Welcome to Write Wrong, the podcast that talks about writing from the point of view of someone who’s been doing it wrong for far too long. I’m Cortney Hamilton, and today I’m going to talk about:

 

Time management: the thing we do to give us the illusion that time won’t win in the end. 

 

But first a tip: 

Don’t eat airplane food. Not because it’s over-salted or stuffed with preservatives or that your tastebuds take a vacation from your mouth at thirty thousand feet in the air. Eating makes jet lag worse. Try to eat at least an hour before you get on the plane and then have a celebratory meal once it’s over. Of course, if it’s an international flight, gorge yourself into a coma because those feelings of discomfort aren’t going to eat themselves. 

 

Moving on:

 

Fellow writers, considering I’m weeks behind in my episodes, I thought I’d talk about time. Because, let’s face it, like a cheap bottle of tequila, time contains all the joy of fantasizing what could be while at the very same time ravaging your body, leaving you with bruises you don’t remember getting, and making you flop around in your own sick

But since time is not under our power, no matter how often we write about multi-verses and time travel and dive into a book hoping that when we surface again, we can go outside and eat at a restaurant without having an anxiety attack because the waiter just touched his face, we need to manage it. Because managing is what we do when we’re too weak to conquer something and yet too capable to ignore it completely. 

 

So I’m going to talk about a few things that suck up our time and a few things we can do about it. And yes, this episode will likely end with me, enabling you to take a nap. Because, as I’ve been told, naps are the poor man’s nirvana. And if you don’t believe that, you clearly don’t have young children.  

 

So let me start with things that suck up our time. 

 

Now, if you’re anything like me, let me extend my condolences, but if you are, you likely want to spend most of your time that you’re not writing, writing. But things get in the way: Family, a job where you actually get paid, sickness, anxiety, fatigue, neighbors screeching death metal through the walls, roommates learning how to play Purple Haze on their electric guitar at full volume, your puppy going into heat two days before her spay appointment, not having the right chair, not being in the right mood, having that chowder that’s been in the fridge for a couple of days come back on you, dentist appts, doctors appts, job interviews, exit interviews, debilitating menstrual cycles, being on hold with an insurance company for an entire morning, and trying to respond intelligently to a question from your boss who you didn’t realize was talking to you because you’ve had him muted on Zoom for the last hour. And notice I haven’t even mentioned social media. You know, the outlet where you can inadvertently stumble on to an abundance of the words’ libtard cuck’ just by tweeting that lizard people aren’t taking over the government.

 

And I don’t want to be a buzzkill, but if you haven’t noticed, time always wins in the end. So, we have to make the most of it—or at least make the least of it—we can do a few things to give us the illusion of control and allow us to both be and, more importantly, feel more productive. 

 

And managing time is so big that I’m going to mainly talk about one thing in this episode: scheduling.  

 

Now, scheduling is one of those words I thought middle-managers used to make them sound laid-back and non-threatening: like shooting down your idea by telling you to “think out of the box” or firing you by saying, “we’d like to offer you a career transition to free you up for the future.”  

But I’ve forced myself to embrace the word, much the same way I’ve forced myself to embrace flossing, a thing I avoided for years until that day my dentist was able to piece together an entire chicken carcass from the bones he found between my teeth. 

 

And I’d like to address two different groups here: The writers who have some free time in their week maybe because they still don’t have a job or heavy responsibilities. And the writers who have families are maybe homeschooling their children and are hiding in their bathroom where Daddy has to pretend he has stomach problems if only to carve out twenty minutes to get a few words farther into the kissy scene of his M/M historical thriller about swashbuckling pirate zombies.  

 

So let me address the first group: People who have free time. 

They say nothing is really free. There’s always a cost. For me, free time has cost me the peace of mind I found when I could drown out my anxieties and obligations by socializing with people who are not me. And, now, because of this, I suffer from auto-privilege author anxiety, a non-existent but real-sounding disorder that basically means when I have time to write, and I’m not writing, I fixate on how I should be writing, how I suck because I’m not writing yet have the time to write, and how there so many other time-starved writers out there, like Cheryl, single mother of two boys who has a full-time nursing job, and who, with just the few minutes I use to drink a cup of coffee a day, could live a more productive, creative life. So my APAA has not only made me feel guilty but also wasteful because I suspect that Cheryl, if she could get away with it, would gut me for even a fraction of the free time I have to spend writing, which I’m not doing right now, by the way.   

 

And one way I have found around this disorder is to make a schedule and stick to it. I know what you’re saying: “Brilliant advice, Hamilton. Next, you’re going to tell me to hug my kids, brush my teeth, and don’t put my neighbor’s Maltipoo in a catapult.”

 

And I say to you, I understand your sarcasm. But I want to add something that took me a little while to figure out: I had to find out what my optimal schedule was. 

 

What I’m learning is that it’s not about forcing a schedule on the free time I have. It’s also finding when I’m most productive, when I’m least productive, when I get distracted easily, when I stop writing to grab cookies, and, more importantly, do I want those cookies because the scene I’m writing is challenging and I don’t know where to go with it? Or do I want those cookies because the scene is bringing up deep-seated wounds that I stuff into that dark place only to resurface after draining a box of sauvignon blanc at my family’s Thanksgiving dinner? Spoiler: It’s always the latter. 

And what I’m finding out is, I’m miserable if I try to write as soon as I get out of bed. I’ve tried it consistently, and my brain won’t cooperate. Sure, I can force it and get some results. But, I write fastest and am most engaged one to two hours after I wake up. I need to eat and have coffee and get enraged by the news before I feel like my brain is cognitively lubed to get the most words down on paper. But it took me a lot of forcing a schedule on me and failing before realizing what schedule was optimal to my creative rhythms. 

 

Now, in a rare moment, I want to be clear: I’m not advocating that you wait for the muse to strike. Or not write until you’re inspired. If I did that, I’d never write. No. It’s identifying when your brain is creatively firing at full force and capitalizing on those times. 

 

So, if you do have the luxury to choose your time to write, how do you find your optimal schedule? 

 

1. Experiment. 

 

Look, I’m not some pseudo-scientist who uses buzz words to tell you to biohack your metronomic-maturity to identify your chrono-type as a wolf or a dolphin or an armadillo with a lazy eye. But I do want you to consider how well you know yourself. 

 

And sure, some of you are saying, ‘I know myself pretty damn well.’ But I don’t want you to answer. I want you to hold the question before assuming the answer. Think of the question like a campfire of introspective thinking. If you put it out too quickly, you lose the warmth and the reward of that mental s’ more you didn’t even know you were melting into a delicious goo. 

 

Holding the question might lead you to discover something about yourself you didn’t know. And one of these things can be: what’s your best time? Not just to write your novel, but to brainstorm, to use social media, to have a cookie as a reward and not a coping mechanism. We live in an eight-to-six world, and so the assumption is that we have to cram everything in during those times. But don’t assume that’s when you work best. Try afternoons. Try evenings. Try early mornings. Try 12:08 a.m. Why not? Why does everything have to start on the hour or half-hour? Try different tasks during those times.  

 

The key here is listening to yourself. And that’s not an easy task. If it was, we’d all be in better shape. If you can be sensitive to how your brain functions throughout the day, how it responds to different times of day, the rhythms of your human incarnation, then you might discover a schedule that is more productive for you.  

 

2. Show up every day. 

 

Fellow writers, if you’ve ever showered or eaten food, you know that doing it regularly is important. And being productive in your writing is no different. You’ve got to show up every day. 

 

And actually, showing up is the easiest part. All it requires is your butt in a seat, and your computer or primitive parchment and an ink-driven writing implement in your hand. And the great thing is you don’t have to get caught up in writing brilliantly. 

 

Now, if this podcast is any indication, then you’ll know that for me, being brilliant never factors into my work. Sure, I aim for brilliance every day, but all I expect when writing are sentences. And hopefully, those sentences have nouns and verbs and the occasional adverb all in an order that’s comprehendible. And if they do, I’ve accomplished my goal. 

When we adhere to one place at one time regularly, ideally, we attune our body and mind to that rhythm. And your brain and body will respond accordingly and expect to do those things at that time. So it gets easier to start your writing day.  

 

As earth-bound beings who breathe oxygen, we’re programmed for ritual, for routine. And routine is important. It’s required for eating. For drinking. For breathing and pooping and expressing our deep need for love or painfully curbing it behind a series of bad decisions on Tinder. 

Routine is built into this machine that is our bodies.

 

Now, personally, I like to call my routine a ritual because rituals are more sacred, and your writing time is sacred. Sure, maybe not in the let’s cut-out-a-heart Aztec kind of way, but still, it’s not for nothing.

 

But considering your writing time as sacred means, you take it seriously. And when you take it seriously, you’re signaling to the people around you to take it seriously. 

 

The great thing about establishing a routine is that it becomes automatic. And, much in the same way you politely smile during awkward conversations, you eventually do it without even thinking about it. 

 

And despite common sense, the less you think, the more you do. Okay, let me rephrase that, the fewer decisions you have to make about whether you should write or not, and where to go write, and what time to write, and even what to write, the easier it will be to get words on the paper. Because when you don’t do this, you suffer from the very real mental strain called decision fatigue. 

 

Decision fatigue refers to the inability to make sound decisions after you’ve already made a bunch of other decisions in your day. This is how people end up with sandwich presses, buy truck nuts, and get that face tattoo that says, ‘Never don’t give up.’  

 

The more decisions you make during the day, the less capacity you have to make any decision. This doesn’t just apply to writing. The more choices you have throughout the day about what you wear, what to eat, when to get up, even whether to paint your toenails or not, the harder it is to make a choice later in the day. 

 

It’s like your neurons are a union and are staging a walk-out, abandoning you in the cereal aisle at the supermarket while you reach for a box of Cap’n Crunch, reasoning that well, it is a good source of Vitamin D. 

 

When you have a set place and time to write every day, then you allow your brain more capacity to create. But decision fatigue extends to more than writing. If you expand that into other trivial decisions and settle on a routine for your day, then you’ll have more capacity to choose if your protagonist vanishes into smoke or fog, drives a Harley or Ducati, or OD’s on Crunch Berries. 

 

3. Location.

 

If you’ll think back to an age-old time when you had a normal job, you’ll remember that you went to the same place every day. That when you arrived, it was still there. And that when you got inside the same people said hello to you. Now, imagine if your job location changed every day. Would you know where your computer was? Would you be able to find the bathroom quickly? And how would you be able to get to the coffee before your co-worker Tim empties the urn with his 64 oz Bubba mug emblazoned with the American flag. “That’s not a mug, Tim! That’s a heart condition with a handle! Share the bean, you pig!” 

 

I really believe having one place where you do your writing is important. And why? Because you’re conditioning your body to do that task. I’ve heard getting on a stationary bike or a treadmill does this with exercise. And finding one place to write is your way of kickstarting your brain into writing mode.

 

Also, if you haven’t guessed by my cockeyed optimism and breezy tone, I’m a romantic. And I do like to believe in a muse. I mean, I’m making stuff up all the time; why not a personal muse, right? If you believe in a muse—that ineffable spirit who may help you achieve writing genius—this is the best way to get your muse to show up. For me, believing in a muse is more helpful than not believing in one. That way, when I sit down and feel utterly depleted of creative energy, I call to my muse for help. This illusion/reality has gotten me through some challenging creative moments. Sure not all the time. My muse is fickle and often a dick. 

 

But at least they know where I am. So when I call out to them, they know when and where to ignore me. I know this sounds a little flaky, but I told you I’m a romantic at heart who still watches Love Actually and ignores the fact that Rick from The Walking Dead is trying to steal his best friend’s wife. 

  

So maybe you’ve found your optimal time, your regular place, and you’ve minimized your decisions for the day. Here are a few things to add that will help you focus:  

 

No distractions. I know you might scoff because this one is obvious. But how many of us scoffers sit down to write, and the screen on our phone lights up. And what do we do automatically? We look. Why? Because it’s in our DNA, it’s the survival instinct programmed into us for thousands of years, ever since we’ve been on the lookout for predators that we now imprison at zoos. Plus, it could be breaking news that RGB came back to life and reclaimed her seat on SCOTUS. But instead, it’s a push notification about how pools and diarrhea are not a good mix. 

 

And cutting out distractions can be one of the more difficult challenges. Let’s face it, when I’m stuck in a chapter not knowing where to go or what to write, I’m all about checking Twitter just for a quick sec, so I can see if anyone hearted my post about how I’m not going to check Twitter while I write. And guess what? No one did. And now I feel bad because here I am trying to reach out to people, and no one gives a damn and what is social media for anyway when I have 200 followers while @jerkrod has 50,000 and all he does is tell us how the pedophiles are serving pizza to the lizard people who run the government. 

 

Sorry. Where was I? Distractions… 

But it’s more than just our own selfish natures who sabotage us. Because most of us live with people, and people can be great, especially if you can get them to shut up when you’re talking. 

 

And when you begin to write for the day, let them know you’re going to work, to your job. Because this is a job, sometimes, it’s even a fun one. And you have to set boundaries.

One thing I do is put up a sign on my door. Something that lets my girlfriend know that I’d really not like to be disturbed for the two-to-four hours I’m writing. It helps to set boundaries if you’re going to get things done. 

 

You can also be on an airplane. Let’s face it, if you removed the benefit of speedy air travel, being on an airplane is like going to prison for people with disposable income. After you get searched, they lock you into one space with complete strangers, and that Teriyaki chicken they serve is neither doing the Japanese nor the chicken any justice.  

 

But one nice thing has arisen with air travel that makes life more bearable: the sweet respite of being cut off from reality. 

 

And when you write, you should be cut off from reality. So put your phone on airplane mode, or, if you have people who need you in an emergency, put it in night mode so your emergency contacts can still get ahold of you. But remember, whole civilizations thrived without people constantly having access to them 24/7 just as recently as the 1990s. You can take an hour or three for yourself.   

  

This also includes cutting yourself off from the internet.

  

Now, for the time being, computers are lovely. Until they become sentient, but let’s not enable them, shall we? Because the internet will call to you like a siren song that enchants with the promise of amusement and gratification in its most primitive form before revealing it’s really a scary clown holding a balloon in a sewer. 

 

And if you do get caught, there are programs that cut you off from the internet for a period of time you set beforehand. I’ll link a couple of those in my show notes.

 

I’m not a fatalist when it comes to this rule. I sometimes break my writing to do quick research or to reference Merrian Webster’s site. I have gotten lost in a clickhole before, and so what I do now is set a timer for ten minutes tops, and when that ten is up, I’ll stop researching and go back to writing. If I haven’t gotten an answer to the question that started me on the research, I’ll make a note of it and move on. 

 

Which reminds me…

 

Set a timer for breaks.

 

When you have a normal paying day job, you have a start and end time. Usually, 9-5. But we don’t think of 5 p.m. when we go to work. It’s too far away. We look forward to the ten-thirty bathroom break. The 11:45 lunch. The coffee break at 1:50 before Tim can get there at two. Then the 4:30 wrap-up so we can go home right at five and get to work writing. 

 

If you have a few hours to write, make sure you take breaks. Maybe you have four hours. Set a timer for ninety minutes. Check in after the timer goes off. Do you need a break? Stand up. Drink water. Then come back and continue. Again, when you become attuned to your natural rhythm of writing, you’ll know when to set that timer for a break. 

 

Then, when your writing day is over, no matter whether you wrote four thousand words of brilliance or nine thousand words of crap that you’ll be deleting momentarily, congratulate yourself for showing up. You came to work, and you finished work for that day. You can go on, happy that your task is complete. No need for guilt. Or even lamenting how much you suck as a writer. Because you don’t suck. Because you showed up. 

 

Also, give yourself a head start. 

 

When I finish for the day, I try to have a little gas left, a little writing left in me. I might start a new chapter or scene, but I don’t get too far into it. This way, I leave an obvious path to go the next day when I sit down to write. 

 

Often, I’ll take notes about what to write the next day. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down to write and dreaded how and where to start only to love myself for having written notes the day before. 

 

And lastly, schedule in other writing tasks. 

 

If there’s nothing I dislike more than writing, it’s doing things that take my time away from writing. Face it, writing is not just writing anymore. It’s like if you went up to a marine biologist and said: “Cool, you get to scuba all the time.” “Yeah, sure. After I prep my gear, research, look through microscopes, write a paper, and beg for funding. But I scuba too.” 

 

And we have to do other stuff too. So maybe save some of your scheduled time for other tasks. This could be social media. Could be working on your website. Anything that helps your authorship. You might even continue writing but on a query or a synopsis because both of those will likely suck, but they utilize different parts of your brain from the parts you’ve been depleting to write your novel. 

 

Finally, I told you I was going to address two groups. Those of us who have some extra time to write. And those of us who have to cram it in between a job and family and obligations. And I’m afraid I actually don’t have much else to add that’s different from what I’ve already said. Sorry for the honeypot. 

 

You already know that finding time to write is more challenging for you. It’s just a fact. Obviously, if your day is filled with obligations, your schedule is pretty much set. And you might have to get up earlier to write. Stay up later. Or just lock yourself in the bathroom for twenty minutes. But again, if you become attuned to when you’re most productive, then you’ll make sure that you’re writing during those times, and it will be less of a slog. 

 

And lastly, as promised, I just want to encourage everyone here to take a nap. Even ten minutes does an amazing amount of refreshing. Studies show that it rejuvenates better than coffee, refreshes your brain for tasks, and keeps you alert for the war against our inevitable lizard overlords. Plus, dreams are often more vivid. And if you like your dreams, this can be a bonus.

 

That’s it for today. Thanks for joining me. Please visit my website Cortwrites.com. That’s C-O-R-T writes.com for links and show notes. And leave a review on iTunes because no one tries anything until after they read about you trying it first. And if I get twenty or more, then Apple says they’ll turn off the chip in my arm that tracks my every movement. 

 

Also, for those of you following along in real-time, I’d like to let you know new episodes will be coming every three to four weeks from now on. I’ll announce new episodes on Twitter, Instagram, and even Facebook--the older brother of social media that, like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused keeps clinging on, hoping someone will give him attention and will be drunk enough to forget that he hangs out with your father.   

 

Today’s quote comes from Annie Dillard, an author who was medaled by Obama:

 

“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.” 

 

Thank you, Ms. Dillard. So it’s like a sort of dream catcher, but for rational people. 

 

So keep writing, my friends, write like you’re saving a baby from a burning car. Because that baby is your novel. And that car is time.