by Evan J
By Evan J
Part of learning how to write is learning how to schedule your creative time. Some people need an unchanging writing regimen. Others thrive on unpredictability. So: what days and what times are best?
Writing is a tough profession, and the only way to excel at it is to work at it every single day. For some people, that means writing every day of the week. But I interpret this advice differently and suggest writing only five days a week.
Regardless of whether it’s five or seven, this quantity of writing offers several benefits: it keeps the creative mind strong and active, it exposes thinking trends or writing patterns that you might not even know you possessed, and it delivers content in bulk. Ever wonder how some writers publish a new book every year? It’s because they write every day.
But like an athlete, I believe rest days are just as important as active days. Two days off from writing per week allows you to reflect on ideas without the pressure to create, and allows you to explore other artistic disciplines. Continuing with the athlete metaphor, exploring other artistic disciplines is like cross-training. You become a better runner by also cycling or swimming. You become a better writer if you also practice dance or spin pottery.
As for the best time of day for writing, the science says to write in the morning when the brain is fresh and most optimistic. This is the time when I schedule the bulk of my writing. But my other favourite time to write is during what I call the margins of the day.
Inevitably, everyone’s day has little breaks, little one-to-five-minute moments of waiting (at the bus stop, lined up at a store, in the washroom), and it’s then that I like to create. This is a wonderful way to write because it: offers you about one extra hour of total writing time each day, it allows you to keep a creative idea working in your head throughout the entire day, and the immediacy of the world is better infused into your writing because of your proximity to speech, emotions, movement, etc.
I’ve come up with a useful little phrase: “you can’t write if you don’t write.” It’s blunt, uncomfortably simple, and a truth that I often tell myself. There can be no excuses. Nobody can do it for you. So if your life is busy, you still have to find a way to make writing a priority. But how? Tommy Orange, Octavia E. Butler, and many other great authors made sure to get up extra early, we’re talking 4 a.m., to jam in a few hours of writing before a busy daytime life. When my life gets busy, I create a meticulous full-day schedule, plopping tasks into 30-minute chunks, and I make sure 60 minutes of writing and 60 minutes of editing are always allotted.