How to Manage Your Writing Time by Managing Your Writer Psyche

Writers Life

Time Management imageQuestion: What is my biggest writing time management problem? Answer: Me.

If you’d asked me this question last month or maybe even last week I’d have said this. “My biggest problem with managing my time to write is all of the demands made on my hours and my energy and my spirit too. So there!”

Reassessment tells me this is not the true answer to the question. Why not? Because it leaves Me totally out of the equation. As if the power in my life to live my life and parcel out my time somehow resides outside of myself in other people and other circumstances.

The true answer has been banging on my head for a while now. Often from the advice wise friends have tried without success to give me. Also from my own observation of other – or the same – friends. Even from my priest who’s been talking a lot about self-care lately.

My biggest problem with managing to find time to write is the same problem I have with managing too much of my life in general. I simply do not know where to put myself in the lineup of my priorities. As one of those wise friends of mine put it – I don’t put myself at the center of my life.

I’ve been long conditioned for this behavior. My mother used to tell me I wanted to be at the center of things. As if that wasn’t at all where I belonged. Even my sainted grandmother raised me to believe that if I wasn’t making the world a better place I shouldn’t be here.

All of which I interpreted as a clear admonition to put everybody else first. To do everything I could for everybody else whenever possible. And most pointedly – at least in my hearing of it and therefore in my head – that doing for myself or taking care of myself was a bad thing.

BTW both of those women followed their own advice. One of them did so with teeth gritted and resentment in her heart. Happenstance didn’t happen well for her. The other did so with love and kindness in her heart and she fared better. But not as well as she deserved to or should have.

Meanwhile I carried on the family tradition by leaping straight into the helping professions in first one form then others. Schoolteacher. Community organizer. Social worker. Book editor. Literary agent. That last requiring perhaps the most outpouring of self of all.

Guess where most of my time was spent through all of that. On other people’s needs. And where it was not spent. “You have a right to have your own needs satisfied.” That was another wise friend talking to me. My response was to stare at her as if she were speaking a language from an alien galaxy.

I’m telling this story first because I need to tell it. But even more so because almost every writer I know – maybe almost every person I know especially if she’s a woman – needs to hear it. Because so few of us put ourselves solidly at the center of our own lives.

In particular we don’t put ourselves at the center of our writing lives. Ask almost any writer what she’d do if she were truly taking care of herself. If she were truly satisfying her own needs. That writer at her most honest would say this. “I would spend more of my time writing. But I don’t.”

We need to change that. Specifically we need to change our minds about that and our hearts too. Otherwise we will never be able to manage our time or our energy. We will never be able to give our hungry spirits what they require to be satisfied. The opportunity to express themselves.

Not to mention we won’t be able to manage our writing careers either. So there!

 Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com                    http://www.facebook.com/aliceorrwriter                    http://www.twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks 

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A Villain for Vanessa ECover (1) 100 x 150px - 14.6KB - SmallA Villain for Vanessa – coming soon – will be Book 4 of Alice Orr’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series featuring the Kalli family and the Miller family in stories of Romance and Danger. A Wrong Way Home – Book 1 – is a FREE eBook at Amazon and other online retailers. All of Alice’s books are available at her Amazon Author Page http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Orr/e/B000APC22E/

 

How A Story Becomes THE Story – THE END

How A Story Becomes THE Story,

A Villain for Vanessa ECover (1) 100 x 150px - 14.6KB - SmallYesterday was a big day for me as a writer. It would be a big day for any writer. So big that lots of excitement is involved. Happy excitement. Jubilant excitement. The excitement of relief. Naturally I wanted to share it.

“Jonathan” I call out from the multipurpose couch/daybed/pillow place in my office where I do most of my writing. “Come in here please. And bring your glasses.”

Last month Jonathan and I passed our forty-fourth anniversary of being together so he may have known the reason for my mysterious request. But he didn’t share that knowledge with me. He allowed me to build the suspense. I write Romantic Suspense after all and I love to milk every ounce of dramatic tension from a scene.

I wait at my laptop with my fingers poised over the keys. The cursor is already in place. The Solid Caps key has already been clicked. I’m ready for the climactic moment but I keep myself in check as is my nature. I maintain a cool façade when my insides may be roiling. Except if I can’t manage that kind of control. In which case it would be wise to run to a distant county.

Jonathan enters the room and stands behind my right shoulder. I don’t look up at him and he doesn’t speak but he’s excited too. I feel those vibes jumping off of him. He obviously does know what’s coming and I’d better make it happen soon or he’ll go all premature on me and you know how that can ruin things.

I touch the keys at the same instant a lump rises in my throat and tears gather under my eyelids. I swallow the lump and will the tears not to fall. Not yet for the emotion. Not quite yet. My fingers move. Six letters separated by a space in the middle form at the center of the page.

THE END

Seconds of silence follow. Reverence for what it has taken to get here. This book has been a challenging adventure and we all know what the word challenge means. This book has been a giant pain in the patoot to make happen. I’ll share those challenging tidbits in future posts. Meanwhile yesterday after those two words become a fact on the page a silence is in order.

Then the kisses begin. Starting at the neck where all sexy romantic heroes know just what to do with their lips etc. And Jonathan is definitely my sexy romantic hero. Especially where my writer life is concerned. Many years ago he was the one who asked the question nobody – including myself – had ever asked me.

“If you could do anything you wanted with your life what would it be?” The dramatic tension was high then too. I could barely breathe. I almost couldn’t talk. “I’d be a writer” I whispered. What Jonathan responded was basically “Go for it my darling.”

I’ve been going for it ever since. Right up until I typed THE END to my fifteenth novel yesterday. It’s called A Villain for Vanessa. Over the next weeks – on as many Mondays as I can manage – I’ll tell you how this story became THE story for me.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com                     http://www.facebook.com/aliceorrwriter                    http://www.twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks

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A Wrong Way Home – Book 1 of Alice Orr’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series – is a FREE eBook at Amazon and other online retailers. All of Alice’s books are available at her Amazon Author Page http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Orr/e/B000APC22E/  A Villain for Vanessa will be Book 4 of the Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series.

 

How to Thrive through Downer Times

Writers Life

Black Dog imageLet’s be honest. We all have them. Winston Churchill called them his Black Dog. If Winnie could admit to experiencing the black-and-blue blues so can we.

I’ve heard a lot of folks owning up to exactly that over the past few months. Maybe it’s the failure of spring to arrive. Maybe it’s the refusal of unpleasant realities to stay away.

Whatever the motivation for a trip to Bummerville an escape strategy is needed. May I suggest three steps along that exit route.

First – Don’t Confide in Anybody but Your Journal.

The world runs on gossip. The writer world runs on storytelling gossip. We should be careful not to fuel that ride. I’m saying you shouldn’t trust anyone. I am saying you shouldn’t overestimate anyone.

People can talk without thinking. People repeat things without thinking about the damage they can do. Sometimes they even succumb to the temptation to use knowledge as currency. Especially juicy knowledge.

The more intimate the story the juicier its potential can be. And nothing is more intimate than the insider details of somebody’s emotional meltdown. The tidbit may be told with compassion. “So sorry for her hardship.” Or with bogus compassion. “Soooo sorry for her hardship.”

The result is the same. The subject of the tidbit is portrayed as down and out or on her way to getting there. An image that does her no good no way no time. Therefore Mum is the word.

Second – Smile While your Heart is Breaking.

Some call it behaving as if. Behave as if you’re fine. I know it’s fake. Worse yet I know it’s hard to do. I also know light attracts and darkness repels.

We don’t want to break down the good work we’ve already accomplished. We want to build it further. Maybe we don’t feel capable of that construction effort at the moment but we can manage to maintain a holding pattern if we try.

My brother Michael once gave me some sage advice. He suggested I take acting classes to learn more about creating story characters. I’ve come to understand the added value of making yourself into a story character when it serves your career purpose. As I said. Only your journal page requires full – or even partial – disclosure.

Third – Tell a Bright Tale Until it Comes True.

I believe in the power of professional pretense. That power has more to do with convincing yourself than it has to do with convincing others. You are the one feeling lousy – or lost – or left out somehow. You are the one who must find a way off the down escalator. The real purpose of spinning a positive less-than-total truthhood is to hear it yourself about yourself.

“The future’s so bright I’m gonna need shades.” That’s the prophecy you want to self-fulfill. Keep repeating it to yourself and everybody and one morning you’ll wake up to find those shiny lenses reflecting your vision of yourself come back to full and lovely life.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com                   http://www.facebook.com/aliceorrwriter                   http://www.twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks

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A Wrong Way Home – Book 1 of Alice Orr’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series – is a FREE eBook at Amazon and other online retailers. All of Alice’s books are available at her Amazon Author Page http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Orr/e/B000APC22E/