Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books in lots of weird genres like fantasy (Blood of Kings and Kinsman Chronicles), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website. You can also try two of her fantasy novels for free here and here.
Last week I talked about 10 ways to increase your productivity. And, as promised, here is a breakdown I did of one of my work weeks and what I learned from it. If you can, I highly recommend keeping track of your hours working on one of your books, just to give you an idea as to how long it takes you and to reveal patterns of low and high productivity. So let’s take a look at one of my weeks.
As I mentioned last week, I really struggled to finish my book King’s War. Ever since we moved, my new schedule was sabotaging my efforts. First, let’s examine my schedule, which looked something like this:
Monday- Babysit my charge from 7:30 am until about 1:00 pm. Write from 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm. Pick up son from 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm. Write in the afternoon.
Tuesday- Go Teen Writers blog post day. Write fiction when finished. Pick up son from 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm.
Wednesday- Babysit my charge from 7:30 am until about 1:00 pm. Write from 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm. Pick up son from 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm. Write in the afternoon.
Thursday- Home to work on book. Pick up son from 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm.
Friday- Occasional babysit my charge day (from 7:30 am until about 1:00 pm). Once a month writers meeting from 9:00 am – 12:00 noon. Otherwise, home to work on book. Pick up son from 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm.
Saturday- Random activities on the schedule. Often home to work on book.
Sunday- Day off.
Add to that schedule taking my son to school from 7:00 am to 7:30 am and a couple physical therapy appointments and you can see there isn’t a lot of time that could be blocked out for writing. And ideally, I’d prefer not to work on Saturdays, but that hasn’t been an option for me. I did my best, however, with this book, but things got stressful, especially every Monday through Wednesday.
Now I’d like to show you a sample of writing results from an average work week. I used Stephanie’s free story workbook tutorial on this book, so I was able to keep track of my writing time, which helped me see where I was productive and where I was not. Here is a sample week:
Monday- 512 words. It’s always hard to write coming off the weekend. So Mondays are usually down a little in word count. But on a babysitting day, it’s especially difficult.
Tuesday- 2840 words. I did better this day, even with it being a GTW blog post day. It helped that I did some writing the previous day and I was home all day this particular Tuesday. No physical therapy or any other appointments.
Wednesday- 1547 words. Another babysitting day, so my word count was down.
Thursday- 1140 words. Home all day, but this chapter was a difficult one (a major battle) and it took me all day just to get this many words, though to be fair, I did delete quite a few other words too, so I bet I wrote closer to 1400. Still. Super tough scene.
Friday- 4860 words. I picked up easily this morning and got right into things. Did much better.
Saturday- 4449 words. This was an equally productive day.
From this I learned:
-I write better in the mornings.
-I am not so productive on Mondays
-I am not so productive on any day in which I didn’t write the day before.
-I am not so productive on a babysitting day or on the day after a babysitting day.
-I am most productive when I am able to write for at least three days in a row.
Mondays are rarely great writing days for me. I’m coming off the weekend, and I need to get back to work and back into my story. Plus I babysit on Monday mornings, so that makes it extra hard to get to work since I’m often exhausted when I do finally sit down (my charge is a three-year-old, quite active boy). Tuesdays are rarely good writing days. It depends on the blog post. I sometimes can write them in a couple hours, but often it takes me all day. But even if I do manage to get the post done in a few hours, it takes a different type of concentration for me to write fiction than it does to write nonfiction. So it’s not easy for me to transition from one into the other.
Since I have been writing mostly on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoons (after I finish babysitting or my GTW blog post), all day Thursday, and sometimes on Friday and/or Saturday, it has been tough to consistently get into my story. On the weeks when I didn’t have to babysit on Friday and I had Saturday free as well, I did so much better. Having three full writing days in a row makes a huge difference. I’m able to draw progressively deeper into my story—each day builds on the last—and I get a lot more done. To do my best fiction writing, I need to be immersed.
Since I like to write nonfiction writing books and have a few projects I want to start working on once I finish King’s Blood, I’m going to embark upon a new trial season in which I’m going to alternate between projects. For example, I might set aside a month or two to write a nonficiton project, then switch to three or four months of fiction. I’m hoping that this method might make it easier for me to work deep and be more productive on each project than trying to switch back and forth in a day or even a week. I’m hoping I will no longer continually derail myself from trying to multitask. I don’t know it it will work, but I’m hopeful. It’s good to try new things to see what works and what doesn’t.
Have you ever tracked your writing time to see where you are most productive? What works best for you? What is a hindrance? Any experiments you might like to try to be more productive? Share in the comments.
