twenty hours a week of dedicated work and another ten of half ass attentive work. This is when I am rushing crappy pre-first-draft drafts, writing e-mails, and doing research while my children will let me sit at the computer during the day.

            Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be about goals and deadlines? Yes, and part of setting goals and deadlines is to be realistic with oneself about the time and work you have and are willing to do. Ergo, what your week looks like … okay, fine, let’s talk about goals and deadlines. Ask yourself what is important to you. What would you like to see from yourself in the next week? Month? Year? Write down your answers. Now, consider what your week looks like and go back over the list. What can you get done in the next week? Write down what day you would like to get them done. If there are items left on your list, can you do it the following week? If so, start writing dates by those items. Do the same for the month long goals.

            Yearlong goals are a little different. For me anyway. I like to make soft goals. For instance, I would like my first novel to be edited and ready to query for publication by the end of the year. Personally, I am striving to be finished by August. This is my soft goal, my, if I work really hard and nothing goes wrong, I think I can do this goal. October is my realistic goal, unless something goes wrong, there is no reason for me not to be done by now goal. December is my leeway goal, I’m known to be lazy and maybe my mother, who is helping me with editing because I suck at grammar, will not be able to edit as fast as I would like. So, look at your yearlong goals and give them dates according to what you would like to achieve.

            This year, I would like to:

·         Publish a weekly blog. I write this sometime during the week, as part of my half ass attentive work. Then, sometime Saturday or Sunday, I go back over it in hopes to polish it up. Cut out what I don’t need and add what I forgot. Monday, I read it one last time before deciding on a title and publishing it. Yes, I publish on Monday. Yes, it is during that half ass attentive work. In my defense, I suck at titles anyway and I am not looking to change anything important about the piece.

·         Work through The Writer’s Devotional by Amy Peters. This is a one of the two books my husband got me for Christmas and a quick glance through has me really excited. Admittedly, I don’t have time to go through it daily, however, most of the daily reads are quick enough for me to hammer a week out throughout my weekend of work.

·         Read through Writer for Hire: 101 Secrets to Freelance Success by Kelly James-Enger. This book, I believe, is my husband’s way of telling me to start making money. What I am learning, so far, is that I do not have confidence in self-promotion and that I am woefully ignorant in a lot of areas. Both, good lessons for me to learn. Thankfully, there is someone who has been through the motions. Hopefully, I can apply her advice and learn from her mistakes.

·         Finish editing my first novel and begin the query process. This of course means I need to figure out what a query is and how to write one.

            Having written all of this, it is also important to realize that life is unpredictable. Accept that some goals are going to be derailed. I had planned on finishing my first novel by November 2014. However, I did not expect to get pregnant with my third child. The tiredness and pain that resulted from that difficult pregnancy forced me to make a decision. I decided to postpone the editing for a year. That did not mean that I couldn’t write, instead I decided to work on new ideas for different worlds. As you can see, it is back on the schedule for 2015. This does not make me a failure, it makes me realistic and flexible to changes.

            Understanding and accepting the unpredictable nature of life makes you capable of pushing a project back in order to make room for another opportunity. This has a warning in itself. It would be easy to constantly change projects and push back dates until you manage to never complete anything. My rule of advice for this is as follows: If you, a family member, or a close friend is not seriously ill or pregnant, or if you are not being offered money for another project with a definite ending, do not change a goal or date.

            This is me. This is what I am learning and the advice I would give to others.

Good luck. I wish a successful year for everyone,

E. Schierschmidt