Fiction Scribe

If you’ve ever played the game The Sims, you’ve had a unique view at time management. Basically, you have to have time for work, friends/social, leisure activities, as well as the basics like eating and bathing.

I found more pleasure in Sim City, to be honest. I found the time management needed for The Sims frustrating. The whole thing was hard because there never seemed time in the day for everything. Especially after getting the necessary things like work and eating done.

Isn’t that the way it always goes in real life too? When you’re leisure time is spent writing, sometimes it feels like the most impossible thing in the world is to actually get to doing it.

As I said I would in Time Management Part One, I now have my schedule from one day.

I’m not going to use it.

I have a ridiculously loose schedule because I work at home freelance writing, so most of my time is spent writing. To better reach out to readers of this blog, I’ll be using rough schedules not my own.

Schedule:

6am-7am: Wake up routine/Personal hygiene/Pet care/Breakfast/Emails
7-7:30: Emails again/House care/Final coffee
8-11:45: Work
11:45-12:30pm: Lunch
12:30-3:30: Work
4-5: Home again/Online things/Write/Start supper
5-5:30: Supper and dishes
5:30-7: Personal time - Read/Watch television/Watch a movie/Whatever
7-11: Walk dog/Social time with friends/Write
11: Bed

We’ll pretend this is my schedule.

By the look of things, I have a pretty decent schedule. I have times slotted out when writing is definitely on the list of things I do, which is a major plus compared to a lot of schedules. How are ways I can improve my schedule?

First, I have emails listed twice. I do a few emails, go away and take care of other stuff, then I come back to my emails again. A good way to fix this would be to have a set point to do all my emails, or do some emails and take the time to separate out the ones I can leave until the evening during my online time then.

The only other thing I would do to get myself started on a better writing schedule is this: As you can see, I do have time for writing. The problem is I have other things to do during those times as well - surefire ways to avoid my writing. I need to space out some time for writing and writing only.

You could say this is a fairly simple schedule, and you’d be right. This schedule is excluding emergency calls at any hour of the night as well as staying at work late to get things finished. This was merely to give you an idea that it doesn’t take major adjustments to your schedule to find time to write.

Time management is about organization and adjustment.

Remember, like in The Sims, it can be a bit of a balance. Try letting your significant other put away the laundry tonight so you can get some more writing done.

In the next part, I’ll whip up a list of times you maybe hadn’t thought of to write.