Marg McAlister

At the beginning of Week 2, you should have taken steps to do whatever needed to be done to clear the way for you to write.

Now it's time to take a good look at what you want to write, and how you plan to do it. The best way to approach this is to think of your writing as a project. In the business world, a project has a timeline and a set of defined steps.

The difference is, of course, that a project undertaken during 9-5 working hours is easier to plan and work on, because it's part of your job. When it comes to writing, you're probably trying to fit it in around your 9-5 job. If you don't work outside the home, you usually have to fit in with family and other commitments.

So what we need is to acknowledge the importance of your writing by giving it the status of a project, but making your timetable and set tasks as flexible as possible.

Easy, right? (Picture eyes rolling and hands thrown in the air.)

Don't worry. It can be done. The main thing you have to remember is this: When you plan your writing project, you are setting what you feel are realistic deadlines and goals. Unfortunately, life has a habit of getting in the way.

You KNOW this. It happens to us all the time. I bet if you look back at various plans you've had over the past few months or years, you can point to a spot where they somehow became derailed (even if temporarily). So... keep in mind that part of being a good project manager is being flexible and having contingency plans.

Instead of becoming frustrated and disappointed when you encounter obstacles, just shrug and remind yourself that you expected this. Stay calm and take another look at your timeline. How much time to you need to allocate to fixing the problem that stopped you writing? (If you're not sure, take a guess. Give it more time rather than less.)

Deal with the problem, then get back into your writing. This is how it's going to be from now on. No more giving up or getting depressed because 'things' stop you from writing. You are now a lean, mean writing machine. You are someone in control. You are the kind of person that can hit a temporary snag, deal with it and then keep moving ahead.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

Planning Your Writing Project

Now you are mentally prepared to deal with obstacles as they arise (because they will arise, you can count on it!) you can plan your project. First, work out how many hours you can devote to your writing. The easiest way to do this is to print out a calendar with blank squares (from a program like Microsoft Publisher or Word) and start by filling in your other regular commitments. In addition to things like Playgroup or car pool rosters, add coffee dates with friends. (You're more likely to give up on your writing if you feel that it's all work and no play. The minute you start feeling deprived and as though you 'never have any fun any more' that's the beginning of the end. So DON'T give up all the fun stuff.)

Now look at the hours you have left. If you have a family, it's a safe bet that they'd like to see something of you outside the times that you're doing chores or running errands. So add time for family and friends.

What about TV? You have a choice: you can either slot in the time for a favourite program, or you can record it to watch later.

By now you have probably noticed that I'm not advising you to give up too much. Why? Well, in my experience, IT JUST DOESN'T WORK. You might well begin by feeling all virtuous about blocking off two hours a day to write, while foregoing TV and family time and time with friends. (After all, you tell yourself, this is your writing career - it's important!) For several weeks, you can probably keep it up.

Then the rot sets in.

• You sit in front of the computer when you're not feeling creative, and you resent it.

• You sit there when other people are going out and having fun, and you resent it.

• You sense that the family resents the time you're spending away from them - and you resent their resentment!

It's far better to 'get real' from the start. Block out the hours that you can realistically work on your writing without depriving yourself or others too much, and you're much more likely to stick to it.

Special Occasions and Times of Year

There are times throughout the year when it's going to be harder than usual to find time to write. Some of these times are common to many people. Some will concern only your family. For example:

• Christmas, New Year, Easter

• School Vacations

• Family Occasions/Trauma - Major exams, death or serious illness in the family, weddings, family reunions.

If you know that these things are approaching, build them into your project timeline. You can plan to take a complete break for weeks at a time (without feeling at all guilty!) or you can cut your writing time down drastically. You'll feel a lot better about it all if you have planned this 'time out', and so will everyone around you!

Become Task-Oriented Rather than Time-Oriented

Once you have identified the hours that are available to you for your writing, block them out. Use colour coding so it's easy for you to see them on your calendar.

Let's say you have managed to find 12 "free" hours over the course of a week. That's good. That's excellent, actually - you can get a lot of writing done in 12 hours. IF you manage to fill the whole 12 hours with writing, that is.

But guess what? I'm not expecting you to put in 12 hours. You shouldn't expect it of yourself, either. If you DO manage to use all of them for your writing project, then you can do a little happy dance. However, you should regard this as a POOL of hours from which you can draw, rather than hours you have to fill.

This is where we switch to being task-oriented rather than time-oriented. Most people find it works better to set themselves a TASK to finish during their weekly pool of hours, rather than saying grimly: "I'm going to sit there for 12 hours and write even if it kills me!"

I like the 'scene by scene' approach if you're writing fiction. It works better than a 'chapter by chapter' approach, because a chapter is a fairly arbitrary length. A chapter can be half a page long or fifty pages long.

Scenes are the true building blocks of fiction. A scene is a 'chunk' of action. It has a viewpoint character with a goal and it has opposition to build tension. You simply decide what your viewpoint character wants to achieve next and how she plans to do it; throw in a dash of opposition (readers love problems) and show how she deals with it. This will lead to the next scene, and the next, and the next.

Of course there's a lot more to writing than just creating scenes. You might want to work on your characters, or make some changes to your plot, or research a few publishers ready for when you want to send out your manuscript. If you're writing non-fiction, you may want to write a proposal or draft an article based on a book chapter. You may just want to write a series of articles and send them off to magazines.

All of these are writing tasks, and can be slotted in to your project time. For example, in the 12 hours you have set aside for writing, you might decide that this week you want to write two short scenes and create a new character. If you're writing non-fiction, you might want to buy a couple of new magazines, analyse their house style, decide on half a dozen possible topics; outline a couple of articles and then query the editors.

What if these tasks take you, say, 7 hours? What do you do with the remaining 5 hours?

It's up to you. If you're 'in the zone' and keen to write more, then by all means use them. Or you might know that at the end of the month you're going to find it hard to find any time to write because of a family celebration - so you decide to do more work this week.

On the other hand, you might feel completely satisfied with what you've accomplished within your pool of hours for the week - and decide to spend your remaining hours on other activities.

And that's quite okay!

What if you don't finish the task you have set yourself?

Sit down and think about why.

• Did you set yourself too big a task for the time available?

• Did you encounter unexpected snags that required more research or planning?

• Or are you finding that you are completely disinterested in your current writing project?

If you are trying to do too much in the time you've allocated, accept this and set yourself smaller tasks. Your writing will get finished eventually if you just work at it regularly. The world won't come to an end if you take two or six months longer to complete your book. And so what if you send out an article a few weeks later than you'd hoped?

Simply adjust the tasks you had planned for the next week to accommodate the extra work, and keep going.

What If You Have Lost Interest In Your Writing Project...?

This is serious. There is no point in sitting down for hours every week working on something that doesn't hold your interest.

If your writing project is something you have agreed to write for money, you have two choices. Either finish the darn thing and resolve never to take on a similar task again, or contact the person paying you and see if you can get out of the contract. (It will help if you can recommend someone else who could take over.)

However, if you are bored with whatever you are writing "for enjoyment" (whether it's fiction or non-fiction) and nobody is waiting impatiently for you to finish it, then it's time to sit down and reconsider.

Life's too short to spend hours writing something that is not holding your interest. Moreover, it's most unlikely that it will appeal to an editor anyway. Your disinterest will probably show in the writing.

Here's what you do with your writing time: use it to think about what you really want to write. Take into consideration the type of books you like to read; what impresses you as a reader; the type of characters you like, and the kind of plots that hold your interest.

Make a list of possible books/articles/ideas that interest you, and go from there. (Refer back to the filtering mechanism in Week 1 for people who can't decide what to write - this might help.) When you start feeling keen about an idea, begin a new project.

If you spend a few weeks thinking about it and you're still not sure what to write, then you might do better to spend your pool of hours in networking with other writers while you decide. Visit online groups; join a new local writing group (or form one yourself!) or go to a few writing workshops. You probably need to 'prime the pump' before you begin again.

Time to Plan!

Are you beginning to see why this flexible approach works so well?

• It doesn't impose impossible hours on you so you end up tired and disenchanted with the whole writing scene.

• It allows you time with family and friends.

• It encourages you to think in terms of tasks, not hours spent sitting in front of the computer.

But at the same time, it also encourages you to think about your writing as a project that deserves serious time.

Staying Healthy

If you are not already involved in sport or regular exercise, use this week to create an exercise plan, too.

Aim for at least half an hour a day of continuous exercise (e.g. a half-hour walk, bike ride or swim) plus short stretches or exercises that you can do as a break from the computer.

Here are some suggestions:

Your half hour of exercise: choose one or mix them up over the course of the week

• Walking

• Swimming

• Bike riding (stationary bike or out on the street)

• Dancing

• Aerobics (in-home with a video or at a class)

There are plenty more: these are just basic suggestions - common activities that are easy to do.

Your 'computer breaks' exercise: choose any or add your own

• Stretching exercises

• Walk up and down stairs

• Vacuum a room

• Hang out the washing

• 10 minutes on a Fit Ball

• Walk around the block

• 10 minutes on an Exercise Bike

• 10 minutes on a treadmill

Your goal for Week 2:

Establish a flexible program by allotting a realistic pool of hours to your writing, then think in terms of writing tasks, rather than hours in front of the computer. Make sure that you are writing what you really want to write - if you just can't get excited about your current writing project, take the time to find out what you like. If necessary, network with other writers and go to workshops until you're feeling energised and keen about your writing again.

Also, take a look at the exercise you have built into your day. Nobody is holding a gun to your head, so you don't have to do this. But for your own benefit - DO IT ANYWAY!

Next week we'll look at roadblocks that every writer encounters now and then, and how you can deal with them. Be prepared!