Stage Two - Week Four - It's A Job

The rest of the fourth week was simply FANTASTIC!

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were days fitting the schedule I have tried to create and maintain for at least the last three years and probably beyond that. This time I actually made it.

For the record, the schedule is pretty basic:

8:00 - 8:30 - Meditation
8:30 - 12:30 - Writing
12:30 - 1:00 - Lunch
1:00 - 6:00 - Business
6:00 - 6:30 - Meditation

The Business time tends to get fragmented between busy work, productive work, meetings, and travel and while it was not as grounded and centered as I would like it still held together pretty well. I had some time where I had to take off but I was able to make up for those times on the back end. Ultimately, the plan went well.

I latched on solidly to my four hour morning writing slot, aided rather considerably by the fact that I presently have enough ongoing (and paid) writing projects (in addition to the ever-expanding list of spec projects I have always worked on) that I could actually dedicate 20 hours of the week to writing and not completely go broke. In other words... this is what I've been working toward and... it's working.

To make it work there are three things that have to happen:

1) I have to want it.

2) I have to make room for it. What this means is that I have to give it something close to inviolable preeminence. Any number of times over the last twenty years I have tried to make a solid writing schedule work, only to allow myself to lose the time because someone asked for a meeting, or because I had important errands, or... well... just because. Last week I put a solid hold on those things and worked the time (one morning I came in later, but I stayed longer to make it up). The key to the process is to not only practice it as a "real job" but truly EXPERIENCE it as such.

3) Along the lines of the above... it's also pretty important for the time to pay for itself. It helps considerably if much, though not necessarily all, of the writing time is spent writing something for which I am being paid.

I have been a writer for over twenty years, but I have only rarely treated myself like a writer and treated the writing like work.

It's an art... it's also a job.