Elaine Fraser is the author of four Young Adult books. She helps us navigate through early 2022 to find methods, systems and procedures that help us write and stick to the commitment of writing. Go get your diaries and calendars! Here’s an interview that I did with Elaine a few years ago, but the points shared still are relevant today.
Lisa: Let’s focus on your appointments with yourself. It’s a way of making sure you write. Can you tell me more about this?
Elaine: This year I’ve set goals and days as ‘work’ days in my diary. Even though I have a lovely library in which to write at home, I often find myself doing laundry or cleaning instead of writing. So, I may end up shifting my ‘office’ to the local library or café so that I’m forced to go out for work. That’s what I keep saying to myself anyway!
Each week is different for me. My husband is a landscape photographer and we travel a lot. I also do volunteer work and mentor writers, so my week is often a hotchpotch of different appointments. I realised after a while that I was being distracted away from my work by legitimate, and satisfying, activities.
If I have blocks of time where I can work for eight to twelve hours without any home or business responsibilities, I work well. If it’s in my diary, I can legitimately tell people I’m not available as my day has been blocked out in my diary. ‘I’m at work that day,’ I tell people.
Lisa: Tell me about your theory of Planned Behaviour. Does it really help dreams and hopes become actions?
If writing is our work, then it is valid to make that time non-negotiable. I blogged about The Theory of Planned Behaviour and it helped me to crystallise my thoughts on how I should be working this year.
According to this theory, when people have time to plan how they are going to behave, the best predictor of that behaviour is one’s intention. In other words, to predict what people are going to do, you need to know what they intend to do.
This doesn’t mean that we always do what we intend. After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions!
I have set up a few little motivators to keep me on track this year. Here are four examples:
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Firstly, we plan some specific adventures and plan how we are going to share those with others incorporating this inspiration into our work. My husband and I committed to a TEDx talk in San Francisco a few years ago. Part of what we shared was about is the way we transitioned from our previous lives to following our creative enterprises. Planned adventures are part of it. This gave me inspiration and set an intention to write and resulted in Living Your Story Promise.
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Secondly, I began using a tool called Scrivener where I can set daily writing word count goals. Even if I don’t meet them every day because of our crazy schedule, I’ve committed to meeting the weekly count, averaging out the days to the daily word count goal.
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A third way I keep on track is to have a critique partner. Each week we commit to sending the next chapter of our book to each other. We critique the work and send it back with our next chapter. We work on about 30 weeks of the year (give or take) 30 weeks means 30 chapters. If you plan to write a YA novel of about 55,000 words in 30 weeks, the word count for each week is only around 1800 words. This gives time to work on blogging, social media and other responsibilities that take up so much of an author’s time these days.
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A fourth thought is buy a Year Planner and block out days and times for different activities, including family time, travel, outings, gym workouts, events, work and so on. The more you can schedule the better. Of course, you can use a whiteboard marker and make adjustments, but this will give you an overview of the year in a visual way to make sure that you are covering all the areas of life you wish to make progress in this year. We colour code ours because my husband is a visual learner!
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When I finished editing this interview with Elaine, I immediately went to my diary and blocked out time at home, at a local café and beautiful libraries. These Blocked Out Days are work days now, lunch appointments with myself or work mornings. I broke my appointments up into:
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The new novel - writing down works, working on ideas, etc.
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Social Media - engaging with my tribe
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The Art of Writing - planning and coordinating for upcoming events
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Answer Emails - cleaning things out to make a new slate, conducting business, etc.
What areas would you like to make more traction on so you have time to write? How will you carve out the time?
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If you’d like to share any comments or thoughts, I’d be happy to hear from you. Email me directly at lisacliffordwriter@gmail.com.